The great debate... Star Wars. I can feel @Jeffro and plenty of others punching holes through their computers whenever a large Star Wars discussion breaks out... so in response to a few posts that were left in the movie discussion thread, I figured it'd make sense to just move it here and carry on any Star Wars analyzing/debating to this thread.
I urge folks that if they want to talk anything Star Wars to do it here - of course unless it's solely to share your opinion/review on a movie, then the Movie thread works. I'd obviously rather this not be the case but I don't want to clog up the other thread. Let's try to keep this discussion story-driven and not politics-driven but heck, I can't control you animals.
I thought 7 was fun and enjoyed it. hated 8, maybe because I had too high expectations for a good twist or something. 9 was good and I enjoyed much more than 8 but not as much as 7 Lol
Secondly, watched Episode IX (again). During that last battle, the fleet isn't stuck in Exogal's atmosphere until after the command ship is shot down by Finn and Jannah. An alien pilot tells Poe to look at the command ship falling and then Poe says "Their fleet are stuck here!" in direct response to that happening. That's context. The fleet wasn't stuck in the atmosphere (until the very end), they just never left the atmosphere because Poe and the Resistance brought the fight to them before they left.
And to be honest, that could have easily been Palpatine's plan - to lure the Resistance into a trap. After all, the initial Resistance fleet that shows up is tiny compared to Palpatine's secret fleet, and that was the only Resistance that was known to still exist at that point (until the big save lead by Lando). It'd make complete strategic sense for Palpatine to lure what he probably assumed was the entire Resistance to a planet where there are zillions of Star Destroyers lined up with planet-killing weaponry. Once he wiped them out before even leaving Exogal, he would have had literally no opposition to take the entire galaxy. The odds seemed forever in Palpatine's favor until Lando and the cavalry arrived.
So I don't really feel like that aspect of his plan didn't make sense. What doesn't make sense about Palpatine's plan is the actual personal bit. He's 100% willing to let Rey strike him down so that he can more-or-less possess her with his Sithiness, but then once Ben shows up, his plan is suddenly to just take all the power for himself. He did seem caught off guard when their Force bond started rejuvenating him so it's possible he just re-assessed his plan at the last second, but you'd think he'd have known their Force bond was that powerful considering he had been pulling Kylo Ren's strings all throughout the trilogy, but alas. Also why the fudge does Rey and Ben's Force bond provide Palpatine with new clothes? I get that it looks like a mix of PT Palpatine and OT Palpatine... but a pretty silly way for it to happen.
> Did they fix Chewies cgi face in RoS? It didn’t seem to bother me this time but was
> an eye sore in FA...maybe I just got used to it.
His face wasn't CGI in The Last Jedi either (no idea about TFA). I guess lots of folks thought that but Johnson confirmed that it wasn't the case. Most people chalk it up to the fact that Joonas Suotamo's eyes are just real different than Peter Mayhew's.
I personally never thought it looked like CGI at all, or even heard that complaint made until your comment here.
@Scott Moved this convo to the SW thread because I know people hate seeing it in the movie thread for whatever reason.
Gonna reply to our points of contention and, yes, in length. 100% not to argue or call you "wrong" or whatever, and I don't blame you for skimming or disregarding entirely. I just wanted to put this disclaimer here to assure anyone reading that this is just a discussion with differing opinions because that's what happens with SW these days. They're just movies after all, just ones that I can write way too much about.
> -Need more details on what the plot was going to be. What's said here sounds like nothing special.
I just gave the overall plot synopsis, of course there were plenty more details. There's a better breakdown than the one I linked to out on the net that delves into the script more.
I think it sounds far better than the plot of TROS... or rather the 27 plots of TROS haha
> -I don't know, Kylo Ren still very much felt like the primary villain in TRoS, until his redemption then it was like oh yeah let's take are of Palpatine. I actually preferred getting to see him help Rey, instead of just redemption at the end, and then it's over.
Kylo Ren turns back to the light side roughly halfway through TROS, or at the very least 2/3 through. A primary villain doesn't become the good guy before the end of the final act, even in Star Wars.
Regardless, it was revealed that Kylo Ren was only working under the guidance of Palpatine the entire time, therefore making Palpatine the primary villain any way you shake it. After all, nobody was gunning directly for Kylo Ren in this movie. Rey's primary goal was to finish Palpatine for good, and the Resistance's primary goal was to defeat Palpatine's fleet. Kylo Ren was second fiddle through and through, and only became Rey's focus anytime he interjected himself into her adventure.
> "I needed Kylo as the main villain in Episode IX for it to be a complete win, so Palpatine being back was an auto-neg from me." Sounds like you went in with expectations and didn't give TRoS a fair chance.
I absolutely gave it a fair chance, I wanted it to be great. Any conversation I had about the movie before it came out proves that. When I say I needed Kylo Ren to remain the villain for a "complete win", I mean just that - a "complete" win. They still could have redeemed him and if done in a good way, I would have still liked the movie - it just wouldn't have reached a "complete" top-grade for me for me personally. And I mean, like I've said a bunch, I did still like the movie even despite them redeeming Kylo in a pretty anti-climactic fashion.
I do find the "you went in with expectations and didn't give (the movie) a fair chance" argument ironic in the wake of all the TLJ backlash though, considering the majority of negative reactions stemmed from that exact sentiment. That said, I absolutely did go into TROS with certain character expectations because that's how stories work. Unlike TFA, which left certain details ambiguous for the future movies, TLJ built off TFA's set-ups (albeit in expectation-subverting ways) and blatantly established characters to set them firmly in their roles for the finale.
TROS then placed them back at square one so Abrams could get back to what he set up. Abrams should have just signed on for the whole trilogy if he didn't want the creator after him to implement their own vision into the series, or at the very least should have passed on Episode IX if he wasn't willing to build off what the previous creator established.
> -I would have been fine with some kind of pre-sequel connection, but not that one. It doesn't even make sense, aren't they around the same age? Unless we're supposed to believe it happened after Kylo went to the dark side, but then, why didn't her parents come back for her in all of that time? I guess hiding her there could have been a permanent solution in their minds, but idk, I don't like it.
To be honest, any pre-sequel connection would have been more preferable than just dropping that story to shoehorn Palpatine in, considering it had been been teased in the previous two movies.
Kylo Ren was supposed to be young when he was turned by Snoke (which is why we only saw him lying in bed when they flashed back to that in TLJ), so it's easy enough to assume that their ages lined up well enough with this idea. Many movies do this, where the actors are similar ages but their backstories establish their ages as being different.
Anyhow, we were supposed to believe Kylo Ren killed Rey's parents after he was turned, he certainly didn't do it because he was a good guy haha. We would have been lead to understand that her parents didn't go back for her because they were dead, and that Rey escaped with the help of someone else. Personally, that's what I always assumed Max Von Sydow's character from TFA was for - but he's just another thing Abrams didn't deliver on.
To go into my own head canon for a sec, I originally theorized that Rey's parents were either padawans at Luke's Academy or at the very least friends who lived nearby, and were killed when the Knights of Ren attacked. From there, I assumed Von Sydow's character (who clearly knew of Kylo Ren's family) was the one to save Rey and drop her on Jakku. This seems like it could have been the way Trevorrow's script went, but even if not, this proves it would have been easy enough to keep TROS's story consistent with TFA and TLJ if they really wanted to try.
> -I'm glad Rose was cut and Finn got to ineract with Rey/Poe more. I don't think I would have liked this storyline much.
Again, having Rose be an integral part of the movie would have just been stronger storytelling regardless of anyone's subjective opinion on her character. I'm happy you enjoyed her being cut, but there are many folks who really enjoyed her character and were pissed about it. The two characters they introduced to play the role that Rose very easily could have played in TROS were underdeveloped and unnecessary.
The larger breakdown I mentioned earlier makes it clear that Rey/Poe/Finn would have still been the center of the story. Rey/Poe going off on their trip and Finn/Rose going off on theirs would have solely been a second act thing, as all the characters would have been together in the first and third acts.
> -Rey and broom boy sounds dumb. They would have had to just blatantly be like "oh yeah, this is that boy from the end of TLJ" or most people would have no clue who it was.
It sounds no dumber than the corny "Rey who" garbage that was at the end of TROS. The larger breakdown mentions that broom boy would have been one of many students in this scene, so it would have just been a nice easter egg for folks who enjoyed his part in TLJ - it wouldn't have been a one-on-one thing.
To sound like a broken record, this would have at the very least created some connective tissue to the previous movie as opposed to a forced last name reveal to some random old lady. That existed solely for the people who NEEDED her to be a Skywalker - more fan service instead of logic.
> I'm sure it would have been better, these are just some very rough high-level ideas, but overall I'm glad they didn't go this direction. Seems like this would have been a better continuation of TLJ, while TRoS is a better completion to what TFA started.
I couldn't disagree with your last sentence more, TROS threw so much from TFA out the window, not just TLJ. This script would have likely been a better continuation to both sequel trilogy movies and a much more satisfying final chapter to the overall saga.
And these only come off as rough "high-level" ideas because they're just my bullet points and only outline things in the simplest possible way, the larger breakdown presents a really good story that connects the entire saga in a fun and logical way: from the prequel nods, to following up on mysteries introduced in TFA, to actually building off what TLJ established.
I wanted to love Episode IX, and I still love SW overall. I reiterate that I did enjoy TROS as a mindless popcorn movie with great visual spectacle and classic SW fan service. At the end of the day, that's clearly all Star Wars needs to be. I just prefer strong storytelling over those aspects and TROS did not deliver with that.
I'll still always look back at SW as a whole - prequels, OT and sequels - and appreciate the overall narrative. Even if certain movies had things I thought were bad, the lore still interests me to no end. I'd love these stories presented in some sort of history book, similar to the history books put out for GOT/ASOIAF, as if they were legitimate accounts of historical events written by someone in-universe.
Also, and I promise this isn't being posted in conjuction with my wall of text as an attempt to sway anyone though the timing is admittedly bad, but I just realized earlier today that TROS has the lowest Cinemascore out of any Star Wars movie. This post includes more discussion about the reaction to TLJ, so feel free to pass on by if you're over that sort of thing.
Anyhow, these are the Cinemascores for the Star Wars movies:
The Phantom Menace: A- Attack of the Clones: A- Revenge of the Sith: A- The Force Awakens: A Rogue One: A The Last Jedi: A Solo: A- The Rise of Skywalker: B+
Cinemascore is an aggregate website that polls folks directly after the movie as they're leaving the theater. Movie scores tend to skew high on that site as the polls happen on opening night, so it's the most "involved" fans being polled. AKA these scores can't be review-bombed like RT and are a direct reflection of some of the most passionate fans of any given movie. B+ isn't bad on paper but it's not necessarily a good "Cinemascore", especially when you take into account that the infamously bad Cats got a C+, which is obviously only a full letter grade below TROS. The only theatrical Star Wars to do worse than TROS was The Clone Wars animated movie that did a B-.
That's not the be-all end-all obviously and everyone's entitled to an opinion. In my own, TROS was fine and definitely not worse than any of the Prequel Trilogy if definitely a little disappointing. But it does say something interesting about the vehement internet backlash toward The Last Jedi when you see that real in-person audiences made up of hardcore Star Wars fans seemed to enjoy the saga more when it veered from the beaten path, or at least enjoyed it less when it decided to return to the beaten path.
The internet backlash to that movie really is just that - internet backlash, with the same vocal-but-toxic critics crapposting with the same tired "points" anytime the movie is brought up (Rian Johnson literally can't post a tweet without someone with "Fandom Menace" in their bio saying something foolish in response). While there are definitely some low lows in TLJ, I still firmly believe that the majority of casual movie-goers, and most Star Wars fans in general, enjoyed The Last Jedi more than you'd think if you were to just look on Twitter, Reddit, Rotten Tomatoes, or of course corner-of-the-net message boards with like 12 active users.
> I don't disagree with you. I enjoy SW movies but I'm no die-hard so I have no issues
> with cannon or random characters. Also, I have generally enjoyed most things JJ
> Abrams has been involved with so I'd prefer him over any other director for sci-fi
> stuff when possible.
>
Replying to you here to keep it outta the Movie thread, folks get mad when too much SW pops up in there haha
I feel you, but the story/character issues I have with TROS aren’t specific to Star Wars, it’s just basic storytelling. If an episodic series introduces a character and another installment/“episode” of said series is released, it just makes sense to integrate the characters who are already established, especially if you have plot details that would make sense to attribute to their character. Introducing characters who are capable of serving the same purpose in a plot as an established character is just poor writing in general, Star Wars or otherwise. Zorii Bliss has the exact same arc that Rose did in TLJ (relay info about a planet overrun by bad guys and swoop in at the end to make a save) just this time with a Power Rangers outfit, and Jannah has the exact same “kinship with Finn” that Rose did just now with Finn’s exact origin story.
I’m also a JJ Abrams fan but can admit his “mystery box” style of writing can get in the way of logic a lot and he’s hit-or-miss when it comes to fully delivering (Into Darkness for example). Still, TROS is the most disappointed I’ve been in one of his movies.
Of course that’s due to the script/writing in general, not the direction, so maybe Chris Terrio deserves more of my ire (dude did write Batman v Superman after all).
hahaa I like Solo too but I can sorta see that. In fact TROS sorta suffers from a lot of what I feel Solo does - it jumps from setting to setting too quickly and integrates sorta half-baked characters who exist solely in their little sections of movie. Both seem sorta like 2 or 3 movies condensed into one.
But ALSO like TROS, it's fudging wonderful to look at, the acting is real good and it's just a fun romp through the universe.
@theJaw I read all of your reply. We can just agree to disagree I guess. You love TLJ and are mixed on TRoS, it's the other way around for me.
As for the CinemaScore, I feel like TRoS's score is more a reflection of the overall tension and negativity that has grown in the Star Wars community, and overall culture, starting with TLJ and then getting even worse with Solo. So many people seem to have already made up their minds that everything Star Wars is just terrible now, will never be good, yet they still watch it, just so they can pick it apart and go on and on about how bad it is. Not you, obviously, but a lot of people. Star Wars fans have transitioned from crapping all over the prequels to crapping all over the ST, it's annoying.
Yah I agree it’s very annoying for sure. I personally don’t feel like the opening night premieres that get polled would have been attended by lots of those naysayers so I still feel like the TROS Cinemascore is valid. I suppose it could be possible that some folks disenchanted by the previous 2 movies went opening night but I don’t feel like it’d be enough to really hinder the score to such a degree - I truly feel like a large enough sect of true SW fans (and not just counter-culture edgelords) were let down by TROS to a degree and I’m judging that solely from the reactions I’ve seen that share that sentiment without getting toxic like TLJ haters tend to. The backlash toward TROS and TLJ are like night and day, at this point TROS comes off as true disappointment from fans who were hopeful and TLJ comes off as try-hard vehement hatred from folks who already had their mind made up. Disliking these movies is one thing but neither were so bad that anyone should feel it necessary to die on that hill. Yet, they do.
Either way we can definitely agree that the SW hate is overblown and obnoxious. It’s made me personally reevaluate my own obnoxious take on the PT movies. While I still dislike them for the most part and feel fine criticizing them when the conversation calls for it, I regret being so hard on them for years solely because that just ruins the fun for folks who did like them. Thankfully I grew up a bit in that regard and can only hope the same happens for the toxic fandom out there.
> I couldn't watch the whole thing, but if my skipping was accurate, more animation?
> No thanks.
>
>
It only mentioned books and comics and whatnot.
What’s the issue with animation? Resistance wasnt much to write home about but Clone Wars and Rebels have consistently been regarded high points of SW. I’d love another animated series.
I don't care for 95% of animation that is geared towards children or families. I can watch some Bakshi or Heavy Metal. Stuff like that. Even some of the old Rankin Bass is ok.
It's not to say that it's bad or I can't enjoy some animation with my kids, but I always prefer live action everything.
Yah that’s valid, plenty of episodes lean toward children. At least for Rebels. But a majority of Rebels ends up tackling mature themes, and just about all of Clone Wars is geared toward older teens/adults.
Resistance is 100% a kids show though.
Either way, other than SW, animation can be used to tell very adult-oriented stories - just depends on, well, the story. Animation doesn’t designate a children’s story by any means, especially these days.
> anyone else disappointed High Republic wasn't about a bunch of stoners sharing their
> love of Star Wars?
Well apparently someone thinks putting Dinosaurs in this High Republic stuff is a good idea. If it's real Dinosaurs (T-Rex, etc) that's dumb. Beasts that just look like they could be Dinosaurs, that's fine as Star Wars has had things that look like them already.
Yes indeed. SW Extended materials have historically done some real stupid things in the past and will almost certainly do some real stupid things in the future. Hoping Earth dinosaurs is not one of them.
> Star Wars will always be in a galaxy far, far away. If they come to our galaxy, I
> call bullcrap.
>
>
If they come to our Galaxy it'll only happen so they can put product placement in Star Wars, and if they do that I'll stop watching anything from there on out.
Again, I doubt that’ll happen. If you look at the High Republic stuff, it all revolves around the “ancient times” of the SW galaxy - the use of the word “dinosaurs” on one white board likely pertains to weirdo extinct alien monsters the same way their use of the word “vehicle” pertains to landspeeders or star destroyers.
Also, they have no reason to include product placement within the stories considering most of them are going to be told via comics, and comics have included actual print ads within their pages for decades.
Ads can obviously be annoying but the argument can be made that there would be far less comics in general without ads - physical print is a dying business so ads are the only reason physical copies with high print runs still get produced. Even Image and other labels run ads in their books if the print run is larger than 5,000 issues or so (although they at least don’t place them in the middle of books like Marvel/DC).
Marvel and DC obviously have a ton of money but if they printed large runs of comics without ads they likely wouldn’t see a return that makes printing physically worth it. I’ll put up with an ad I can ignore to ensure physical copies continue to exist. I’d hate to never smell a fresh book again haha
Yah most of their issues run around 5,000 copies for a 1st print, so there’s no huge need to put ads in there. I would rather the ads stick to the back of the books from other labels but like I said, I have no issue ignoring them to ensure some of the books I’ve loved since I was a kid keep getting printed physically.
So for fellow dweebs who were left wondering about this, apparently the Episode IX novel confirms that the Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker was a clone of the Palpatine we knew from Episodes I-VI, and was only so degraded due to the cloned vessel being unable to withstand the OG Palpatine’s immense power.
I suppose that’s a better explanation than no explanation at all, or the common assumption that it was the tattered body from the first 6 movies having somehow survived Return of the Jedi. Though I do think that this was just the novel’s writer filling in blanks that were never considered when Abrams and Terrio were writing the movie itself, and that the film’s writers truly intended it to be the body from RotJ having survived the Second Death Star’s destruction. Otherwise it would have been so easy to include a simple line of (necessary) dialogue during Kylo Ren and Palpatine’s initial interaction to establish that it was a clone we were seeing as opposed to all the dialogue that seemed to insinuate it was the same Palpatine we had always seen. All we got was Dominic Monaghan’s character vaguely mentioning “clone technology” or something similar among a list of other possibilities for Palpatine’s return.
Still, I’m glad somebody offered a now-canon reason for why Palpatine was still around without it being a total cop-out. I mean cloning is still pretty “eh” anytime it’s used, especially when bringing back a dead character, but at least there is already a precedence in SW that cloning has always been a “thing” that happens from time to time. And I do think the novel’s way of establishing this info (by having Kylo Ren remember his teachings of the Clone Wars from when he was kid and recognize the equipment Palpatine was hooked up to as being prominent during that era) was pretty witty.
> Reys father was a failed Palpatine clone. They need to actually have a plan with
> whatever they do next and not just make it up as they go along.
As much as I feel like they're just making crap up as they go along, I looked further into it and apparently most of these plot points from the novel (like Palpatine being a clone in TROS) were indeed in the script but cut from the movie.
Either they're just saying that to save face, which I'd be inclined to believe at this point after the backlash toward TROS, or they should have left this crap in the actual movie so that the MOVIE made sense and not the novel. Either way you shake a stick at it, the movie dropped the ball on a lot of this.
It does seem like leadership is getting their crap together and plotting things out well in advance, which is why the movies were put on hold for a bit and the Obi-Wan series was delayed, so hopefully moving forward everything is a bit more consistent. I just really wish they took that approach for the sequel trilogy because, while I enjoyed VII and loved VIII, IX was a pretty brutal disappointment in wrapping the entire saga together.
haha that's like me telling you the same thing about VIII. Very unlikely that I'll ever enjoy it more than I already do. Half-baked fetch quest plot with macguffins that don't make sense on a basic level, and decently unsatisfying endings for all the characters. It'll be tough for me to come around to liking it as more than just a gorgeous spectacle to look at unfort.
Going back to the "Rey's dadio is a failed clone" deal, I haven't read the novel but I am really wondering how exactly that would even make in-universe sense. If we're to believe Palpatine in TROS is a clone that's being physically destroyed from the inside out by Palpatine's power, wtf happened with Rey's dad to just give him a normal personality and no physical ailments? 1) he doesn't LOOK like Palpatine, so the whole "clone" thing is sorta hard to slap on him to begin with considering how clones have historically been presented in SW, but also 2) I figured, going by what TROS shows us, that Palpatine clones are only "activated" when he needs a new vessel.
So how the frig did Rey's dad, a "failed Palpatine clone", fend off Palpatine's spirit... or power.... or essence.... or whatever actually gets passed from body-to-body and just end up a regular dude?
