[Disney's] Star Wars Episode IX

[Krakalakachkn]

So what do we expect from this movie?  What plotlines do we want to see tied up?  Will we discover the actual identity of Snoke?  Rey's parents?

[Niniel]

What did you think about it? 

 

(Can I write without spoiler tags? If not, how do I do them?)

[SinisterDeath]

19 minutes ago, Niniel said:

What did you think about it? 

 

(Can I write without spoiler tags? If not, how do I do them?)

[spoiler]text here[/spoiler]

 

That's how it's done.
I'd probably do spoiler codes on this for a few weeks/months just because it's a major 'blockbuster'. ?

[Krakalakachkn]

21 hours ago, Niniel said:

What did you think about it? 

 

 

I had such low expectations going into it that I wasn't disappointed by it. 

 

I found it at times beautiful and at more times preposterous.

 

It stuffed 2.5 movies worth of story into 1 movie and it was definitely hurt by it.  The biggest surprise was that Abrams completely retconned large amounts of Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi which I thought was a really poor decision.  It turned a trilogy into a movie and it's sequel (a dryad! - I see what Abrams did there!).  I think Abrams also introduced some problematic physics/theology as the other (new) movies have before it (hyperspace skipping and the whole dryad thing in this one, the Holdo maneuver in The Last Jedi, and hyperspacing within a planets gravity in Rogue One).  It was plagued by callbacks - stuffed full of distracting and unnecessary fan service that didn't benefit the story and pandered to whiny twitter posters.

 

Other thoughts:

- Rose got sidelined like a nobody

- why did Abrams feel the need to double down on weird horse riding?  Why didn't the star destroyer captain just turn the ship on it's side instead of sending troops to fight?

- that whole lightaaber passed behind the back was cool but oh so dumb

- those knights of ren were really lame

- why would you program c3p0 to understand a language he can't translate?

 

 

 

Overall it was a fitting end to a trilogy that didn't feel true to the previous two trilogies and struggled to find its identity.  With hindsight I think Abrams and Disney were the wrong choices to lead the franchise forward into a new age.

 

What about you?

 

 

Edited December 28, 2019 by Krakalakachkn

[Niniel]

 

I agree with most of your thoughts, Krak. The movies really suffered not having a clear story line for the whole trilogy. Why didn´t they have one? Unbelievable. 

 

I liked everything with Rey and Ben. Kylo Ren has been a great character all along (one of my favorite SW characters) and Adam Driver is a great actor. The kiss was a bit unnecessary but I´m okay with it. I also liked Chewie (how he reacted to Leia´s death was so sad), C3PO and seeing Lando again (even though he didn´t do much). 

 

Except for that... I´m disappointed. 

 

They had to do a huge info dump in the beginning and suddenly the Emperor is alive. How did that happen? We got no indication about that. We would have needed another film for that. And he wasn´t good in this film. The way he described every step that Rey should take was so silly. How had he managed to stay hidden and build this great army? And btw, all the star ships can now destroy planets. Riddiculus. 

 

And it wasn´t until now that we learned that Leia had trained with Luke. That would have been some great scenes looking back on but now it was just mentioned. 

 

I could rant on for a long time. I really wish it was better. I tell myself that the most important to me (Rey and Kylo/Ben) got a good ending after all. 

 

 

 

[imlad]

 

I have very mixed feelings on tRoS. The start with it being a very very beautiful film, that can't be denied. Absolutely stunning. And it was a fun ride, no doubt about that. And this film, along with the other two Sequel Trilogy films, are the best acted of all the franchise so far (well, include Rogue One in there as well, but not Solo as much as I liked that and the performances).

 

One thing that surprised me is that, despite the fact that throughout my entire life, even all the way back into my childhood, I have always disliked C-3PO, that scene in Babu Frick's shop when Threepio is talking about looking at his friends one last time...?That really hit me in the feels, and I'd seen that in the commercials a million times already. But seeing in context made it hit home even harder. And I really dislike Goldenrod, more than many people dislike Jar Jar (who doesn't bother me much at all ::shrug::). 

 

I was never into the whole #Reylo thing, not as a romance at least, but I was happy with the kiss when it happened, I felt that one kiss was earned. Especially with what happened seconds later. 

 Unlike some I have encountered out in those dangerous lands of the internet, I am totally fine with Rey taking the last name of Skywalker; I interpreted Luke and Leia's Force Ghosts as giving her permission to go ahead and take the name instead of keeping her father's, and his father's, name. I thought that was pretty clear in their behavior during that shot, but apparently a lot of people missed that.

 I rather liked the lightsaber transfer; it had been established back in The Last Jedi that matter can transfer through that sort of connection when the raindrops ended up on Kylo's glove. And then earlier in The Rise of Skywalker when he snatched the necklace. Weird teleportation-like things with the Force have happened before in canon, like the Loth-wolves traveling across Lothal on the show Star Wars Rebels carrying the main characters, and traversing a much greater distance than should have been possible. Then there's the World Between Worlds (also from Rebels), which, well, um... it's... complicated. But it messes with the concept of locality in so may ways. And time as well.
 

 

 

 I had a lot of fun with most of the movie. Most. But there were things that I really did not like at all.

 

I didn't mind that they gave Rey a somebody for an ancestor (and hey, I'm a big fan and defender of tLJ*). I just really hated the choice of Sheev for that somebody. Like, eeeew! No no no! ?? Gross-out factor aside, I just didn't like this choice in general, nor the Nature vs Nurture type storyline it incurred. I've seen that done too often in genre media, and really didn't need that in Star Wars again. I was hoping that if Rey was descended from someone known that it would be Obi Wan Kenobi and Duchess Satine (probably two or three generations removed of course). But JJ Abrams probably doesn't even know who Satine is (but I'll wager Terrio does).

 I wasn't really happy that they brought Sheev Palpatine back from the dead, but OK, I can live with that. It's been done in Legends to death (ahem?). What I didn't like is that the explanation for how was such a tiny, single, throwaway line that was the barest minimum of an attempt at hand-wavey, mumbo-jumbo, woo-woo explanation that was not satisfactory. A couple more lines of dialog, maybe an image or two to knock it home as well.

 The planet-killer laser canons on the Star Destroyers pissed me the ?? off. Nope nope nope. The Xyston-class Star Destroyer and its Axial Superlaser is a step too far. The only reason the Death Stars were able to generate enough energy to destroy a planet is that the energy its generators produced was amplified by a giant kyber crystal (a green one in fact, thus the color of the laser). Starkiller base powered itself with a nearby sun to transform a type of dark energy called "quintessence" into "phantom energy" and launch that at a planet(s). But it took a all whole sun to power that. Star Destroyers are too small to bear a generator big enough to kick out enough juice to power something that could explode a planet even with sustained blasting. I couldn't suspend disbelief on that one. That was a needless addition, it added absolutely nothing to the story. The stakes were already high enough, no need to add planet-killers to all the Star Destroyers. Star Destroyers are devastating enough when they can just bombard the surface to smithereens in hours, wiping out cities and towns completely. And that's just with their turbolasers and other energy weapons, and not counting any large rocks they just drop on the planet, which are horrendous in the devastation they can cause (just ask the dinosaurs).

 I was skeptical of the sheer numbers of ships and cultists(?) people, crewmen and officers Palpatine had out there at Exegol. When and how was this built? With what source of funding? How was it done without anyone knowing? Where was it all built, and how come nothing about it leaked from there? Sure, I know there was a line about needing lot more people to crew the ships properly, but still, there were a heck of a lot of people on that "secret planet" in Unknown Space crewing a "secret fleet" of Star Destroyers. 

I wasn't happy that Rose wasn't utilised at all, basically benched, I thought she was great in tLJ, basically the conscience of that film, Finn's own Jimminy Cricket (one that he needed for parts of his character growth). I think this was JJ overreacting the nasty anti-Rose backlash from the Toxic Fandom (in this case the so called "Fandom Menace" I guess they would be called). I think there should have been some sort of introduction of Aftab as Ackbar's son (Aftab is that young weird looking Mon Calamari). 

 To @NinielIt's probably unfair of LucasFilm to have done it this way (at least in the minds of many), but they had made it known that Leia had trained with Luke at one point. I haven't read many of the canon books that have come out since they took over, but I've watched/listened to a lot of reviews and discussions about them, and although I don't recall which novel it was, I know that in at least one of the books (I'm guessing Bloodline by Claudia Grey) it is mentioned that she had trained with Luke sometime after Endor. But she decided she could serve the Galaxy more in a political role than as a Jedi, so she stuck to what she already knew best.

 In the end, I think the problem with this trilogy, other than not having had a plan for an overall story, is JJ's wandering and inconsistent writing. Heck, they have a Story Group who could have sat down with the writers who were tapped to write the three screenplays, along with the directors. The way I would have done it is put them on a little "retreat" at Skywalker Ranch (or some other location perhaps, preferably with little distraction) for a week or two, all the scriptwriters, directors and the Story Group, along with a few of the more involved producers (not all "Producer"s in the credits are equal!). Have them break down the story for the three movies as if it was the writer's room for a tv show breaking down a season. Throughout all this, the Story Group would also be aware of what was going on with the other properties, stuff they'd been working with the writers and producers of already, so details from those properties could potential be worked into this trilogy, if appropriate and not forced. (And the SG could have had more ability to keep Abrams inline instead of letting him go against stuff already established in canon; this whole thing about Poe being a spice runner causes some issues with Dameron's established backstory from the books and comics from what I've been hearing online from people read all that stuff).

 This is the one fault I find in the way Kennedy has run LucasFilm so far. Okay, one of two. The second is letting JJ Abrams have any part in writing either of the scripts he was directing. Go ahead and let Abrams direct. He's an incredible director, I won't take that from him. I just don't particularly care that much for his writing, it leaves too many holes and questions left unanswered. Kasdan by himself (or with his son) for TFA would have been great. Terio by himself for tRoS would have been fine. When Kennedy let Rian Johnson write and direct The Last Jedi we got one of the greatest movies of the franchise (second only to A New Hope in my opinion, at least in my love for the films; in a purely objective sense, it is the best by far). The franchise needs more Rian Johnsons and Gareth Edwards (or Tony Gilroy depending who you talk to) and less Abrams-s and Howards (and yeah, I really liked Solo, but I've never been a fan of Ron's directing in general). I'd even be supportive of the Russo Bros. and Marcus and McFeely, the quartet behind Infinity War and Endgame (just in a different time period of the galaxy). And I'm still holding out for Spielberg to direct a Star Wars film. It is long past due, and I hope he hasn't sworn it off or anything out of a sense of loyalty to his friend.
------------------------------------------------------
* Unlike many people (especially The Last Jedi fans), I was fine either way on whether or not Rey was a legacy Force User or not. For the entire history of the Jed, initiates came from families of non-Force Users, not children of Jedi. Jedi didn't marry and have children that became Jedi, the Jedi were taken as infants or toddlers from their parents who were nobodies. The only known exceptions to this were Luke, Leia, Ben and now Rey (okay, okay, and the Dathomiri Night Sisters and Night Brothers, but they're a special exception unto themselves, and we don't really even know how they operate and pass on their knowledge and skills). So the whole argument people were making after tLJ that "Rey and Broom Kid were symbols of how special it was that anyone could be a Force User" was just silly, because we already had "a thousand generations" of Jedi to have as symbols of that very idea. The people making that argument really were not paying attention to their Star Wars lore carefully enough.

Edited January 20, 2020 by imlad

[Krakalakachkn]

I went back and rewatched the Prequel Trilogy for the first real time as an adult - trying to completely ignore any nostalgic feelings.

 

They hold up so poorly.  It's the writing.  Okay, 95% is the writing.  It's atrocious.

 

Jar-Jar still doesn't annoy me anymore than any other characters. 

 

The biggest surprise was finding that Hayden Christensen really wasn't that bad.

 

I think my order of mediocrity would be:

1) Phantom Menace

2) Attack of the Clones

3) Revenge of the Sith

 

 

Next up: The OG Trilogy