spoilers [SPOILERS] Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker

[Lord Varys]

14 minutes ago, Ran said:

The whole "dyad of the Force" thing was ... actually awesome and clever, and made me feel much better about Rey's strength. I don't know if it's a JJ invention or an EU thing or even something he got from Lucas.

That actually seems to be a concept straight out of the one of the earlier versions of the script for ROTJ - which was originally supposed to play in the Coruscant (or rather: Had Abbadon as it was called then) system, the capital world of the Empire, with two half-constructed Death Stars in orbit, and Endor being 'the Sanctuary moon' (hence that weird reference to Endor by the Emperor in the finished movie) which had been traditionally kept the way it always was.

The final confrontation was supposed to be deep down in the fiery heart of the capital planet, in the Emperor's throne room surrounded by a lava lake, with Luke being aided in his defiance against the Emperor by the Force Ghosts of Obi-Wan and Yoda. Making that all the Jedi is the logical next step when we are at a point when many Jedi actually got names and faces.

[The Mother of The Others]

A neat twist would be if Ren's cutting words ("Your parents were nobody") turned out to be deeply accurate, as in dark side slang for literally no parents.  Vader was a virgin birth... Rey could have upped the ante by being born totally free of any biology.   Pure Force, Jim!   The force!  (Somehow in the process removing human weakness from the Rey equation!  Explaining how she intuits force powers more directly than anyone else and justifying her marysue-ism.... by being truly superhuman in origin!)    Eh.

[Joe Pesci]

Well, I enjoyed this a lot more than I was anticipating to. There were definitely some head scratching moments, but I'm easy enough to let them go. 7.5/10 and I'll probably go see it again over the holidays. Imagine what it could've been like had TLJ not skull fucked Luke Skywalker, and I actually didn't mind TLJ. Wasted opportunity but life goes on.

[Lord Varys]

Just now, The Mother of The Others said:

A neat twist would be if Ren's cutting words ("Your parents were nobody") turned out to be deeply accurate, as in dark side slang for literally no parents.  Vader was a virgin birth... Rey could have upped the ante by being born totally free of any biology.   Pure Force, Jim!   The force!  (Somehow in the process removing human weakness from the Rey equation!  Explaining how she intuits force powers more directly than anyone else and justifying her marysue-ism.... by being truly superhuman in origin!)    Eh.

That would be very weird, to say the least.

The whole force child theme was originally intended to have some sort of payback after TPM. Anakin could have been Palpatine's own child - by means of force manipulation. He could have taken over his master's projects to result in the miracle boy - whether intentionally or unintentionally.

And had they wanted to go in such a direction they should have brought in/back Darth Plagueis in the new movies. There are hints that he and/or Palpatine actually did create Anakin via midi-chlorian manipulation in the Darth Plagueis book - which is perhaps one of the most official Lucas-stamped EU works out there considering Luceno worked very closely with Howard Roffman when writing that novel. Plagueis is in close contact with Gardulla the Hutt in the novel - the previous owner of Anakin and Shmi Skywalker, which leaves open the possibility that Shmi Skywalker was once a specimen in Plagueis' laboratory. And if the guy could save others from death, as Palpatine claims in ROTS, then he could also have done that for himself ... without Palpatine's knowledge, of course.

That would have been a fine new/old villain for the new movies.

By making Rey literally a Palpatine by ways of Palpatine's son (not his daughter, by any means) it seems clear that we actually do have to imagine Emperor Palpatine as a married man with some empress at his side, even if that woman was just a puppet or trophy wife or baby machine confined to some wing of the Imperial Palace.

Strangely enough, in the EU Palpatine does have some kin - there is a mutant son with three eyes whose mother was eventually supposed to be Palpatine's aide and confidant, Sly Moore, who only appears in the very obscure and almost apocryphical Jedi Prince series of novels (whose protagonist is actually a boy named Ken, Triclops' son and thus the alleged grandson of Palpatine).

Then there is Palpatine's third cousin Volpau who shows up as a corpse in a Boba Fett comic, and the most famous Ederlathh Pallopides, a remote great-niece of the Emperor who, according to the Dark Empire Sourcebook, was a contestant for the Imperial Throne after the Battle of Endor.

This sort of clashes with the information from 'Darth Plagueis' where young Palpatine kills his entire core family, his father Cosinga, his nameless mother, his two nameless brothers and his two nameless sisters, making him having a living legitimate niece problematic, but we do learn in the same book that his father Cosinga had a mistress in addition to his wife, so Edderlathh could have been the granddaughter of a half-brother or half-sister of Palpatine that way.

[sologdin]

seagulls poke me in my knees. overall, fast paced and full of intentional badass.  will need to watch again to assess everything.  maybe not a satisfactory conclusion, unearned. i'd've written a lot of it differently. it doesn't much undo VIII, but fails to live up to that film's insights.

[Slurktan]

I liked it better than I thought I would which very much surprises given that the spoilers were 100% correct that came out months ago.  But my god JJ Abrams really does think no one uses their brain.  So much stupid.

One actual big thing that really annoyed me....  why isn't it Luke's lightsaber they use and then bury at the end?  Like what the fuck.  The blue one was never his, it was Anakin's.  (And somehow got put back together)  The block at the end with both sabers would have been much better with blue and green as well.

PS... Thought Chewie getting the medal was terrible fan service although I liked JJ's mea culpa with showing him grieve unlike the scene in Force Awakens.

[Argonath Diver]

Well, I had a blast. We can all pick it apart, sure, but it hit all the right notes for me. My opinion is pretty much the same as The Mandalorian. Sure it makes little sense, but it's a very entertaining popcorn flick. The original trilogy had loads of awful acting and absurd plot elements, but we all cherish it. I still have hardly ever re-watched those prequel movies, but as disjointed as Eps 7, 8, and 9 may be, I still had a great time in the theater each time.

Okay, one minor complaint. The horse charge and bow-and-arrow shot was so goddamn stupid that my girl and I were openly groaning, as was half the theater. What happened to the alien horses anyway? And how the hell were they low enough in that planet's magical atmosphere that no one cared? Eh, whatever.

Oh, and on a totally sophomoric note, said girl is madly in lust over Poe, and was upset that his random masked girlfriend had an old-school "What a great ass" shot and he didn't get one. I agreed with her. It was a terrific toosh and got me a deserved hard and audible slap on the thigh. We also both yelled "KISS!!" when Poe and Finn embraced at the end. I'll ship them forever.

[Crazydog7]

billy dee williams is in it and he was wonderful (82 years old good for him).

Beyond that there isn't really alot I can say In terms of Star Wars material that is out there now just find some way to watch the Mandelorians its much better. It wasn't good it wasn't bad it was just....a movie. I went into this with my expectations pretty low and still feel disappointed. I know I am probably being hard headed about this but this reminds me to much of when Revenge of the Sith came out.  People were willing to forgive alot simply because it wasn't as bad as Clone Wars or Phantom. 

I do have sympathy for anyone who has to do a Star Wars movie now or later its like the Marvel films even though the villians are much more interesting the "good" guys have to win personally I think a movie that ended with Rey ascending the throne and turning to the Dark Side would have been much more interesting. 

 

 

[Ran]

3 hours ago, Crazydog7 said:

(82 years old good for him).

Colt 45: works every time.

 

 

[Yawron]

Overall I liked it. Weak first part, good second half.

Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver are both great, so that helps immensely. Only problem is Kylos final death. The hole cinema laughed...

[Lord Varys]

4 hours ago, Crazydog7 said:

billy dee williams is in it and he was wonderful (82 years old good for him).

He is that old? Didn't realize that - he doesn't look his age.

4 hours ago, Crazydog7 said:

I do have sympathy for anyone who has to do a Star Wars movie now or later its like the Marvel films even though the villians are much more interesting the "good" guys have to win personally I think a movie that ended with Rey ascending the throne and turning to the Dark Side would have been much more interesting.

That would have been a completely different story, though. Something that could have been very interesting, to be sure, but then - one could just as well have had that kind of story with a child of Luke's or Han-Leia's where a compelling reason for their change was given.

In fact, part of the childishness of the new movies was this weirdo focus on artifacts rather than concepts - that started with TFA with Ren's stupid fetishism of the Vader mask - and the silly mask he wore himself. What the point of that was aside from underlying that he was weird creep was never explained. I mean, Vader's mask did have a purpose, as did the body armor of General Grievous. The Sith never wanted to be dependent on technology to survive - those things were tools to save/prolong life, not something (mentally) healthy people aspire to become. Vader's mask and suit are a testimony to him being a failure - it is a weakness, not a strength, and there is very much a reason why Darth Sidious or Darth Tyranus or even Darth Maul never wore some stupid suit.

If anyone grandchild of Anakin Skywalker's would want to emulate his grandfather he would have to be very weird if he were to focus on aspects of his personality that underlined his defeat - in fact, any Sith wannabe would, most likely, never emulate Vader at all considering the fact that he was a huge failure as a Sith, both insofar as Obi-Wan roasted him, crippling him for life, but also because he betrayed the Sith in the end and (sort of) killed Darth Sidious - which is arguably the greatest betrayal to the Sith Order you could possibly imagine.

Then there is the strange fetishism about the lightsaber in TFA - Anakin's own saber has almost magical qualities in that movie, 'awakening the Force' in Rey (whatever that's supposed to mean). That is nothing that was ever part of Star Wars before - and it actually doesn't have a place there. Lightsabers are cool weapons, but wielding one doesn't really affect you in any way. They have nothing to do with the Force aside from the fact that their crystals are somewhat attuned to it (and you have to be a Force-sensitive to properly construct a lightsaber).

In the new movie we have the weirdo Sith blade or whatever that knife was (I shortly feared it would turn out it was the only weapon to kill Palpatine, but they thankfully did not go in that direction) and the mystical 'Sith throne' - all things that do not really fit well with Star Wars at all.

As for the idea that the Palpatine thing was there from the start:

I've done some thinking, and I really don't think that makes any sense. Just think of how TFA 'introduces' stuff. The Empire as such is abolished and the Sith are never so much as mentioned in that movie. We get the stupid First Order (followed by the evil more stupid Final Order), having a pointless difference in terms by retaining essentially all the old imagery.

If they had wanted to continue the concepts from the old movie they wouldn't have made the Snoke fellow 'the Supreme Leader' of the First Order - after all, you cannot make it clearer than using such a trashy title that you want this guy to be seen as the, you know, supreme leader of that organization. And if they had wanted to remain in Sith territory - which they clearly did not back in TFA - then the Snoke fellow would have been a Darth Something (or at least somebody who presumed to claim the Sith mantle) and if the Emperor had been behind him he would have run the remnants of the Empire - which could have just called that rather than First Order - as a warlord or simply a Dark Lord of the Sith.

It seems completely nonsensical to have the true hierarchy/ruler of the Imperial forces to hide from its very elite. Sure, if there had been some sort of Imperial factionalism a civil war been portrayed in the movies (which wasn't) then this could have made sense - that was the reason why Palpatine stayed hidden in the Dark Empire comics, after all.

But there is really no reason in that story as given why Kylo Ren or anyone in the First Order leadership should not know that they are all Palpatine's goons.

[Ran]

11 minutes ago, Yawron said:

Overall I liked it. Weak first part, good second half.

Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver are both great, so that helps immensely. Only problem is Kylos final death. The hole cinema laughed...

No one laughed in ours, and I have to say I'm not sure what exactly was funny. Did people forget that this can happen to Jedi?

[Jen'ari]

Ok,obviously I was slightly annoyed Palpatine was defeated, even though I knew going into the film he would have to be for the plot.

I wish they had done it in a slightly better way though, I mean honestly the guy is not stupid, he’d remember from previous experience carrying on throwing force lightning at a lightsaber was never going to end up good for him, I guess I did like that it was his own power that defeated him in the end though.

 

[Yawron]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

No one laughed in ours, and I have to say I'm not sure what exactly was funny. Did people forget that this can happen to Jedi?

It was the actual death that got the laugh, not the disappearance.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, Jen'ari said:

I wish they had done it in a slightly better way though, I mean honestly the guy is not stupid, he’d remember from previous experience carrying on throwing force lightning at a lightsaber was never going to end up good for him, I guess I did like that it was his own power that defeated him in the end though.

Well, he is a cliché villain. And who said anything about him being dead now? If you bring a character like him back once after the way he died in ROTJ there is simply no good way to establish his death - especially if there was literally no (good) explanation as to why and how he survived.

And the lack of an explanation there definitely hurts the ending of ROTJ to no small degree because Luke's and Anakin's action are now pretty much entirely meaningless. The main criticism of the whole clone Emperor stick from 'Dark Empire' was always that the sacrifice of ROTJ is meaningless/not very important if Palpatine just got away somehow - especially after the whole Chosen One/balance of the Force angle the PT movies introduced.

Didn't much care for the Force lightning lightsaber reflection scene there - that was already stupid in ROTS, especially since the reflection thing was not there in AOTC with Dooku and Anakin/Obi-Wan (and Yoda's lightsaber could also not stand against Palpatine's Force lightning in ROTS).

A much better variation there would have been if Rey had pulled a Yoda and had been able to absorb and reflect the evil energy. That would have had more symbolic meaning than the scene we got - especially since Rey essentially was/represented all the Jedi in that moment, just as Palpatine represented all the Sith for some reason.

And if they had to drag lightsabers into this - a proper duel could have also worked. Even more so if that rejuvenating ritual had actually, you know, rejuvated Palpatine, turning him into a middle-aged or even young man.

[Rhom]

I liked the scene with the young Leia and Luke training.  They did a good job with the CGI in that one.  It was quick, but it was a nice bit of building to know that this Leia did take time to train for a while. 

[sologdin]

(and who, in some tellings, directly or indirectly was responsible for Anakin's birth in the first place),

my kid was talking to me during the scene where driver explains their respective parentages to ridley. does he make a suggestion to her along these lines, i.e., that mcdiarmid is somehow christensen's progentior?

 

By making Rey literally a Palpatine by ways of Palpatine's son (not his daughter, by any means) it seems clear that we actually do have to imagine Emperor Palpatine as a married man with some empress at his side, even if that woman was just a puppet or trophy wife or baby machine confined to some wing of the Imperial Palace.

do we have a timeline for the setting on this? i assume that mcdiarmid had a family while he was a senator prior to I, though, and his kid disowned him when he went full metal hitler.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

I liked the scene with the young Leia and Luke training.  They did a good job with the CGI in that one.  It was quick, but it was a nice bit of building to know that this Leia did take time to train for a while. 

I thought the young Luke worked really well, while the young Leia -- perhaps because of it being more flatly lit -- looked a little off. But it was a nice thing to see.

58 minutes ago, sologdin said:

(and who, in some tellings, directly or indirectly was responsible for Anakin's birth in the first place),my kid was talking to me during the scene where driver explains their respective parentages to ridley. does he make a suggestion to her along these lines, i.e., that mcdiarmid is somehow christensen's progentior?

I don't recall that. The prequel trilogy has Palpatine claiming to that his master before him had experimented with the Force to create life, and that he too knew how to do it. There's an implication that he or Plagueis were responsible for Anakin's birth. OTOH, the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jin believed the Force itself influenced Anakin's immaculate conception, to fulfill the prophecy of the one who'd bring balance to the force or some such. Some fans have speculatively tried to tie the two views together by saying that as a result of Plagueis and Palpatine messing with the creation of new life, the Force influenced the creation of Anakin to try and restore the balance they upset with such experiments.

I'm not sure any definitive answer exists in the canon.

[sologdin]

right. i recall the recitations from I-III on these questions.  and likely we do not need any further confirmation--direct confirmations of the mystical normally weaken the impact of indirect implication.

[Darryk]

But Luke also suddenly is a space pilot when he was in fact just some farm boy. It is completely unbelievable that a guy knowing how to drive cars (which those speeders he has experiences with are) can pilot an X-Wing without proper training.

There are references to him racing friends through beggars canyon; Obi-wan telling him that "your father was a great pilot, I hear you've become a good pilot yourself", and the fact he keeps begging his uncle to let him join the academy because "most of his friends having already gone".

In other words, there's off-screen stuff implied that establishes him as an aspiring star pilot, whereas with Rey there are no references to previous piloting experience or even to any desire on her part to be a pilot.

Rey's background as a mechanic and her interest in fixing things made sense, working in a junkyard, and I think they should have stuck with that. Having her pilot the Falcon near the beginning of TFA seemed especially strange to me when there was already a character who could fill that role (Po Dameron), but they chose to have him inexplicably disappear instead.

We later see that the grand Obi-Wan Kenobi and the even grander Anakin Skywalker had years of training in the Force (Obi-Wan over a decade; Anakin over ten years) before they rose to the rank of Jedi Knight (and I'm not even counting the younglings training Obi-Wan got before he was a padawan). Luke's abilities to stand against Vader or anyone with a proper training in the Force, is quite frankly, completely ridiculous.

Well the key distinguishing factor here is that Vader is Luke's father and doesn't truly want to kill him. He's just toying with him in ESB and it's clear Luke is no match for him. Vader is occasionally impressed when Luke manages to pull something off, kind of like the way a father would be. I loved that dynamic in ESB.

As for ROTJ, it's clear Luke is stronger and does a much better job of standing up to Vader here, and I'll grant that you may be right about that being ridiculous since he never had the formal training that a Jedi academy would provide. However, some things that make it work for me is

- Luke is established as being exceptionally strong in the force, and although Anakin was as well, his injuries prevented him from achieving his full potential whereas Luke is in his prime 
- Vader is still conflicted, as Luke points out "I sense the conflict in you"
- At least we had the contrast between the duel in ESB (Vader completely dominates Luke) and in in ROTJ (Luke is able to hold his own) to show growth on the part of the character, whereas Rey basically succeeds at everything right from the beginning.

Obviously it helps that the prequels had not come out yet, and therefore we had no reference point for what Jedi training actual entails. However, we at least knew that Luke had a long period of training with Yoda on Dagobah, and by himself on Tatooine, which is certainly more than Rey had before she started using Jedi mind tricks and thrashing people in lightsaber duels.

Unless we really consider them special people who really don't have all that much to learn to use their innate potential - like child Anakin also was.

It is implied that Luke is strong in the force, and Rey obviously is as well, so it makes sense for latent abilities to manifest in dramatic ways. However, as you say, Rey's abilities were revealed in a much less subtle manner; showing clumsy filmmaking on the part of JJ Abrams. A Jedi mind trick just wasn't the right way to show her powers awakening.

An interesting plot point would've been if she was a powerful force user once and had amnesia (like Revan in KOTOR), with her memories gradually returning after she touched the lightsaber. That would've explained her knowing about Jedi mind tricks. However, this is just yet another cool idea the fans came up to explain things, without realising that  the filmmakers couldn't be bothered to explain anything.

Luke can also suddenly move objects with his mind in TESB before he goes to Yoda despite nobody ever telling him that Jedi can do that or how this works. Back in ANH nobody moves objects with their minds unless I'm misrembering.

This goes back to what I said about Luke's early uses of the force being an instinctive "reaching out", more of a leap of faith than a highly advanced use of the force. He knew the force was an energy field, so I don't think he would've needed someone to tell him that you could move objects with it; whereas instinctively knowing you could use the force to influence someone's mind seems a bit of a stretch.

Of course, it could also be the quality of filmmaking that made the ice cave scene so much more effective than anything in TFA. I mean, it's so well done, with the slow music build-up, Luke crossing his fingers and reaching out, the shots of the lightsaber trembling in the snow intercut with shots of the ice creature (Wompa?) approaching. 

Compare that to Rey using the Jedi mind trick on the stormtrooper, which felt like it was being played for laughs.

And Luke's failure in TESB is not followed by him having more training by anyone qualified - something they did much better in the new movies with Leia giving Rey some more training. The mere passage of time doesn't really help if 'the Jedi arts' truly are things some sort of magical initiate/tutor/master has to teach you. I'd agree that this concept was essentially torched by TLJ with Luke essentially giving Rey no training at all.

One thing to take into account is that Luke spent more time with Yoda on Dagobah than the film implied. Just because it was only a few scenes in the film doesn't mean more time wasn't passing in the actual Star Wars universe. 

But I grant that he never received more than a few months at most training from a tutor, which the prequels established was an important part of the training. But on the other hand, he is the last remaining Jedi (besides an old and dying Yoda), so he doesn't ever have to face anyone who is a full academy-trained Jedi, except Vader who, as mentioned, is his father and does not truly desire to kill him.

Well, she also fails 'to save' babyface in TLJ, and both her and his stories are slightly different. Rey wants to emulate Luke in TLJ with Leia's nephew - and she fails at that. Unlike Luke she never believed in the strict good vs. evil thing in the first place - she never sat out to destroy Darth Vader/save the good guys, she went in there to save the bad guy.

Well, first of all, Luke didn't believe in the strict god vs evil thing either. He believed Vader could be redeemed. Just makes the way he's portrayed in TLJ seem even more ridiculous; the guy who believed Vader could be saved just gives up and goes to hide on an island 'cause of a falling out with his nephew.

And another thing that really gets me about TLJ is that Rey's decision to "save" Kylo Ren was based on about two conversations. This is a guy she saw stab Han Solo in cold blood. Really bad character motivation in my view to have her hand herself over to the empire based on about two conversations after what she's seen Kylo do. Luke's decision to try save Vader makes more sense considering they're father and son, but even he took longer than Rey to come to the decision to hand himself over to the enemy.

But the whole conflict thing, the potential that he might actually turn dark like his father is never really visible there. In fact, you can only see that with the PT in mind when you compare Anakin's and Luke's wardrobe, and process that Luke could actually have followed in his father's footsteps. From what I heard from people watching the movies in chronological order for the first time this is actually pretty effective. The cut scene at Obi-Wan's place where Luke finishes his new lightsaber would have added much to that, considering that he looks nearly like Palpatine in that scene.

Well I guess the difference between us here is I never really saw the prospect of Luke turning to the dark side as something the film needed to present as a possibility. For me the central question in ROTJ is not "will Luke turn to the dark side" but rather "will Luke succeed in turning Vader, or even survive his second encounter with Vader at all". So I didn't see the need to make Luke's conflict visible, it was more about Vader's conflict. I suppose it would have brought an interesting angle to the film if they had hinted at a possible turn to the dark side for Luke, but it also may have muddled up the narrative a bit.

With Rey they do have the whole conflict thing. We see her 'darker side' a couple of times in the new movie, something we barely see with Luke. The only exception is his apparent (?) murder of the Gamorrean guards early in ROTJ.

Yeah, well, for me the appeal of Luke's character is that he's a paladin. There are moments when we see his brashness and impatience, but for me, a dark side to Luke is not something I really considered. (I think he sleep choked the Gamorrean guards, or at least that's what I'm going with).

I kind of thought of Rey as the same as Luke, pure and idealistic. Didn't really see any darkness to her although I havent seen ROTS yet, can't say it's something that's been built up through the trilogy though.

The core flaw of this new trilogy was that they really told exactly the same story as the last time - and that exceptionally bad, at least in the two first movies.

Yup.