spoilers [SPOILERS] Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

Luke says he knew it, and Leia knew it too and trained her anyway. Implication was that both knew it before. Leia certainly knew it before taking her on. 

But you said he was horrified in TLJ, which I don't understand. Can you clarify that?

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

How was he given the dagger by the Emperor then? And how did that person get back to the Emperor? 

Who said the Emperor gave it? Who said that person went back to the Emperor?

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

 

Why would you have him not go to Exegol in the first place, or if you were going to be all secretive about it, why would you not have him just drop her off where you picked up the dagger and then have whomever gave him the dagger go back to Exegol? 

Well, according to the Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory, the Emperor acts through layers of agents who carry out his will with such finesse and secrecy that the galaxy did not realize his malignant spirit survived...

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

And why did Palpatine stop looking for Rey?

Did he? I don't know that.

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

The movie we just watched? Luke certainly thought that. 

I corrected that. He believed that Ochi knew how to get to Exegol, which was true, though at a remove -- he knew how to find the wayfinder which would then lead there. 

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

So why would you program him to understand it at all? (the programmer in me knows exactly the answer to this, and it's a very depressing one)

What is the programmer's answer? My answer is that his translation abilities are hardcoded into his components and the block was implemented afterward rather than his components being swapped out. 

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

Doesn't work that way apparently - you need to have the route. Otherwise they would have gotten it from Ren. 

Who is "they"? Rey and co? Why would they think Kylo Ren would tell them? And did they even know he had been to Exegol? They knew, I think, that he had a wayfinder, but I'm not sure it means he went there.

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

But no where near him, and no reason to help him at that point. 

I'm not sure why they are "no where near", nor why they have no reason to help, at that point. He hasn't made a public declaration that he's no longer Supreme Leader, and indeed never does, though at some point we have Emperor suborning Pryde and again I can't quite recall when/how that happens.

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

That is really impressive gymnastics. It still doesn't answer why they wouldn't capture Finn and Poe and C3P0. 

Because Rey was with them and he didn't want Rey messed with by anyone else?

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

 

I mean we don't hear anything about it from anyone ever, until this very last thing, and the main reason is so that they can have two lightsabers. 

I don't think that's right. Rey was already building her lightsaber at the start, they could just have had it completed if they wanted to do that. They had Leia have a lightsaber because she obviously trained with Luke given what she does in TLJ (even if I disliked how long they had it play out over, the basic concept was fine of her using the Force to pull herself back into the ship), and it's not that large a step. That she basically completed her training with him and was a Jedi in all but name seems to ahve helped.

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

Yes, leaning on prior plotholes doesn't make this less of a plothole.

By see TFA, I mean Maz Kanata. How is Maz a plot hole? She's introduced us with us being told about her knowing and seeing stuff. Works for me.

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

Another one - so the Emperor wanted Rey to kill him so he'd inhabit her body as a ghost, right? So...why doesn't he inhabit her body as a ghost when she ends up killing him?

A thousand generations of Jedi had her back, blocking the Sith magic.

 

[Lord Varys]

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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".

Well, that still doesn't mean nothing in relation to a star ship, no? I mean, are you equating speeder races with piloting an actual star ship? That's like claiming driving a car is the same as piloting an airplane or a space shuttle.

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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.

I'd agree with that, although that's in part because Rey doesn't have any family/people who talk of or about her. The fact that she flies the Falcon the way she does either indicates that she had some Luke-like experience before ... or that kind of thing is not really necessary. If you want you certainly can imagine she had some chance to fly around with some ship before (unless she explicitly says she did not in the movie). After all, young Anakin also could do use pod-race skills to become a fighter pilot.

And in fact the whole background on that in TPM is that Anakin's 'talent' is all intuitive Force use, not really a talent. And as granddaughter of Darth Sidious Rey could have perhaps the greatest natural Force talent in the entire galaxy. And if you look at Palpatine himself - he figured our how to use the Force to kill his parents and siblings easily enough. He didn't need Darth Plagueis' training for that. I don't find it hard to swallow that in a time of crisis the Force would essentially help you figure out what to do even if you are in a completely new/unfamiliar situation. That's presumably also how you block blaster bots with a lightsaber. You do not competently move your blade but allow the Force to guide your hands because it *tells* your body where the bolts would be before they are there.

Overall one should also keep in mind that in the Star Wars world as presented young people are much more mature and capable than in our world, considering they had an adolescent recently elected head of state governing an entire planet in TPM. Padmé could not only run for office, but was also elected and did fulfill her duties excellently. That's also something that wouldn't possibly happen in our world all that often.

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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.

They actually wanted to kill him originally, which is why he originally disappeared. TFA is pretty much shit show in the beginning with Rey definitely meeting the wrong kind of mentor (Han) who could teach her nothing about the Force. I definitely agree that this is not how it should have been done.

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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.

Sure, that's a great fight. The point just is that if you allow Luke 'being special' to beat or compete with decade-long training then the question inevitably arises: What was that training for? Is Luke so much stronger than Obi-Wan or Anakin (who had a decade of formal training)?

I don't think so. The heroes of the movies all get miraculous abilities in light of that.

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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.

Rey doesn't really face any real properly trained adversaries throughout the movies (until she meets grandpa). Ren is a completely imbalanced person, not in control of himself or his abilities.

If you consider for a moment what Vader supposedly did - and what potential he still has despite his ruined body - then it really makes no sense that Luke could defeat him. Even if we acknowledge that Vader did not want to kill Luke, it just makes no sense that Luke could overpower him.

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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.

Well, I assume we can assume she must have heard of the mind trick thing before. Else she wouldn't have tried him. What's to it that you have *to learn* we don't really know, especially if you have great raw potential.

And the lightsaber is really depicted as some weirdo artifact 'awakening the Force' in TFA - which I don't like, but which nevertheless is in the movie. They seem to be using this to *explain* how she can suddenly use it the way she does.

That weird technique to steal memories with the Force is also shit TFA came up with - since that technique would have come in handy in ANH when Vader was interrogating Leia and other people. Vader would also have known how to use such a trick.

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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.

We definitely agree there.

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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.

That would have actually been a great idea, something that could have helped both with her final back story as well as the likely Skywalker back story she may have had originally.

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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.

See above. I for one was baffled that Luke could move things with his mind or thought he could when I first watched TESB as a child. I mean, nothing lead up to that.

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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.

Sure, TESB is definitely a better movie. And my points overall are about the character - I think Rey very much works as Luke 2.0, and there is little wrong with her character as such - and everything with the setup for the character and how she interacts with others, especially in the first two films.

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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. 

I know all that, and I accept that as a sort of in-universe explanation (they took some time to get to Bespin with the back-up hyperdrive and such) but there is still not much screen time or indication of much passed time in the movie.

I think the reason why people think this sort of works is that we still don't really know what those evil villains can at this point. Vader choked the guy back in ANH but that was the 'supernatural stuff' up to that point. When you have just watched ANH then you don't think one needs years of training to stand against Vader - when you know about the dueling abilities of Darth Tyranus and the powers of Darth Sidious things are somewhat more complex.

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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.

Which he never knows in TESB, though.

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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.

Sure, Luke is a disgrace in the new movies (until he is dead). But I meant the TESB Luke - that one didn't want to redeem Vader, did he? Why should he? Rey knew who Ben was pretty much from the start.

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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.

Well, they have that strange connection - but, yeah, this also sort of something strange. But then - what kind of a father was Darth Vader ever to Luke? A monstrous shell of a man who killed his mentor and friend, hacked off his hand, helped to blow up an entire planet, and killed Luke's best childhood friend back in the first movie.

If I were in his shoes I'd seriously pause whether I cared that say guy was the guy who impregnated my mother or not - much less whether I cared whether he remembered that.

What we can explain with 'Luke sensing a conflict' in his dad (and some son-like feelings/duties for the old cyborg) we can just as well explain the same way with Rey and Ben - especially if add underlying romantic/sexual attraction (which was sort of there as we see in the end).

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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.

From what I read about ROTJ they actually wanted to show such a conflict, but mostly/only expressed it via wardrobe and such - but it is clear that Anakin later reflected Luke's stories there and Lucas really wanted their temptations to be similar.

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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 think that's how quite a few people see it. But take a look at Luke's over-confidence, arrogance even, when dealing with Jabba. He is a manipulator there, not the straightforward kind of guy we know from the earlier movies. I think many people interpret this as maturity but it can also be read as very calculating and cold. This Luke could make a fine Darth Tyranus, say.

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

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.

No, it is not there - but then, for Luke we also only get that sort of in ROTJ. When you next watch the movies in chronologially order try to view Luke as Vader's son the way the new movie is trying to make Rey Palpatine's granddaughter. If you view the OT through the lense of Anakin's fall then the great danger in ROTJ is actually Luke's possible fall to the dark side - because that's actually what happened to Anakin back in ROTS.

I don't think many people view the films like that - because the image of the heroic Luke Skywalker is way too strong. But if you think about the generational story there a person not knowing how it will end could worry there for a moment.

5 hours ago, Ran said:

He wanted a succesor to carry on the Sith. Like any good Sith, he wanted whoever was strongest, so he set them against one another.

I don't think that was the plan there. Palpatine mumbles something about the Princess of Alderaan having messed with his plans when Leia turned her son around. I'd say that if Rey had struck down her (helpless) enemy (for she was definitely much stronger in the dark side) then she would have been ripe for the essence transfer thing without having to kill granddad.

Overall, though, Abrams really made Palpatine the worst zombie super villain ever. How stupid can you be to broadcast your existence before your fucking fleet got off the ground? The man didn't really need to lure the good guys into a trap this time (and that wouldn't be a great plan, anyway, since it didn't work the last time). He could wipe them all out with his micro Death Star fleet.

Also - the fucking, fucking dagger! How is it possible that the exact position of the Death Star fragment where the Sith MacGuffin is is engraved on that blade? In what kind of world can that make sense and why? I overlooked that the first time around but having watched the movie a second time got me thinking.

Any means to give Rey the position of the Sith planet but that thing could have worked. Visions, a feeling, and if they wanted to show Endor (a ruined Imperial Palace on Coruscant would have been much better, considering that Palpatine actually had a Sith refugium in the bowels of that planet) they could have had them go there to find out something about Palpatine - and make the whole thing an actual Sith holocron, not a 'Pathfinder' (whatever that is).

5 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Something like the galaxy gun would have made much more sense imo.

Yeah, not something like the Galaxy Gun, but exactly the Galaxy Gun. Then all they would have been forced to do was to destroy that thing. And it would have still given Palpatine the power to essentially blackmail everybody in the galaxy into submission without him having a need for a vast army.

But then, they sort of botched the Galaxy Gun concept in TFA.

I mean, we have to face it - those new movies actually do have worse super weapons than the entire EU. Even Anderson's Sun Crusher was better than either 'Starkiller' or that fleet, not to mention the Eclipse ships, the Word Devastators (great idea), Darksaber, etc.

I'm repeating myself, but you feel kind of odd when obscure comics actually make more sense and have more depth and internal plausibility than blockbuster movies...

4 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Unless I'm mistaken it was clearly mentioned that Star Destroyers can't raise shields while in an atmosphere and they needed the navigational aid to leave said atmosphere. If they only needed the aid to leave the location of the Sith planet the fleet should have parked in orbit.

You are correct, it is explicitly stated they can - for some obscure reason - not raise any shields while yet in the atmosphere. And the retard in the black robes does indeed inform the enemy about his existence/whereabouts before he has his fucking fleet in orbit. That's beyond stupid and essentially kills the entire story of the movie.

Why/how on earth His Imperial Majesty build said ships in the oceans of his world rather than in some space dock - or felt the need to hide it down there (with the shields not being active facing the rather extreme conditions of his lightning planet) when his fucking planet was literally unknown to the entire galaxy is also completely unclear.

How shitty the setup there is you see when you give the active part to the villain - he revealed himself without any pressure whatsoever - yet somehow he still not ready when he does that.

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

The post-Empire plan was that the next film would focus on a massive Rebel assault on Imperial Center (which later became Coruscant), which was defended by weapons platforms and two big space stations in orbit (these would be like mini-Death Stars, but shipyards and dockyards rather than superweapons). The idea was that the attack would succeed, with Han Solo dying and the Falcon destroyed, and Luke would defeat and kill Vader.

According to Kurtz, Lucas's plans for VII-IX were vaguer. It was unclear if the Empire would fall in VI or if it would still exist in a shrunken form, with the Rebels (now the New Republic) trying to topple the last remnants whilst the Emperor worked on some kind of Force-driven masterplan in the background. Apparently Lucas threw out some ideas in that vein in conversations with some of the EU writers and team when he decided not to make VII-IX, so that sounds plausible based on how the EU played out (with the Republic trying to bring down the rest of the Empire). The Emperor would not die until IX, with Luke either founding a new order of Jedi Knights between the trilogies or at the end of IX.

Lucas did have even vaguer plans for X-XII, which apparently would have been more philosophical and about the Whills. Presumably this was the idea Lucas developed for his 2012 vision of VII-IX (as RotJ and the EU had eliminated the need for his original VII-IX outline) which also featured miniaturisation and midichlorians, which Disney mostly ignored.

From what I recall about all this, there was talk that the Emperor should actually not show up ever again after the hologram appearance in TESB. The confrontation with Vader and the Emperor was only planned after Lucas scrapped his original concept of having another trilogy to tell the story of the original gang. Luke sister was supposed to be somebody else entirely.

What little I heard about Lucas' ideas for Episode VII revolve around Darth Talon (or a movie character based on her design) being instrumental in the corruption of Han and Leia's son.

3 hours ago, Crazydog7 said:

Here a drinking game I like to play pick one aspect of the Star Wars films that really annoys you but you have to clearly state why.  My own personal favorite?  The Rule of Two is stupid it makes no sense from a tactical standpoint. 

I mean what if both Sith are crossing the street at the same time and they both get hit by the same space bus? It doesn't make alot of sense.

They never really stuck with that, anyway. Many a Banenite Sith had a secret second or third apprentice - and they all had Sith adepts and cultists and agents and what not. It was only sort of the official sharing of power, the deepest, most important knowledge (and of course the grand plan for revenge against the Jedi) that was kept between the two Sith Lords.

For the time of their millennium-long secrecy that was not that bad an approach.

3 hours ago, sologdin said:

this strikes me as a trainwreck in the new films. i usually understood some of the older films to feature interstellar travel taking quite a bit of time--but these films make it seem as though it were driving cross-town.  boyega says at one point in IX that in 16 hours the reign of terror starts; two or three planets later, the doomsday clock in his estimation has eight hours left, and they have a couple planets left on their itinerary.  i guess FTL travel is very fast, then?

That's perhaps the worst background detail in the new movie(s). Traveling does take time, there is no way they could gotten around this fast in just a couple of hours.

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

But you said he was horrified in TLJ, which I don't understand. Can you clarify that? 

He reacts to her super strong when she reaches out to the force and goes to the dark place, and basically freaks out and compares her to Ben. Before that, he doesn't really know why she's there or who she is at all. Was all of that a clever act? Seems unlikely. 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

Who said the Emperor gave it? Who said that person went back to the Emperor? 

The Emperor said that he wanted the hunter to go back. At some point you have to have SOMEONE go to Exegol with Rey, right?

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

Well, according to the Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory, the Emperor acts through layers of agents who carry out his will with such finesse and secrecy that the galaxy did not realize his malignant spirit survived...

Except Luke and Lando and Leia apparently.

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

Did he? I don't know that. 

Certainly seems like that. Seems like the sort of thing that would have been noticed if people were constantly going from world to world to hunt for a girl and randomly killing people. 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

I corrected that. He believed that Ochi knew how to get to Exegol, which was true, though at a remove -- he knew how to find the wayfinder which would then lead there. 

But again, why do that in that insane way instead of having Ochi hand over Rey to some agent who doesn't need to get instruction on how to get to Exegol? 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

What is the programmer's answer? My answer is that his translation abilities are hardcoded into his components and the block was implemented afterward rather than his components being swapped out. 

The programmer's answer is that this was some bullshit V2 feature that they wanted when they were going to sell it to Sith, and it was easier to put in everything and then put in a special 'if not evil, disallow this function' and they forgot to block the reading part entirely, because that wasn't part of the regulation. 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

Who is "they"? Rey and co? Why would they think Kylo Ren would tell them? And did they even know he had been to Exegol? They knew, I think, that he had a wayfinder, but I'm not sure it means he went there. 

Yes, they is Rey and co. And Rey knew Ren had been there because Ren told her when they were having that weird duel. 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

I'm not sure why they are "no where near", nor why they have no reason to help, at that point. He hasn't made a public declaration that he's no longer Supreme Leader, and indeed never does, though at some point we have Emperor suborning Pryde and again I can't quite recall when/how that happens. 

He still doesn't have any communication system, or a ship, or anything. He's stuck out on the ocean with no way off. It's a bit of a stretch that he somehow calls down transport from a ship that isn't shown with a communicator that isn't shown, takes a TIE fighter from said ship, and then somehow figures out how to get to Exegol. 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

Because Rey was with them and he didn't want Rey messed with by anyone else?

Rey wasn't with them at that point. She was wandering off while he's doing his GTA thing. That's when Chewie is captured. She's way out in the open, for anyone to see. 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

I don't think that's right. Rey was already building her lightsaber at the start, they could just have had it completed if they wanted to do that. They had Leia have a lightsaber because she obviously trained with Luke given what she does in TLJ (even if I disliked how long they had it play out over, the basic concept was fine of her using the Force to pull herself back into the ship), and it's not that large a step. That she basically completed her training with him and was a Jedi in all but name seems to ahve helped.

Rey was building her lightsaber? When did that happen? 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

By see TFA, I mean Maz Kanata. How is Maz a plot hole? She's introduced us with us being told about her knowing and seeing stuff. Works for me. 

K. To each their own. Like I said, because you enjoyed it you didn't have a problem with this all-knowing person who conveniently exposits things at just the right time because she's special, or something. 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

A thousand generations of Jedi had her back, blocking the Sith magic.

So...why didn't they do that before? Fucking selfish ghosts. 

[Kalbear]

Also, to @Lord Varys and @Darryk - the point of training in the Jedi Temple wasn't to learn how to use force skills. As we've seen countless times in basically every single movie, cartoons and the Mandalorian now, force power is basically innate and largely inherited (ugh). If the force is strong in you you can do a whole lot of things without particular skill or training - including things like force lightning, jumping, pulling, pushing, and in TFA mind tricks. Psychometry is another rarer ability too, and one that neatly explains why Rey knows the existence of the jedi mind trick - she can see the past of things through objects, and touching Luke's lightsaber gives her a whole lot of insight. You might want years and years of training to matter, but it doesn't. 

No, the point of the Jedi temple is indoctrination. Yoda wasn't worried about training Luke late in life because it's too hard to train them to use abilities - it's because it's too hard to train them in that specific form of religion and viewpoint that late in life, because they have all those things that fuck it up - things like attachments and love and caring for others. You can teach kids early how to be good little child soldiers who have no attachments and no belongings and no physical needs, but older kids or adults? Way too hard. Way too easy for them to do the wrong thing and care about others or see the inherent unfairness in the Jedi ways. 

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

I mean, he was prepared to give it to Rey, quite obviously. Through her, he has a kind of immortality that he presumably does not have with whatever Sith dark side magic/cloning thing he had going on, as his falling-apart body goes. His body was failing, his power was as high as it could be, his Final Order was ready -- it was time to choose his successor. If Kylo slew Rey, he would have given himself over to the Dark Side for good and all. If Rey killed Kylo, and sought the Emperor out for revenge, he would have used the threat of the Final Order to force her to complete his ritual, absorb the evil essence of ten thousand years of Sith (or whatever), and be turned to the Dark side for good and all.

The way I see it Palpatine intended to possess Rey with the help of the power of 'all the Sith'. And he clearly wanted to use his own granddaughter for that for some reason - if he had wanted or could have done that with Ren he would have done so.

Coming up with explanations why he needed 'a new body' when he apparently had resurrected himself somehow is something we as audience should not do. If clone bodies no longer worked or didn't have the same effect or whatever then this should have been mentioned in the movie (and not by Merry Brandybuck who definitely knows nothing about Sith immortality techniques). We don't really know how weak he was.

This is really where the movie is so lazy that they actually counted on the audience who cared to have read 'Dark Empire' and have that fill up the blanks.

1 hour ago, Ran said:

The only thing that changed his calculus was when he was going to at least revenge himself by destroying them, only to realize they were a dyad, and that he could drain them for new life.

Yeah, that was new development he quickly jumped on.

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Oh yeah, there's another one - who the hell was Rey's grandmother? The canon story has Palpatine killing like all of his family, and we've never once seen him with anyone, yet he had the opportunity to have actual relations? 

Palpatine's unknown wife - the Empress of the Galactic Empire, one assumes ;-).

 

[Ran]

30 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

He reacts to her super strong when she reaches out to the force and goes to the dark place, and basically freaks out and compares her to Ben. Before that, he doesn't really know why she's there or who she is at all. Was all of that a clever act? Seems unlikely. 

Hmm, just because she's Palpatine's grand daughter doesn't mean she's evil, just as his son wasn't, so I'm not surprised by his response to her going dark for a moment or what have you. His not knowing who she is to begin with -- I guess the question is, when did he learn from Leia who she was? Or did he tell her? I can't recall whether there was time for communication between them, through the Force, that we did not see. Or perhaps even on Crait -- do we see every moment between them? 

ETA: Let me add that this was clearly one of those "TLJ dropped the ball things" and part of the messiness of the movie. That said, it's actually inconsequential to the plot that they knew her identity, and I'm not sure why they felt they needed to add that. But because it's inconsequential, I don't think of it as a plot hole.

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The Emperor said that he wanted the hunter to go back. At some point you have to have SOMEONE go to Exegol with Rey, right?

Sure. I guess he wanted the hunter to go back, and that's why it wasn't a matter of handing her off to some other agent?

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Certainly seems like that. Seems like the sort of thing that would have been noticed if people were constantly going from world to world to hunt for a girl and randomly killing people. 

Hasn't the First Order been stealing kids and slaughtering people for a good while at this point?

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But again, why do that in that insane way instead of having Ochi hand over Rey to some agent who doesn't need to get instruction on how to get to Exegol? 

Maybe Ochi was good with jokes. Maybe allowing him to Exogol to join the Sith acolytes was his reward.

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The programmer's answer is that this was some bullshit V2 feature that they wanted when they were going to sell it to Sith, and it was easier to put in everything and then put in a special 'if not evil, disallow this function' and they forgot to block the reading part entirely, because that wasn't part of the regulation. 

Works for me.

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Yes, they is Rey and co. And Rey knew Ren had been there because Ren told her when they were having that weird duel. 

So instead of looking for the wayfinder, which they had a lead on, you suggest they should have tried to capture and interrogate Ren? I don't know why they didn't think of that.

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He still doesn't have any communication system

Are we sure of this? We see stormtroopers communicating to ships in space using those little lipstick-case looking things. He's got a big cloak.

 

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Rey wasn't with them at that point. She was wandering off while he's doing his GTA thing. That's when Chewie is captured.

Presumably at the point that his TIE is approaching, he's waved them off.

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She's way out in the open, for anyone to see. 

Rey was building her lightsaber? When did that happen? 

I'm 99.5% sure that we see pieces for it laid out in her quarters on... uh, whatever the Resistance base planet was (did it get a name?)

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K. To each their own. Like I said, because you enjoyed it you didn't have a problem with this all-knowing person who conveniently exposits things at just the right time because she's special, or something.

Did you get really bothered that Jedi mind tricks don't work on Hutts, too? The Force exists. There are characters that have connections to it, some of them Jedi, some of them Sith, some of them neither. TFA introduced one whose connection included sensing the force of destiny and so on. Did Maz bother you in TFA?

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So...why didn't they do that before? Fucking selfish ghosts. 

Feels like you need the Force user to reach some kind of state of oneness with the Force or whatever you want to call it. They may also have access to the unique power of being part of this dyad business. She couldn't reach them at all at the start, so circumstances changed as the story progressed.

[Lord Varys]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Also, to @Lord Varys and @Darryk - the point of training in the Jedi Temple wasn't to learn how to use force skills. As we've seen countless times in basically every single movie, cartoons and the Mandalorian now, force power is basically innate and largely inherited (ugh). If the force is strong in you you can do a whole lot of things without particular skill or training - including things like force lightning, jumping, pulling, pushing, and in TFA mind tricks. Psychometry is another rarer ability too, and one that neatly explains why Rey knows the existence of the jedi mind trick - she can see the past of things through objects, and touching Luke's lightsaber gives her a whole lot of insight. You might want years and years of training to matter, but it doesn't. 

No, the point of the Jedi temple is indoctrination. Yoda wasn't worried about training Luke late in life because it's too hard to train them to use abilities - it's because it's too hard to train them in that specific form of religion and viewpoint that late in life, because they have all those things that fuck it up - things like attachments and love and caring for others. You can teach kids early how to be good little child soldiers who have no attachments and no belongings and no physical needs, but older kids or adults? Way too hard. Way too easy for them to do the wrong thing and care about others or see the inherent unfairness in the Jedi ways. 

There might be something to that ... or not. We do have strong examples for 'singular individuals' from some movies, but we don't really know whether those 'special people' are representative for the run-of-the-mill Jedi we see as extras in some of them.

And with somebody like Ahsoka and even Ezra we see a slow development over time, just as we do see with Anakin who really cannot do the same stuff he can in AOTC than he can in TPM.

I overall see little problem with the Jedi ways, so not sure I agree with your view on them.

[Lord Varys]

Guys, the issue with the dagger is that there is literally no reason for them to inscribe the location of the Pathfinder thing there rather than tell the agents where to get it - and get it for their mission. Whoever inscribed the dagger would have to know where exactly the correct Death Star II fragment was - and add gimmicks to the dagger to use it as a means to pinpoint the exact place in the structure. That's completely ridiculous. If anyone actually did that (Palpatine himself definitely did not) then they could just as well have taken the Pathfinder thing then and there.

Rey's parents seem to have been taken to Palpatine where they were (apparently) killed, so whoever did that (and that person was connected to the Jedi killed who got eaten by the snake) knew how to get (back) to the secret Sith planet. They did not need the dagger for anything.

[sologdin]

point of the Jedi temple is indoctrination

quite correct. both sith and jedi ideology guard against being 'seduced' by the other side.   it's very much puritanical, imagining that the chaste adherent is threatened at all times by the deviant perversions of an enemy carnality. the education in each is a foucauldian discipline, an agambenian rule.

 

anyway, i liked the giant friendly snake. +1 for ridley's being patient and kind with it--my favorite scene in any SW product.

[Suzanna Stormborn]

This was my least favorite Star Wars in a while. The plot was weird and it was too long. There was no death star/starkiller to really be afraid of the whole time. I dont like how all the Skywalkers are dead but it is called ‘Rise of Skywalker’.

Finn has too many girlfriends and we never heard what he wanted to tell Rey.

Why did Ben have to die? His death made no sense.

I had several other issues with the script as well, 3PO was seriously un-funny just like Episode II, which bothered me. And why did they make such a big deal abt having his memory erased when R2 just completely fixed him like 4 minutes later?

why is Palpatine’s son so ‘weak’? What is the back story there?

can everyone use the Force now or is it selective like when you are a muggle born with Magic in Harry Potter?

Poe was not a great general.....

[Corvinus85]

Star Wars and the Temple of Doom. This is what this felt like to me, an Indiana Jones adventure with a big event at the end, set up by nonsensical babble, all wrapped in a JJ special of moving the story way too fast.

And btw, JJ is a liar. Didn't he say in an interview that there will no redemption for Kylo Ren? Maybe he doesn't understand the difference between death and redemption.

[Jace, Extat]

That was fucking terrible. I thought it was going to be bad. I didn't understand that it would be the Batman v Superman of Star Wars. 

Seriously. How much more could you fail to understand Stat Wars? Palpatine doesn't fuck.

[Ran]

12 hours ago, Ran said:

Kijimi, I think the planet is called. I feel like that was explained, but I can't recall it off hand, as this was still in the very hectic patching-up-TLJ-related-problems part of the movie.

ETA: Did it have to do with the realization that C-3PO would need to be hacked for them to get the information from the dagger, and he just had a feeling of where they would go to find a droid engineer who could do that for them? Though I suppose they must have files on Poe, if he's a known former criminal from the area.... But I feel like that's not explicit.

I just realized what the actual explanation is. When Pryde sees Chewbacca, he orders him to be put in an interrogation chamber. So Chewbacca, whether through torture or through Kylo using his Force memory grabbing thing, revealed that they were planning to go to Kijimi to crack open C-3POs head.

[Raja]

It was a little strange to see Rose sidelined to the extent that she was only to be replaced by characters that were such ciphers because they really didn't have enough time to give them more than 1 or 2 scenes ( if they're lucky) of dialogue.

The Batman V Superman of Star Wars is unfortunately a pretty apt description.

I had issues with The Last Jedi, but after seeing this one I've really come to appreciate the good stuff about TLJ & even TFA.

Sigh. At least Rey's lightsaber looked quite cool at the end.

[Ran]

5 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

That was fucking terrible. I thought it was going to be bad. I didn't understand that it would be the Batman v Superman of Star Wars. 

Seriously. How much more could you fail to understand Stat Wars? Palpatine doesn't fuck.

Does Yoda?

Personally, yes, I'd have liked the idea if the "son" was actually a clone Palpatine made that rebelled against him somehow, but I'm fine with him artificially creating him through his powers of the Dark Side, or through the expediency of artificial insemination for reasons to be explained in some future book or comic, I guess. I definitely don't think he naturally procreated, and I doubt the mother was a willing subject of his plans.

[Raja]

Also, the sith acolytes or whatever that were on the sidelines made me laugh & got the whole cinema laughing when they showed up. They looked like the Jawas from Tatooine. I know they had to have *some* people besides the emperor there but it was shockingly bad.

Edit: I know I've been quite negative on the movie but I think there are *some* decent moments - the scene at the end where Rey hears the Jedi, and the lightsaber fight with Kylo & Rey with the waves was good!

[Jeor]

Just saw this. Given the bad reviews I was expecting a real mess, but I was pleasantly surprised. I generally liked this one, although that might have been because of the low expectations.

Good parts: I think the numerous call-backs were actually good and could be justified in a 9th film (e.g. the Palpatine heritage reveal and escaping in a ship was like ESB "I am your father", and numerous other parallels like final space battles etc). I thought bringing back Palpatine was fine; it was never going to work with Kylo Ren as the big bad, he was too unstable and not a dangerous enough baddie. Most loose ends were tied up, so in that respect it was fairly satisfying.

Bad parts: All that resurrection crap was a joke (people literally laughing out loud in the cinema when Ben brings back Rey only to die himself). It would have worked better if either (a) Ben as a Skywalker sacrificed himself to defeat Palpatine so that Rey could forge her own path, or (b) It happened as it happened, except that Ben stayed dead and Rey survived normally, so they didn't have that weird trading places. I also think they should have re-cast Leia. I know it would have been controversial, but her scenes seemed very stilted to me (maybe I was hyper sensitive to the fact they could only use archival footage) and she could have had a much greater role to play in redeeming Ben (instead of a random Han Solo hallucination) and knitting the whole film together. The dagger stuff was also pretty silly; just have the Wayfinder and that's enough, you don't need two plot devices that essentially do the same thing.

In terms of personal preferences, I also wish they had redeemed Luke's character a bit more - the whole TLJ interpretation of a bitter hermit could have been rescued if Luke had been secretly working on defeating Palpatine all along. I know he had completed part of the search (and TLJ didn't give them much to work with), but it still looks like he just gave up.

The film suffered from some unavoidable weaknesses that really constrained it (The Last Jedi, and Carrie Fisher's passing), but within those constraints I think it did a reasonable job.

[Jeor]

I also don't really know how Snoke works as a plot device. Either he was an overly complicated puppet of Palpatine's, in which case why didn't Palpatine just continue doing his hologram shtick with the admirals instead of hiding behind Snoke, and with all those Star Destroyers (which can also kill planets) why did the First Order have that whole Starkiller base thing when they could have just been loaned half a dozen of that massive fleet? There were a few plot holes or difficult to understand concepts.

[sologdin]

He reacts to her super strong when she reaches out to the force and goes to the dark place, and basically freaks out and compares her to Ben.

there's a reason for this: persuasive reasoning here on the textual evidence of a palpy ridley prior to IX.  good stuff. am convinced that her lineage is sufficiently developed to be warranted irrespective of whether it was pre-planned or simply recognized post hoc--those sort of authorial intent arguments are undecidable and generally meritless even when decided.

a number of writings complain that IX 'retcons' prior films; this may be a misuse of the term.  we'd need continuity errors to be fixed first--what users of the term mean about it with IX is that it has developed the narrative or setting in a way that the user disapproves. ridley's ancestry is a good example of nuanced development.

 

been rescued if Luke had been secretly working on defeating Palpatine all along

that's how i read it--when BDW explains their mission to happy desert planet.  hamill's exile begins ~20 years after his father's death?  that's a lot of time for missions of this sort.  the brilliance of VIII is declining to show a safe and conservative replay of hamill kicking ass--this can be worked out in derivative works; the useful story is his failure and redemption.

[Relic]

9 minutes ago, sologdin said:

the brilliance of VIII is declining to show a safe and conservative replay of hamill kicking ass--this can be worked out in derivative works; the useful story is his failure and redemption.

Could not disagree more. How is his totally played out "redemption" story useful in ANY WAY whatsoever? All  we really know is that he took his ball and left the court when the shit hit the fan. His actions led to the deaths of all the Republic home planets, indirectly. He's a pathetic miserable old fart, and watching him in these movies is fucking painful.