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[SPOILERS] Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker


Lord Varys

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3 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

A FUCKING HOBBIT

Swear to god, actual hand to the deity I don't believe in, the only time I cheered in this movie was when Charlie Pace showed up. I let out a genuine "Yahhh!" like a goddamn anime character. There are witnesses.

Are you guys defending that the holdo maneuver is something that should exist? 

That it doesn t destroy space battles? Why build big and powerful ships if any ship with light speed can destroy them? 

4 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Contempt for The Last Jedi, contempt for Rose Tico and the people who liked the direction certain characters in this franchise were going.

The big problem is that with TLJ the franchising was going nowhere. The force was never a Skywalker family thing... The idea that a strong sith creates a strong jedi is ridiculous, you would never be able to have a jedi counsil without creating thousands of siths. Basically TLJ defends that there can t be jedis... It destroyed Luke and made force ghosts capable of interfering directly with reality. You hate star strek's Kahn blood but what about unkilable ghosts with force abilities? How do you even fight that? How do you stop kamikaze small ships with light speed? How do you write a script for rose after the brilliant line of love will win while all their friends are being killed and she didn t let Finn save them? 

 

I can agree that jj goes out of his way to show how ridiculous some things in TLJ were. But those are high points in the movie for a lot of people. It was like recognizing that those things shouldn t have happened. Having Luke come out and saying that lightsabers shouldn t be thrown away like trash and that he was wrong to have stayed in that planet and rey leaving in his ship is a way of showing fans what should have happened... 

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6 hours ago, Slurktan said:

Would it surprise you to know that the moon the Death Star wreckage is on isn't the Forest Moon?  Despite the Death Star being shown and spoke of as being in close orbit to that Forest Moon in RotJ?  Your points would be interesting but you are forgetting the key fact that the director and story creator of this movie is literally a COMPLETE AND UTTER MORON when it comes to space, time, and distance.

There was some pre-release information that suggested that this was a different moon of Endor, but there is nothing in the movie to suggest it isn't Endor (Endor has oceans, as seen from orbit), other than the fact that the screen isn't crawling in Ewoks.

ETA: Nope, of course there's some BS publicity stuff stating the moon is in fact called Kef Bir, the Ocean Moon of Endor.

Christ, sometimes you just want to punch Abrams in the face for his utter, mind-bending stupidity.

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EDIT:  As a side note I find it incredibly hilarious (and obviously beyond stupid) that it is now canon that Starkiller base was created while the first Death Star was being made. 

 

Where is that stated? The wikis firmly state that Starkiller Base was created more than a decade after the Battle of Jakku.

More recent canon information confirms that Starkiller Base is Ilus, which was around as the main home of khyber crystals for millennia previously, but it wasn't converted into Starkiller Base until after RotJ.

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Glad I’m not alone in my hate of Abrams. The guy basically has a reputation for copying the ideas better people came up with years ago. If you want an inferior version of a story you love, then Abrams I’d your man, lol

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37 minutes ago, sifth said:

Kylo Ren is basically Joffrey, only he knows how to fight. 


Apart from being unstable and throwing tantrums, Kylo is nothing like Joffrey. Joffrey gets angry but he isn't driven by anger- but he has no moral understanding whatsoever. Kylo's entire character was driven by the conflict between rage and knowing underneath that he's doing evil.

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51 minutes ago, Werthead said:

There was some pre-release information that suggested that this was a different moon of Endor, but there is nothing in the movie to suggest it isn't Endor (Endor has oceans, as seen from orbit), other than the fact that the screen isn't crawling in Ewoks.

ETA: Nope, of course there's some BS publicity stuff stating the moon is in fact called Kef Bir, the Ocean Moon of Endor.

Christ, sometimes you just want to punch Abrams in the face for his utter, mind-bending stupidity.

Where is that stated? The wikis firmly state that Starkiller Base was created more than a decade after the Battle of Jakku.

More recent canon information confirms that Starkiller Base is Ilus, which was around as the main home of khyber crystals for millennia previously, but it wasn't converted into Starkiller Base until after RotJ.

Ilum is confirmed in I belive visual dictionary. However t is shown in the game Jedi Fallen Order.  You go to Ilum in the main game and there is nothing there, You go there after "beating" the game and and it is recognizably turning into Starkiller base (ie the giant trench, and basically looks exactly like it). You can see it on youtube if you like.  The game takes place 5-6 years after Revenge of the Sith.

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31 minutes ago, polishgenius said:


Apart from being unstable and throwing tantrums, Kylo is nothing like Joffrey. Joffrey gets angry but he isn't driven by anger- but he has no moral understanding whatsoever. Kylo's entire character was driven by the conflict between rage and knowing underneath that he's doing evil.

I was referring to the sense that they are both man babies. 

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32 minutes ago, polishgenius said:


Apart from being unstable and throwing tantrums, Kylo is nothing like Joffrey. Joffrey gets angry but he isn't driven by anger- but he has no moral understanding whatsoever. Kylo's entire character was driven by the conflict between rage and knowing underneath that he's doing evil.

Rage at what? It is like he turned sith because Luke tried to kill him and Luke tried to kill him because he turned sith... 

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4 hours ago, Ran said:

Acknowledging that it exists but saying it was a freak event for *insert reasons* seems like a way to patch it up in the continuity without removing it. Having an actual Holdo maneuver happen in that same movie seems like it's muddying the waters, though, but in the opposite direction.

Agree with the second sentence.  But by the same token I think mentioning it just to emphasize its unlikelihood is taking an unnecessary shot at TLJ/Johnson.  There didn't seem to be any reason to mention it otherwise, especially considering just like most everything else in the movie if you blink you'll miss it anyway.

4 hours ago, Ran said:

I don't know what he changed in this movie that fundamentally changes the rules of the Star Wars universe.

Certainly didn't mean it in that way.  What I meant there was how much Abrams changed/reverted things back from TLJ.  Although thinking about it, I suppose TROS did introduce two "new" things, to me at least who only watches the films - the "Force dyad" and the apparent ability to bring people back to life.  The former seems like an interesting thing to explore in later ventures.  The latter seems like a cop out/slippery slope akin to the MCU introducing multiverses.

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10 minutes ago, DMC said:

Agree with the second sentence.  But by the same token I think mentioning it just to emphasize its unlikelihood is taking an unnecessary shot at TLJ/Johnson.  There didn't seem to be any reason to mention it otherwise, especially considering just like most everything else in the movie if you blink you'll miss it anyway.

The point is explaining why the rebels won t use kamikaze ships to destroy the star destroyers.

It needed to be said... They couldn t just pretend it didn t happen and that it wouldn t be the most effective way to destroy the new fleet. 

Either space battles would become about crashing ships against each other or they needed to make the holdo maneuver extremely unlikely. 

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4 minutes ago, divica said:

It needed to be said... They couldn t just pretend it didn t happen and that it wouldn t be the most effective way to destroy the new fleet. 

I really don't think that's the case.  It's a very small percentage of viewers that even know what the Holdo maneuver is referring to.

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16 minutes ago, DMC said:

I really don't think that's the case.  It's a very small percentage of viewers that even know what the Holdo maneuver is referring to.

Everybody that cares about why we didn t have more kamikaze ships will find out what they meant by the holdo maneuver. 

From the several things that jj used to show the finger to Rian Johnson that is one of the few that was essential and made the film more solid. 

For example, the Luke scene was essentially made for the people that hated his arc in TLJ. Was it needed? Not really.  Did I like it? HELL YEAH. 

Edit and if people Don t know what the holdo maneuver is then they wouldn t know it is criticizing TLJ... 

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5 minutes ago, divica said:

From the several things that jj used to show the finger to Rian Johnson that is one of the few that was essential and made the film more solid.

I agree that it stands out as a criticism that also reinforced the plot/narrative in a logical way.  Still don't think it was necessary though - think it's kind of silly to go down that path on what they "should" have explained when the entire basis of the film is screaming "here's what we're doing, accept it and move on," beginning with the first two sentences of the opening crawl.  (Which, to be clear, I'm generally fine with.  I actually think Abrams would have been much better served not worrying about so much exposition.)

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3 minutes ago, DMC said:

I agree that it stands out as a criticism that also reinforced the plot/narrative in a logical way.  Still don't think it was necessary though - think it's kind of silly to go down that path on what they "should" have explained when the entire basis of the film is screaming "here's what we're doing, accept it and move on," beginning with the first two sentences of the opening crawl.  (Which, to be clear, I'm generally fine with.  I actually think Abrams would have been much better served not worrying about so much exposition.)

But people criticize and don t like things happening without explanation. just because a lot of things in the movie aren t explained doesn t mean there should be more unexplained things happening. If jj can explain why they aren t using the holdo maneuver why don t do it? It would be self sabotage...

 

About the exposition… Who is ok with the emperor being alive without a proper explanation? People just move on from that because they accept that thse sw just aren t solid stories. Martin scorcese critics of superhero movies are much better aplied to this trilogy than actually marvel. It is like the movies treat the audince as dumb people and they can do whatever they want because as long as it is interesting to look at people will aplaud wether it makes sense or not. It is fast food cinema. Like who made a dagger with the same form of the destroyed death star and used it for terrible things? That dagger had to be made after the death star was destroyed, by someone that knew where the pathfinder was but didn t want to take it, that knew sith and that for some reason did a dagger map instead of anything remotely normal...

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21 minutes ago, divica said:

Like who made a dagger with the same form of the destroyed death star and used it for terrible things? That dagger had to be made after the death star was destroyed, by someone that knew where the pathfinder was but didn t want to take it, that knew sith and that for some reason did a dagger map instead of anything remotely normal...

Yeah I feel like that dagger will go down as a particularly peculiar, random, and confounding McGuffin.

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2 hours ago, Slurktan said:

Ilum is confirmed in I belive visual dictionary. However t is shown in the game Jedi Fallen Order.  You go to Ilum in the main game and there is nothing there, You go there after "beating" the game and and it is recognizably turning into Starkiller base (ie the giant trench, and basically looks exactly like it). You can see it on youtube if you like.  The game takes place 5-6 years after Revenge of the Sith.

I believe they strip-mined Illum for the kyber crystals for the Death Star(s), creating the big trench. But the idea to make the planet itself into a weapon came much later. 

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8 hours ago, DMC said:

This is just facile, overly dismissive, and logically inaccurate.  To be clear, I think Palps coming back is pretty stupid.  But even so, it doesn't necessarily negate what they did from a pragmatic viewpoint.  At the worst, they waylaid him for 30 some years before he was "finally" defeated...until they need him for another trilogy.

If they have him do essentially the same thing thirty years later both ROTJ and TROS essentially look like nonsense. I'm not talking about in-universe continuity here (although that looks pretty weird now, too, especially in relation to the Chosen One nonsense), but about themes of the movies.

8 hours ago, DMC said:

Of course you're entitled to your opinion.  What I was trying to sarcastically - and drunkenly, sorry - express there is your idea of what should happen is not the only way things should actually happen.  In other words, your opinion is indeed one among many in a commentary thread.  You have a habit of presenting your arguments as authoritative, as if that is the way things should be.  And that was undoubtedly the case with your post I was reacting to.  So I responded in kind.  Don't like the taste of your own medicine, huh?

If you cannot deal with people expressing their opinions in a confident manner that's your issue. I don't see why I should express my views in a more timid manner. I'm not Aenys Targaryen, you know.

I honestly don't see your problem here. I don't tell people here that they are not entitled/shouldn't love those new movies. And I definitely don't insult anyone's tastes or character by telling everyone who does is a moron or anything. When I use stronger language I express my feelings towards the movies and, perhaps, the people who made them (who most likely don't read any of this), and that is perfectly fine.

8 hours ago, DMC said:

My point there is it's difficult to do so while simultaneously respecting the accomplishments of the OT and reintegrating the OT characters.  The former is inherently going to cheapen the latter, and vice versa.  If you want something that won't do either, you're asking for a sequel that truly does take place "long, long.." in the future - or past.

Difficult, sure, impossible most definitely not. And there is certainly a rather broad spectrum between shit like those new movies and, say, an attempt to tell a new story and failing with the execution. I'm not blaming them for Carrie Fisher's death and the problems that caused. Although I think changing Luke's pointless death in the TLJ because of that could have been a good idea to have an actually living actor of the Big Three in the last movie. All they would have needed to do for that was to change the scene where Luke disappears in the end and have him jump into his X-Wing instead.

8 hours ago, DMC said:

Um, didn't they run the clone wars?  They clearly had a long-held relationship with the Galactic Senate as their protectors.  They would have been the equivalent of a - in a modern American context - Department of Defense - as well as the intelligence agencies.  If you want to equate them to earlier governments, they were the military wing until the revelation of the clone army. 

George Lucas himself said that the Jedi were essentially a variation of the marshals of the Wild West. I don't see the marshals of the Wild West running the United States in the 19th century in a meaningful sense.

The Jedi definitely were much more powerful than most or even all of the membership states of the Republic unless the combined many of their assets, giving them the power to enforce settlements and negotiate in conflicts and such, but they were not running things. They were acting only on the authority of the Senate of the Republic, and did not have the right to decide how the people of the galaxy had to live on their own.

They were not a military force, didn't have any troops aside from the members of the order, no capital ships or fleets.

8 hours ago, DMC said:

It's preposterous to think such an entity did not play a permanently integral political role in the foundation and execution of the Republic's politics.  Let alone the fact military coups are incredibly common throughout history, and the Jedi clearly could have executed as much for, apparently, centuries.  Particularly in terms of the PT, the argument the Jedi did not have a role in the politics of the Republic is patently ludicrous, frankly should not be entertained.

There are no indication that the Jedi ever had the manpower/means to stage a military coup while neither they nor the Republic as such had a military. In the EU context there certainly were also times when the Republic had a standing military and when the Jedi were officially running the Republic with the Supreme Chancellor being a Jedi more often than not - during the last centuries of the New Sith Wars, for instance - but that's not the case for the movie canon Republic we are talking about here.

8 hours ago, DMC said:

You're right, I'm not sure what you mean by fascism, because it's not any rational definition of fascism.  First, yes, fascists regimes came to power with paramilitary forces.  As did the Empire.  Which is why they're called stormtroopers, a terminology Lucas literally cribbed from Nazi Germany (as if that needed to be clarified).  Second, yes, fascists had political parties, as is depicted in the PT through the fact Palpatine has to secure certain support for his extension of powers in AOTC.

My point simply was that Palpatine's story is significantly different from the rise of fascist regimes in the real world. And the most crucial element of that - xenophobia and racism - is explicitly absent in the PT trilogy. The EU and supplementary material have made the Empire have a 'Humans first' ideology but that is not the case for the PT. In fact, Palpatine being surrounded by three non-human aides in AOTC and ROTS pretty much goes against that.

The transformation of the Republic to the Empire has little to nothing in common with German and Italian fascism insofar as the transformation is portrayed. In fact, the Palpatine approach could be very much seen how a tired and rotten federal republic - like the US are today, say - into a dictorship or a monarchy.

But the problem of the whole story there is that we only see that this transformation takes place, we do not really see much of the how, nor the effects the transformation has in ROTS or AOTC. And while it is clear that Palpatine is evil, this is not shown by means of describing his policies or ideology but mainly by his looks and his eradication of the Jedi - which is clearly a horrible crime! - not by how his new regime affects the general population.

The stormtroopers seem to me like general military (and they don't show up in the PT), not paramilitary forces like the SA.

It would have been great if Lucas had given us Palpatine's Goebbels or his Himmler, but there are none such people around, unfortunately.

8 hours ago, DMC said:

The entire PT is Lucas' depiction of how a fascist dictator rises to power, mirroring Hitler.  The iconography of fascism is almost overly blatant throughout the OT, let alone the PT, and the new trilogy with the First Order is even more explicitly based on Nazi symbolism - pretty sure one of TFA's writer's got in trouble for admitting so.

In the OT, yeah, there we have more fascist like imagery. But that's not necessarily the same as proper analogy or depiction of fascism, no? I'd say Lucas used ways to stress the fact that he wants to see those people be recognizable movie villains - and the new movies just continue this trend. They don't make the fascism of the Empire more explicit because we still don't understand what the goal of the First Order is. What do they want? Why do they think democracy suck? We don't know that.

8 hours ago, DMC said:

Moreover, Palpatine does not "essentially [bury] democracy as a democrat."  That's another incredibly stupid statement.  He buries democracy after killing off dissenters and having the remainder of the "democratic" Senate approve his dictatorship via fear.  This is literally how almost all fascist regimes take power.  The fact you don't know that is fine.  That fact you're trying to claim this is not fascist is why neo-fascist movements are re-emerging.

Palpatine keeps his grandfatherly persona until the very end. Even his inauguration speech there isn't about him crushing traitors and dissenters, but about how things are going to get better now. Sure, he did kill the Jedi, but there is no talk in ROTS as such about Palpatine rounding up and shooting opposition politicians, targeting minority groups, abolishing civilian rights, etc.

In fact, in the finished version of ROTS there don't even seem to be any politicians who oppose Palpatine's rise to power - those scenes were all cut. People like Hitler or Mussolini never paid lip service to democracy and republican values - they openly despised concepts like that. But that's something Palpatine never does. Which is why I said above the Galactic Republic and its death is a much better parallel to the possible future transformation of the US into a dictatorship because I cannot see a US President doing such a transformation by spitting on the graves and memories of the founding fathers and the Consititution - those things would all still be invoked and paid lip service to.

8 hours ago, DMC said:

Finally, Palpatine's dictatorship did indeed come with oppression and eradication of certain groups/species.  There are clear supremacist sentiments expressed throughout the films, let alone the obvious genocidal analogies the Death Star and all its progenies represent.  In conclusion, if you're an avid fan of Star Wars and don't think the Empire and subsequent First Order represent fascism, you're either gravely uneducated on the history of fascism, an alt-right contrarian, or just a nihilist who likes fucking with people.

Well, of course fascism is what the Empire is if you include all Star Wars material. I was talking about the tiny tidbit of Star Wars which can be seen in the official movies (and only there). I'd have liked if they had kept/given the 'humans only' ideology as an explanation why there are only humans in the Imperial military, etc. - but that's just never made explicit.

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27 minutes ago, divica said:

Like who made a dagger with the same form of the destroyed death star and used it for terrible things? That dagger had to be made after the death star was destroyed, by someone that knew where the pathfinder was but didn t want to take it, that knew sith and that for some reason did a dagger map instead of anything remotely normal...

I speculated about this earlier, and after the film I assumed some agent of Palpatine, maybe a member of the Sith Eternal (I guess that's the name), was sent out from Exogol with the dagger to locate the wayfinder in the wreckage and turn the dagger into a map with the intent of providing a reward to Ochi to allow him to make his way to Exogol after completing his mission(s). 

Yes, this means whoever was sent out was being exiled from Exogol if we assume you generally need the wayfinder to get there if you've never made the journey, but the Sith cultists look like the sort who'd be happy to die for their master, much less be exiled from Exogol.

I

 

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6 hours ago, divica said:

Are you guys defending that the holdo maneuver is something that should exist? 

That it doesn t destroy space battles? Why build big and powerful ships if any ship with light speed can destroy them? 

The big problem is that with TLJ the franchising was going nowhere. The force was never a Skywalker family thing... The idea that a strong sith creates a strong jedi is ridiculous, you would never be able to have a jedi counsil without creating thousands of siths. Basically TLJ defends that there can t be jedis... It destroyed Luke and made force ghosts capable of interfering directly with reality. You hate star strek's Kahn blood but what about unkilable ghosts with force abilities? How do you even fight that? How do you stop kamikaze small ships with light speed? How do you write a script for rose after the brilliant line of love will win while all their friends are being killed and she didn t let Finn save them? 

 

I can agree that jj goes out of his way to show how ridiculous some things in TLJ were. But those are high points in the movie for a lot of people. It was like recognizing that those things shouldn t have happened. Having Luke come out and saying that lightsabers shouldn t be thrown away like trash and that he was wrong to have stayed in that planet and rey leaving in his ship is a way of showing fans what should have happened... 

The Holdo maneuver was precisely the kind of shit I hated about The Last Jedi. But I don't need a hobbit to give me a throwaway line about it. 

Apparently in one of the books they explain that that ship had an experimental drive or something. I posited that Snoke's ship was so big you could actually manage to hit it.

Both are better explanations, but it doesn't matter. The exchange flies past faster than the speed of Laura Dern and we are on to the next thing.

Just fucking ignore it if you're basically going to fucking ignore it. Imagine if Return of the Jedi took the time to have characters explain to you that the Millenium Falcon got to Bespin on impulse power instead of light speed, that's how Luke had time to train. But instead of this needless explanation of a clickbait factoid, you get a two line bit of dialogue.

"Took you long enough to get to Bespin, Luke." 

"Faster than you did, old buddy." 

It would feel completely out of place. And fucking weird. You aren't supposed to address gizmodo articles about minute plot details in five second increments like you're checking a box. Thats... Not what movies are supposed to be about. 

So in conclusion, Holdo ram stupid. But there's so much wrong with Skywalker that it doesn't really have a leg to stand on when criticising The Last Jedi. At least that movie thought it had a point.

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3 hours ago, Ran said:

I speculated about this earlier, and after the film I assumed some agent of Palpatine, maybe a member of the Sith Eternal (I guess that's the name), was sent out from Exogol with the dagger to locate the wayfinder in the wreckage and turn the dagger into a map with the intent of providing a reward to Ochi to allow him to make his way to Exogol after completing his mission(s). 

Yes, this means whoever was sent out was being exiled from Exogol if we assume you generally need the wayfinder to get there if you've never made the journey, but the Sith cultists look like the sort who'd be happy to die for their master, much less be exiled from Exogol.

I

 

I don't know how you managed to type this while carrying ten gallons of water uphill without a bucket, but mad props for the effort. 

Not buying it, but an undeniable creative spark initiated your explanation. And I haven't seen anything creative in weeks.

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5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, of course fascism is what the Empire is if you include all Star Wars material. I was talking about the tiny tidbit of Star Wars which can be seen in the official movies (and only there). I'd have liked if they had kept/given the 'humans only' ideology as an explanation why there are only humans in the Imperial military, etc. - but that's just never made explicit.



I think you're conflating Nazism and fascism there. While the original Italian Fascism for example was ultranationalist and certainly wasn't lacking in racism, it wasn't built on official and rabid racism in the same way the Nazis were and certainly not on the exclusion or extermination of non-white or non-Romantic people.

In any case the Emperor did grab power on a wave of xenophobia- he deliberately engineered a whole war with outside powers to generate the fear he needed to grab sole power. 

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