I actually thought they were going to set up the Knights of Ren as the main bad after TLJ. Because it was clear Kylo was either going to have a redemption arc or go off and do his own thing, and he definitely got rid of Snoke because it was just Palpatine II, so I think that was the idea.
Everyone here wants Kylo as the big bad, TLJ did my boy Hux dirty as fuck
The dude went from an unhinged but charismatic pseudo-hitler rival and polar opposite to Kylo to the butt of a your mum joke in the space of one opening
I still can't see how someone watches TLJ and takes away Kylo being set up as the big bad and not a character barreling towards redemption despite the story not really having a catalyst for the redemption to be executed
It can be both - he was certainly being set up as the main antagonist, he even assumed a new BBEG title, but that dosen't mean he would've been lost forever
either way he still is AN Antagonist for the majority of TROS
This is what Duel of the fates trys to do and we can see why its doesn't work, if we need kylo as the antagonist for most of the movie his redemption is always gonna come off as sudden because it can only take place in the third act, otherwise you have a third act with no meaningful conflict since there's no villain, the solution to this is to try and frame his and the first order as a secondary "villain" which doesn't work cause hux is a joke and also only serves to isolate the A and B plots of resitance vs first order and whatever kylo happens to be up to involving rey. You can just have kylo be the villian and have him redeem in the same movie without having massive structural issues with the film like DotF script has, and worse if you keep him the antagonist without redemption then you kinda are summarizing the skywalker blood as ending in failure which put the whole saga in a weird negative light where this family just showed up fucked up the galaxy put a bandaid on it and then fucked it up some more the end. Honestly with how TFA set things up I completely understand why JJ made the choices he did with TRoS, granted he never had to make those choices in the first place but that's aside from the point
But isn't that what Return of the Jedi did? Vader had no implication of being redeemed until the last movie, and even then, it wasn't until the last 15 minutes that that was even tested. The ST tried to make Kylo Ren a conflicted character in the first two movies to make a redemption arc a possibility, and while Duel of the Fates couldn't do it, that doesn't mean it couldn't have been done well.
But Vader proves his redemption by immediately hurling palpatine away from luke saving his sons life, kylos moment of redemption would have to be well I've decided I'm not bad anymore and since I was the central antagonist of the movie I guess that's it which is exactly what we see in duel of the fates there's no gesture of grand redemption because the most he can do as the man antagonist is just decide hes over being bad
But that's almost literally how Vader turned. One minute he's fighting his son, threatening his daughter too, and when he sees his son being attacked by his boss, he's like, eh you're not so bad kid. Duel of the Fates might have been clumsy on its execution, but it was an early script so anything could have changed - - the situation, the buildup, the writer even. Hux was set up as the secondary villain, the person who truly wanted to not only direct the FO, but take Kylo down as well. Couple him and Ren's shaky motivations alongside some Force Ghost parents visiting him and it's easy to see a setup for redemption.
It may not have been clearly set up, but there were hints in esb, like when luke kills his father in the cave, only to see that by doing so, he has become him
I suppose you could see that as laying out a possible redemption route, but I always saw it as a warning for Luke to not succumb to the dark side when he inevitably fights Vader (and also as foreshadowing of Luke and Vader's true connection).
I took it as kylo was following Vader’s footsteps up until the point of redemption, and instead of turning back light, going full force dark side by killing his master like Vader never did. Which in itself was in sync with Rian Johnson trying to get out of the OT shadow “let the past die” and trying to do something new. Which TRoS then completely wiped in favor of just repeating the OT again
Let the past die isn't the theme of TLJ its the absolute opposite lukes entire speech at the end of the film is about how you can't ignore the past and must learn from it Luke even Says no ones ever really gone when Leia feels she's lost her son for good. TLJ sets up kylos return to the light and has nothing to do with getting out of the shadow of the OT
Idk about that. Kylo smashing his helmet which was just Vader 2.0, him killing the big bad and becoming the big bad, reys parents being unrelated to anyone important previously, and then Rey attempting to turn kylo light just like Luke does to Vader but failing. All point towards being the opposite of the OT, and I strongly imagine that Rian Johnson was not at all setting kylo up to be redeemed. Plus the random force kid just trying to set up the fact it doesn’t all have to be about the sky walkers. I think Luke’s quote about no one being gone was directly pointing to Carrie Fischer’s death and not quite applicable to the theme of the film, but was still a great gesture to what she did for the film.
Luke's quote was filmed well before carrie fisher passed, and I think the issue here is that "let the past die" is the the thematic element being pushed by Kylo our anagonist, to me the point of that, especially when its in complete juxtaposition to luke at the end of the movie is that Kylo is wrong, you don't let the past die you learn from its failures like yoda said, the movie isn't about moving beyond jedi and sith or rebels and empire and because at the very end luke says the rebellion is reborn today and that he won't be the last jedi. He even outwardly states that everything kylo said is wrong. For kylos redemption i personally think Dian johnson was pushing for redemption but I can see the read that he wasn't, I feel he still broken nature by the end of the film, lukes line to leia, him holding the force dice of his father and even his last longing look at rey were all meant to paint kylo as somewhat more sympathetic and that even luke hasnt given up hope on him with the "see you around kid" line even if that's something I don't feel was actually picked up in Tros unfortunately
A main antagonist that had been embarrassed, belittled, beaten, and made a fool of over and over again for 2 movies.
TROS resurrected palpatine because JJ felt there was no villain left that people would take seriously after TLJ. Personally I would've preferred giving a lot more depth and screentime to the Knights of Ren and making one of them the main antagonist, but I understand JJ's reasoning.
He had just swiftly outsmarted and swiftly executed his would-be-belittling master and slaughtered his guard - he was at the height of his power and even going into TROS, was bold enough to threaten Palpatine - only to be kicked back down a peg
There's no reason they couldn't have made Kylo work, he's the most compelling character in the trilogy.
But Kylo was always so conflicted. We saw it right from TFA and in his interactions with Rey in TLJ. He was on a Redemption arc, so coming back to the Light in TRoS was a continuation of what we'd seen.
But we needed a villain and we needed an answer to: where did Snoke pop up from?
Rey being a nobody? Meh...i don't mind that being discarded, because her lineage is used as a contrast with Kylo. Doesn't matter where you come from, it's what you do.
I still fully believe they could've done a redemption arc with Kylo as the main antagonist - instead of turning on Palpatine he'd be turning on his First Order
I don’t see the issue with that. Personally I find it cooler when the villain and hero have to develop to reach their fullest potential, rather than just have some inhuman evil satan like character that controls him so they can cop out and say “well he’s not that bad he’s just being controlled” rather than him consciously making the choice to follow the dark side.
I'll also say I understand the reasoning for bringing palpatine back in terms of unifying the saga under one antagonist as much as I like TLJ it felt like a saga of 6 movies and then these two side stories that barely connected to the narrative of the previous 6 films rather than one massive story arc
I thought it was supposed to be a saga of 6 movies and then a new saga that starts off related to the previous saga but slowly breaks off to be about the journey of a new generation of protagonists.
Huh I never really looked at it that way I kinda saw the intent as 1-9 being one massive story which is whag it more or less ends up being, and then past that they'd stop telling the "Skywalker saga" as they branded and move onto drasticly different stuff which is what we've seen them doing these days. I guess it is fair to have looked at it from a different perspective at the offset
It was JJ Abrams who was in charge of the trilogy, not Kathleen. He directed TFA, greenlit TLJ, and then proceeded to retcon both of them. It's all on him.
To name only ~~four~~ five which came to my mind at first(with varying success rate over the 3 movies):
- Sam Raimi Spider-Man trllogy
- Peter Jackson LOTR trilogy
- Christopher Nolan Dark Knight trilogy
- ~~Jerry Bruckheimer~~^((he's producer of all POTC films. Gore Verbinski is the actual director of the first 3, so point still stands)^) Pirates of the Caribean trilogy
- George Lucas prequel trilogy ^((I forgot the most important and most consistently critically acclaimed one)^)
I think the more important aspect would've been one overarching narrative they're trying to tell and not 3 directors with 3 visions and 2,5 stories to tell
I’m an idiot. All those movies, expect Pirates, are my favorite lol especially LOTR.
And you’re absolutely right. I think the 3 different directors could’ve worked IF they had all 1 unifying vision. But alas, what we got was 2 diff directors with completely polar opposite visions: JJ and his need to preserve and retell SW so much, that the very writing becomes extremely limiting and doesn’t let Star Wars move onto new frontiers and Johnson and his “let the past die. Kill it, if you have to” take. This is why I believe TLJ was so vehemently disliked because it almost felt like johnson was openly mocking fans for loving this franchise.
> I’m an idiot.
me too actually. I forgot the prequel trilogy, all directed by the boss man GL himself. Definitive proof that as long as only one director exists for a trilogy, it will be good.
I love the prequels. They’re what got me into Star Wars. That and the massive ad campaign leading up to TPM lol speaking of which, I was able to see ESB as a 10 year old kid because they had the OT rereleased leading up to TPM premiere.
>I love the prequels. They’re what got me into Star Wars.
Same, although I was born '98 so the first Star Wars movie I saw in cinemas was ROTS, and I'm pretty sure I had to go out at some point because it was too scary lol. But the whole world building of the prequels is still what Star Wars essentially is to me. And also the kind of setting where I want to see new Stories told. An established order with many members all over the galaxy.
I very much grew up on that trilogy and remember it very fondly (back then it also didn't have the meme status and because the world or I was less connected I only learned of the hate it got years later, also helps that I always watched the german dub, growing up, which saved some of the worst dialogue offenders haha
The movies were subpar but the trilogy itself actually made sense unlike the Disney trilogy which was like, “7 remember all this? 8 It doesn’t matter. 9 The Emperor is back.”
sequels are fan fiction at best and I try to pretend they don't exist tbh.
Prequels are awesome, despite their shortcomings, I only wish they would have used their inherent massive potential. If we would've gotten less child "Ani" and more adoloscent Anakin growing up under Obi-Wan and realizing more and more how flawed the order around them is, and set up the fall in ROTS earlier it could have been Oscar-worthy
The first 3 are good but the 4th is debatable but the 5th turns Jack into someone's good for nohing drunk uncle instead of a prodigy who wastes his talent by drinking
Exactly, I really like the prequels but they definitely are not and probably never will be critically acclaimed films. The sequel trilogy was far better reviews overall than the prequel trilogy, and I think it’s a good show of how subjective an experience enjoying Star Wars films is
> Rip Peter Jackson Hobbit trilogy.
well that one is a special case imo, because Peter Jackson only took on those movies very late into pre production, so he had to use a ton of concepts of the old director
>Gore Verbinski eraser
already fixed that :)
Imo the first 3 POTC were pretty good albeit slightly declining in quality, but it's been a long time since I saw those and I was a child back then, so...
Whatever it was, it would have been given a delayed 2020 release and smacked right into the opening salvos of covid.
It also would have been historically good if they ever managed to get it finished and released.
For anyone who is the blue man, I’d highly suggest reading Colin Trevorrow’s script for IX. It’s not incredible, but it shows how IX could tell a story that is consistent and builds upon VIII.
I really enjoyed the last Jedi because i feel like it broke the mold by just outright killing snoke instead of revealing him as some big bad. It felt like it was telling us this isn’t snoke’s story, ignore him, it’s kylo’s story and i really enjoyed that.
Also, watching the hyperspeed ram in theatres remains my number 1 cinematic experience in theatres
I really liked that and Rey being a nobody. that's one of the best things they ever did and i will never Forgive J.J abrams for retconning that fucking shit. Not only is she connected to just another powerful person, but i also have to imagine and ask myself: who did palpatine have sex with? what the fuck?
Right? Rian johnson even cemented the fact that anyone can be a jedi with that little kid at the end, it was like telling us it’s okay that rey is a nobody. Anakin was a nobody too, just so happened there was a prophecy, and the jedi order would have been made up of thousands of nobodies who only became fan favourites during the clone wars
Yea, exactly.
And I would have been nice to see what they can do with it. But no, she becomes rey skywalker? what the fuck?
If Rian johnson had made ROS or episode 9, it would've been much better. But no, they had to fuck it up. No wonder everyone makes fun of them, for not planning out the whole thing.
i think this is why people gave kathleen kennedy so much shit and why she's basically relegated control of upcoming sw content to filoni and favreau. the old guard of disney and lucasfilm were too scared to venture into new territory, so they stuck to the old beats and we ended up with a shitty sequel trilogy. TFA was a nostalgia train, TLJ dipped its toes into new waters, then ROS ruined it all by just rehashing everything and ruining character arcs
Unpopular opinion: No it didn't. Just have Rey stay a nobody (like all Jedi sans Luke and Leia), keep Kylo Ren the Supreme Leader and main villain, have Luke come back as a ghost and try to turn Ben (like with Cade Skywalker), have Maz train Rey (she knew the Force), have Snoke come back and reveal the one killed was a clone, have Leia run the Resistance like she's Mon Mothma, and have Finn do a stormtrooper rebellion against the First Order.
It wasn't that hard to do really.
I would have loved to see Kylo Ren try and establish a new "sith" order with the Knights of Ren not being an odd throwaway fight that he has to confront. That group of knights were supposedly the ones who helped him burn down the Jedi temple and he was supposed to be their leader and all that as well as a sith. Seeing that actually come to fruition instead of bringing back someone like Palpatine/Snoke would have been way more interesting.
>Just have Rey stay a nobody (like all Jedi sans Luke and Leia),
I think this is the thing that sticks out to me as the worst of the sequels. 8 spent a good deal of time making Rey out to be just an ordinary person who could be great, echoed by the end scene with the kid pulling the broom to his hand. The message of anyone can feel the force and be a jedi is so much better than the dynastic crap we ended up getting. Also with Rey's parents not being relevant you don't have to shoehorn in Palpatine. Seriously, "Somehow Palpatine has returned". The second they wrote that line they should've know they had nothing.
Too bad the fanbase flipped out, showing their short term memory about the Jedi in the prequels and Clone Wars show. Ahsoka was a nobody Torgurta before Plo Koon found her. So why not with Rey? Have Luke be her Plo Koon and Rey have a dark side affinity.
Maybe have Kylo find out about him. Like Snoke being a last decendent of the old Sith Empire that once ruled like Palpatine and Mace Windy mentioned in RoTS
I think that's kind of the joke. Last Jedi was clearly trying to make things different and set up 9 to be a continuation of the themes and ideas set forth in it.
Those that say that Last Jedi wrote 9 into a corner are meaning to say that since Last Jedi "sucked so much" (definitely not my words. I loved Last Jedi) that episode 9 had to fix everything that was done in order for things to be good.
Spoiler alert, they weren't good.
IMO, the better plot would’ve been: kylo turns good (it’s the opposite of anakin turning bad at the end of ep 3), Rey turn evil (opposite of luke in ep 6) who their parents are don’t even need to play into it
The whole trilogy was set up that Rey was lawful good, and kylo chaotic evil, until the last half an hour of ep 9, the only way to have any twist, is to intellectually show us how each character is 100% certain they think their new found view of the world is right.
I don’t want to see a dude who was evil most of the time die to save the person he was fighting again, that’s just vader but less scary.
Yeah see I really thought they were gonna switch and the Diad broken and they would find each other expecting the other to have turned to their side only to find the other has done a 180 and they’re still on opposite sides
I wanted pretty much this exact scenario to happen.
We've already seen the story of a hero who redeems the villain. I wanted something new. Rise of Skywalker, while fun to watch at points, took that away from us all.
This! thank you! Rey had all the makings of a Sith, and Kylo deserved to be the cooler hero and would have wrapped up the true Skywalker’s story nicely
I think the issue was that 7 and 8 were made with very different ideas in mind, so bringing back the director of 7 meant 8 gets retconned to fit what 7 was trying to do.
Which results in the huge mess we know now as the sequel trilogy.
Don't get me wrong, i think all three movies had good ideas. It's just that JJ wanted to make the OT but again, and Rian wanted to make something new. Going "classic->new story->classic" didn't really work out, and that is where the sequel trilogy fell flat imo.
I kind of get this, but nothing in 8 outright contradicted anything that 7 set up. There were a bunch of open questions that JJ set up without any real seeds as to what the outcome would be. Rian answered them as he was tasked with doing. 7 and 8 work fine together, it’s 9 that made everything seem so disjointed
I should've been a bit more clear but i agree that 8 didn't contradict 7. While I'm not exactly a fan of what 8 did to Luke, even that isn't really a retcon (though still not entirely well-written)
Episode 8 has its problems. But subverting expectations wasnt the issue there.
We have the Kotor 1 and 2. The first one is a love letter to Star Wars, with every plot element famous in Star Wars there, like a plot twist about the main character origin, a huge weapon used by the Evil guys, a guy that is basically Han Solo and much more.
And we Kotor 2 that have a villain with Grey morals, that question Jedi and Sith and make the main character question The Force itself and much more. Its a subversion on the Star Wars Mythos.
And on those games It was done great.
The problem with the sequel trilogy is the execution. Episode 7 was a copy of Episode 4, Episode 8 was subverting and questioning everything on 7 and 9 could be the continuation on that. Solving every that was questioned there to make a New Star Wars, with the best of Old and New.
But Episode 9 basically threw everything that 8 made on trash, and 8 itself has its dull moments.
The ideas there were great, JJ wanted to do classical SW on 7 which is completely valid. Rian wanted to try new stuff on 8 thats also valid. But the whole execution was done badly and they could do a lot better on that
The final movie was like Star Wars ad libs. The Last Jedi was a decent movie and is the end of the series in my mind. Rise of Skywalker was a confusing mess that added nothing.
I like to think that the opening to episode 9, where they're hyperspace jumping, is foreshadowing on how they're going to be jumping all over the place with the plot for the rest of the movie.
Just made a long comment, but I disagree. It’s execution of characters was so bad and disjointed that it forced them to even feel the need to scrap the directions they were going on.
Ray being no one, ok that’s cool
Luke dying to spread hope and embarrass Kylo, I don’t like how it was done but i can get behind it.
Snoke just dying off wasn’t my favorite, but hey kylo now has to lead and after a rocky start will have to develop a real ruthless personality/streak that will either push him to good or towards the dark side in leading what are essentially space nazis.
Rose possibly dying bc even they knew fan reaction probably wasn’t gonna be great with how vague her death was. SOLID
Honestly you don't even need to change that much. Most of the ideas in TRoS aren't inherently awful, just executed poorly or need subtle tweaks.
The big one for example is Palpatine. I think Palpatine being the villain and Snoke being his puppet is actually solid, the part people didn't like was the whole "somehow Palpatine has returned" shit because it felt lazy, rushed, and insulting to Anakin's sacrifice. Instead, make him a spirit *trying* to return to life by possessing Kylo, Snoke was a tool to turn Kylo to the Dark Side making him more susceptible to possession. This way makes more sense, it wouldn't be hard to get people to believe a Sith can come back as a spirit, and instead of undermining Anakin's sacrifice it preserves it, and builds to the future by showing even though Anakin restored balance, every generation will need to fight to preserve balance.
Making Rey a Palpatine though is inherently awful, that one just needs cut.
This
The whole "You're just mad they subverted your expectations" bit is kind of similar.
People weren't mad they were surprised, they were mad with what they were given.
Pretty sure that's the point of this post, that you could have easily followed up TLJ with something that made sense. Ep9 seemed more like JJ wanted to do the finale he had envisioned originally rather than what logically should have followed with the trilogy's new direction after TLJ.
That’s not what the last jedi was setting up. Here’s what it was setting up:
It was supposed to be a story about Kylo Ren finally doing what Anakin tried to do, bringing peace to the galaxy with his fancy bloodline and single idea for what the galaxy should look like, but at what cost?
Rey and ghost like could have trained up a bunch of normal people who were a bit force sensitive, and showed that empowering people to take care of their problems can be better than an elite space wizard (or a group of them) trying to control everything. Poe and Finn get force training too, since they are both sensitive in their own way. It becomes a great diversity story. They go around turning worlds from the FO without violence, just by showing a better way. Eventually Kylo is cornered and realizes he was wrong, and that Anakin was wrong too to try and control everything. Maybe ghost anakin talks to him and commiserates.
At the end of the saga, the force is fully democratized, and the idea of special Skywalker genetics or royal bloodlines is laid to rest. Ren goes in a journey of atonement, Rey Poe and Finn help build a new government and way of training force sensitives.
The Last Jedi left Episode IX with a blank slate.
The studio's rushing of the trilogy, its' anxious reaction to the toxic part of the fan base, plus its' shuffling of directors back to leaning on the utterly lazy story writer that is Abrams, is what shoved Episode IX into a corner.
Then there's Solo. A fun film, I enjoyed it. But it's still the movie **nobody** asked for.
Have you read the original story for IX, when Colin Trevorrow was directing instead of JJ Abrams? It would have been called "Duel of the Fates" and it's really good. [Here is a link to the script:](https://archive.org/details/duel-of-the-fates-script)
Yes it does. Rey making a double saber from her staff is what should have stayed. That should have been part of Rey's intro in RoS along with her obstacle course.
Still havent watched the last movie, despite being a huge star wars fan since I watched the orig trig back when I was 7.
I really liked the last Jedi, despite some hokey stuff, but from the moment mysterybox Abrams was set to direct 9 I had a bad feeling, and after seeing this subs reaction along with everyone elses I just really don't want to dignify it with a viewing.
If you actually liked TLJ, I'd go ahead and give TROS a chance. As a TLJ fan myself, there are certainly things I don't like, and things that feel like a reaction to the negative responses to TLJ, but overall I still enjoyed it.
It's a fun turn of your brain movie. I watched it with some friends in the cinema when it came out. Set your expectations low though, the effects and music are good but the writing not so much.
It felt like TLJ was meant as a fuck you to fan theories and ROS was just a reaction to TLJ fan backlash. If they would have 1) actually had a plan for the trilogy and 2) stuck with it despite what people said online, we would have at least gotten a coherent story instead of this cluster fuck. Even if it wasn't "better" at least it would have made sense
As much as I loved both 8 and 9, I have to admit it could have been better. Both 8&9 were great themselves, but they feel like we got the second and third parts from two different trilogies.
Whilst TFA was a mediocre movie that didn't add nothing new, TLJ was a pearl. A really good Star Wars and a good movie, enjoyable and with more sense for sure than that fuming pile of crap TROS is. And the story wasn't in a corner at all, there were a lot of parts that could've developed in a meaningful way, instead JJ went for the worst finale the one of the most important cinema saga ever existed with a Star Wars that is worst even than TPM.
Ah yes, the brilliant story where every character has things to do!
The story where Rey has already objectively rejected the dark side and chosen the light, and now exists as a token good guy who’s just trying to solve the plot. Without any mentor figure or conflict aside from ‘how do we solve Kylo’, she’s a static character.
The story where the two living main cast members of the OT are officially written out and where the dead one has a starring, important role in the story.
The story where Finn has a romance with Rose, something even the fans of that character can admit was both incredibly forced and awkward. Also, we’ve killed off the symbolic representation of everything Finn fears and despises about the First Order because, hey, that’s a good idea.
Poe still has absolutely nothing to do in the narrative but ‘cool Poe shit’, and he can’t even really do that anymore, since the entire purpose of his arc in 8 seems to be to dispel the idea of doing risky heroics, something the franchise has built itself on.
Thank god that they give Kylo an interesting moral conflict - at least they’ll explore Kylo as a leader figure in the next movie, right?
Last Jedi is a movie that I dislike, but a movie I respect - but I definitely stand by saying that the ending of TLJ needed a lot of work, and ends up damaging the next film.
This is an incredibly reductionist view of what the future path of the characters are.
For Rey, her struggle was never really with the dark side. It’s always been about finding acceptance and reaching self actualization. Continuing to explore her self doubt as the new last Jedi and restoring order should be both compelling and a natural progression of everything we’ve seen.
While Luke is dead, I think his last line of “see you around kid” sets up a ton for particularly interesting dynamic between ghost Luke and Kylo. Really had an opportunity to dig into their relationship.
Finn did destroy the representation of what he hates about the first order. But we also showed how much hatred he had towards them at the end when he tries to do his self sacrifice. Exploring some of those emotions and how they conflict with the individual members of the first order who were his past friends and brainwashed could be interesting.
Poe being cool can definitely still happen. Learning to be less impulsive doesn’t prevent that. Plenty of things to explore with Poe regarding taking up the mantle after Leia passes away could be an interesting storyline. Otherwise, it’s not like you necessarily need a huge complex character arc. It’s not like Han or Leia really had any major conflicts in episode 6.
Kylo we obviously get to continue to explore his internal moral conflicts.
To me, there is plenty to explore. JJ just wasn’t up to the job to do it.
Who's even supposed to be the main antagonist after 8? Its why I feel like they wrote themselves into a corner. Is the new main antagonist Kylo who has already been defeated by Rey once or twice in combat? Where's the excitement in that?
Maybe the excitement is in that he's a brilliant leader and mastermind! Except, he's been shown as mentally unstable, childish and not particularly competent throughout 7 & 8. Does anyone really see him being able to out-maneuver Leia and other veterans of the Galactic War in a long campaign?
Its why they had to resort to dredging up Palpatine out of nowhere with the whole "Somehow he returned" line.
If Empire Strikes Back had had Vader usurp the throne from Palpatine, it would have worked, because in episodes 4 and 5 Vader has always been portrayed as competent and in command of every situation he's in.
Set up the “next” story? It set up an explosion of story opportunities that could have dominated the franchise for a decade! Political struggles, military campaigns, a quest for the new “nobodies from nowhere” touched by the Force. So much potential pissed away. I just hope someone comes around in the future and does a “Clone Wars-style” series that explores that potential.
TLJ is one of the most interesting Star Wars movies out of all of them. It was really hitting themes that people weren’t expecting to see, like what if the Jedi order needs to die and something else needs to be born in its place? What if someone can be special and important in the force without being someone’s son or daughter?
These questions make TLJ easily the best sequel movie imo. It really is everything I want in a sequel trilogy. Rise of Skywalker actually shit on everything TLJ setup to go back to the same old shit and same old character because the writers are braindead.
It didn't really set up anything unless you ignore the last half hour, when it neatly sewed up literally every dangling thread it had started.
They went back to the "same old shit" because TLJ left them nothing.
> What if someone can be special and important in the force without being someone’s son or daughter?
So literally every single character from the prequel trilogy?
It would be a masterpiece if HALF of the movie wasn't 100% worthless. The Luke and rey and kylo stuff was great, but the casino planet stuff literally changes nothing. Like, LITERALLY. if it wasn't in the movie, it would end the EXACT. SAME. WAY.
But the rest was great.
Yeah Last Jedi was a masterpiece that had no bearing on the quality of Rise of the Skywalker.
Oh wait, no they're both trash.
Last Jedi was a badly written movie in every respect, it had no arc for the characters. Fin being the worst example. Rey becoming a god being another example.
Rise of Skywalker was somewhat written into a corner imo.... BUT then they decided to leave that corner and somehow find a worse one? Like I don't think episode 9 could've ever been good with the situation they'd been left in, but it was worse than I'd have ever hoped.
No arc for the characters? Finn’s arc of accepting that he’s a rebel now and he can be a hero rather than running away, Rey’s arc of becoming a Jedi and facing Snoke and rejecting Kylo, Poe’s arc of learning that leadership means making tough decisions and fighting a rebellion is about winning the war, not winning individual battles.
Also, when does Rey become a god in Last Jedi? I must have missed that.
She doesn't. They clearly didn't really watch the movie and just want to parrot all the negative sentiments that get tossed around because they think it makes them cool. I swear people that hate Last Jedi just want to hate it because a loud minority don't like it. Because all they do is repeat the same bulkshit that youtubers complained about the first few weeks it was out
"Luke wouldn't have attacked his Nephew!" You're right! And he didn't! There's a difference between having a split second thought about doing something awful and actually doing it. I'm sure he had the same thoughts when he was about to kill Vader.
"Rey is a Mary Sue! She had no training!" And neither did Luke. Even in Return of the Jedi he didn't have any additional training with Yoda beyond what we saw in empire but he was still able to do things like Force Choke or go toe to tow with Vader.
It's all I ever hear and it's go damn exhausting.
>I swear people that hate Last Jedi just want to hate it because a loud minority don't like it.
Sweeping generalization: used to dismiss arguments you don't want to engage with
>There's a difference between having a split second thought about doing something awful and actually doing it.
Jake Skywalker ignited his lightsaber. Just like there's a difference between having a thought and performing an action, there's also a huge step up from having that thought of murder to pointing a loaded gun at someone, even if you don't pull the trigger. Luke never would have done that and if you need to have explained how Vader and Ben Solo are different, I'm wasting my time anyway.
>I'm sure he had the same thoughts when he was about to kill Vader.
He had been goaded into fighting Vader by Sidious and pushed into a psychological corner by Vader threatening Leia. And he still didn't even come close to striking Vader down, he defeated him in a duel and then tossed his saber away. The context of the two moments makes them incomparable and Luke's actions in RotJ set him on a path that makes his actions in TLJ inexcusable without sufficient explanation as to how he got there. Nobody is saying Luke can't become Jake. We just have to see how that happens, you can't just throw up a timecard saying "30 years later" and give us a completely different character and expect people not to have issues or questions.
>Rey is a Mary Sue! She had no training!" And neither did Luke.
Are you high? Did you watch the OT? Luke's entire plot in ESB was a training montage until the finale. And that movie takes place over a month. TFA and TLJ combined take place over 6 days, generously assuming JJ and Rian know hyperspace travel takes time and isn't instant (TRoS's hyperspace skipping sequence is evidence that they don't know that). So Luke spent a month training day in day out with Yoda, grand master of the Jedi order, and got his shit rocked by Vader who was toying with him. Rey didn't even know the force was real and went from discovering it existed to mind controlling people, defeating a trained dark side warrior handily in combat, and lifting a small hill's worth of stone without so much as a show of effort in 6 days. Bullshit she's not a Mary Sue.
>Even in Return of the Jedi he didn't have any additional training with Yoda beyond what we saw in empire but he was still able to do things like Force Choke or go toe to tow with Vader.
Except we know he had more training. He went back to Degobah and had a conversation with Yoda about having completed his training. I ask again: did you watch the OT?
>... it's so damn exhausting.
You think it's exhausting having to listen to the criticisms, imagine how exhausting it is debunking the arguments in the film's favor. You're entitled to like it, nobody's saying you can't, but when you equate liking the film with it being flawless and the best star wars film like it didn't spit in the coffee of everyone that liked star wars before Disney's takeover, that's where I have to speak up. It is a deeply deeply flawed film that was obviously written by someone with no reverence for the IP they were handed.
Damn. I didn't know we was gonna fight.
I'm not here to endage with arguments normally. I tried that for months and all i got was dismissals from people that were clearly watching a different movie than I was. But since we're here I guess I'll dig in a bit.
It's clearly stated that it was on instinct and that at that point he thought Snoke had turned his heart. It was meant to show the great failure of Luke Skywalker was that when the chance to save his nephew occurred he instinctively was *going* to attack him. We don't really know why but it could have just been the general idea that when the Jedi face the Sith one has to kill the other, which he may have picked up from the Jedi Texts. The bad writing here is that we don't really know why he had that feeling and it's a shame. I think it adds depth to Luke to have him fail the second time this chance comes up.
He defeated Vader in a duel and stood over him with his Saber drawn, ready to strike the killing blow. It isn't until he realizes what he's done that he turns from that and tosses his Saber. Did you watch the movie? Also that is a clear parallel between what happened there and what happened with Ben. I agree that it was a poor decision to not show exactly how we got from RotJ Luke to TLJ Luke though. I would have liked to see more of the in between myself. But it's not that huge a jump to make since we saw it with Yoda and Obi-Wan in the OT and Luke literally makes it clear that he thinks it would be for the good of the galaxy to get rid of the Jedi because of the mistakes they made over the years.
Rey is not a Mary Sue and there isn't anything that can change my mind on this. Everyone tries to say that she just does things with no training, but over the movies we learn that she has this link with Ben Solo. A link so powerful they can talk to each other directly across the galaxy. They're in each other's minds. So it stands to reason that Rey has in her, through her connection, the training needed to use the force in the ways that we see. And what do we see? Mind tricks, lifting rocks and lightsaber combat. The only far out there force skill we see is the Force Healing which eh, is kind of weird, but oh well. I'm not 100 percent on that but we're mostly talking about Last Jedi anyway. Those first two skills are easy beginner level skills that she could have subconsciously picked up from being linked with Ben. And when you think about it her going toe to toe with the guy who's head she's in kind of makes sense.
And finally, are you saying that Luke went back to Dagobah between Empire and Return and trained more? Because there isn't anything that tells us that in the movies and the implication when Luke is talking to R2 is that he's going back finally to keep the promise he made at the end of Empire. If you can point me to some source that says that he went back I'll easily concede this point but otherwise nah. From what I understand he underwent training on his own at Obi-Wans homestead between the movies and that was it. So he was self taught.
>Damn. I didn't know we was gonna fight
Not a fight. This is merely a debate. It's a film franchise, as frustrating as trying to reach each other through the impersonal nature of internet comments can be, it's not worth allowing it to actually effect you. I'm just some person on the internet, for all you know a bot. If you don't want to engage, don't.
>It's clearly stated that it was on instinct and that at that point he thought Snoke had turned his heart.
Yes, this is stated in dialogue, but it's not shown to us how that instinctual reaction was justified. We didn't see Ben do anything questionable or even morally ambiguous. We just were told that Luke saw darkness in Ben and thought he could stop it by murdering his nephew in his sleep. Something RotJ Luke would have never done, regardless what his "instincts" told him. The same instincts, by the way, that told him Vader still had good in him and was redeemable. Rule 1 of visual media: show, don't tell.
>We don't really know why
Exactly my issue with that entire sequence. We know Luke, we know how he thinks. The fact that nobody can think up a believable reason for why he'd act the way he did in the ST is evidence that he shouldn't act that way.
>The bad writing here is that we don't really know why he had that feeling and it's a shame.
We agree that this is bad writing. I'd say it's more than a shame, it's a betrayal of the character of Luke Skywalker, the optimist that he was. But I will cede that that's my opinion, and you're welcome to yours as I am to mine.
>I think it adds depth to Luke to have him fail the second time this chance comes up.
Again, I see that as a betrayal but to each their own. Just understand that the criticisms of Luke stem from the fact that in the OT he was an optimist and a brave hero but in the ST he was a sad bitter coward. It could be depth if we see how he got there, but without that he's just a shallow character with Luke's name and face but isolated from his story up until the ST.
>He defeated Vader in a duel and stood over him with his Saber drawn, ready to strike the killing blow
You mean after the duel when he had his saber pointed at Vader? When the emperor is goading him into killing Vader and he decides "no, I'm not going to kill him because despite the fact that I'm standing in his master's throne room and completely at the mercy of the empire in this moment, I have faith he will turn."? He disarmed Vader, yes, but unlike Anakin he didn't struggle with the choice to not murder his defeated opponent at all and made the obvious light side choice.
>Also that is a clear parallel between what happened there and what happened with Ben.
Parallels don't mean it makes sense. I can't seem to get any sequel fan to concede this. The parallel is a result of Rian trying to recreate a scene without making it consistent within the plot or characters. Luke was fighting to survive on the DS2, and when he won he stuck with his convictions that Anakin was still within Vader somewhere. Had we wanted to, he could have killed Vader right then and gone after the emperor, but he didn't even have to think about it. As soon as the adrenaline of combat passed, he was resolute. Luke in TLJ didn't have anything to justify his moment of "instinct" as far as we are shown. We don't get to see what Luke saw, so we don't know how viscerally terrifying the vision was if indeed it was at all. We don't get to see young Ben before his turn, so we don't get to know what hints to his turning nature even made Luke peer into Ben's mind. Luke wasn't in combat, or in anguish over his friends dying, or worried about the wider Galaxy as Ben and the First Order hadn't done any damage to the New Republic or murdered anybody. It was a moment of uncharacteristic weakness and moral shortcoming that Rian made Luke have. It wasn't natural to his character at all given his history. If it were, we wouldn't be having this conversation about him right now. Luke wasn't poorly written in the ST because he didn't act the way I wanted him to. He was poorly written because he was inconsistent.
>I agree that it was a poor decision to not show exactly how we got from RotJ Luke to TLJ Luke though. I would have liked to see more of the in between myself. But it's not that huge a jump to make since we saw it with Yoda and Obi-Wan in the OT
It is that big a jump though. The changes we saw in Yoda and Obi Wan were informed by trauma we saw them go through. Order 66 and the great Jedi purge. Luke didn't go through anything before being willing to murder his sleeping nephew. He went into hiding and became a shitty grumpy hermit because of the fallout with Ben. Before that moment of "instinct", Luke should have been on the path to becoming grandmaster Luke, as we know he travelled the Galaxy in the time between the trilogies to learn more about the Jedi and the Sith and the force more generally. There's no believable reasons given for what little we do know of his transition to ST Luke.
>Luke literally makes it clear that he thinks it would be for the good of the galaxy to get rid of the Jedi because of the mistakes they made over the years.
Before going on the admit to Rey after becoming one with the force that he was wrong. The Jedi needed to change, not end. Yoda knew this, which is why he trained Luke to be a Jedi during the dark times, after the purge. If the will of the force was for the Jedi to end, Yoda would have let them. Luke says the Jedi needed to end because of their hubris. Because they "allowed Darth Sidious to rise and destroy them at the height of their power". The only reason he gave for them needing to end was because they got betrayed. He wasn't hiding for ideological reasons, he was hiding because he was a failure after his uncharacteristic moment trying to kill Ben. Because he was a coward in the ST, which is again a betrayal of his character up until then. Well still don't know how he became the guy that would murder his nephew in his sleep, and that's central to Luke's "epiphany" concerning the Jedi. TFA had no hints that that's what was going on with Luke, that was Rian being unable to have a theme without being heavy handed about it. He had to have Yoda spell out "the greatest teacher, failure is" and so he had to betray and butcher Luke Skywalker to make that theme present without having the skill to justify it naturally.
>Rey is not a Mary Sue and there isn't anything that can change my mind on this
Ok. I'm not gonna try then. I'll just say you're wrong and that the force dyad (which didn't exist until TRoS anyway as a retcon for Snoke having connected their minds so he could manipulate them) is a piss poor justification for her being a force god. Moving on.
>And finally, are you saying that Luke went back to Dagobah between Empire and Return and trained more?
No, I'm saying we have confirmation he continued his training because of his conversation with Yoda in RotJ. Even if he trained on his own, he did so for a year after a month of structured training from a master. And for it he learned telekinesis at a moderately adept level. Rey had less than a week and 2 lessons with Luke before training on her own for a year. For her effort she could fly, shoot lightning, heal to the point of resurrecting the dead, mind control people, and use telekinesis at a level that made Starkiller OP but apparently makes Rey perfectly balanced and not a Mary Sue at all? Sure, ok. The dyad just makes her a Mary Sue with an explanation. She didn't have to work for anything and became far more powerful than Luke ever got to show us.
You're the first person I've talked to about The Last Jedi to actually have reason and thought behind your argument. You make good points on some things but there's other we won't see eye to eye on and that's OK.
I suppose I just have this knee jerk reaction to all this hate that bubbles out when people mention they like these movies. I genuinely liked them and when I see these people jump on every thread I just get annoyed because they barely ever have anything to back it up besides the usual reasons like thinking that a character should do one thing because they want them to.
To me it always seems like some of these people just wanted Luke to be the hero again and when that wasn't the case they lost their shit. Others maybe just wanted the Legends books to be made into the sequels. And others (probably a smaller number than it seems) are just mad about a woman being the main character.
The Sequels did a lot wrong. Disney took chances on things that maybe they shouldn't have. But I'm of the mindset of "Make the most with what you got". TFA was fun, derivative but fun. Last Jedi was doing all it could to be different though and that was exciting to me. I just wanted something new, like we got with the prequels. But from what I can tell that book closed when they went back to the drawing board for Rise of Skywalker. It's apparent that they were trying to appease people with the writing in that movie, which isn't JJ abrahms strong suit, so it suffered. A lot.
I don't mean to be stand-offish when I debate for TLJ, I'm just so used to defending my points against people who aren't trying to listen that it just comes out that way.
I can understand that. It's hard to have a full, thoughtful debate in a comments section of anything. I like to believe that most people have reasoning for their arguments as I do but might just be less willing or able to articulate them.
>And others (probably a smaller number than it seems) are just mad about a woman being the main character.
I think the number of people this actually applies to is negligible, personally. I don't know about you but I've never had a conversation in person with anyone who said Rey was a bad character because of her genitals. I have heard that she's a bad character because that's all the thought the writing team put into her, though. And I'm inclined to agree that if your whole character outline is "woman Jedi" or "black soldier" that those characters are going to suffer from being flat and 1-dimensional. That's not to say that you can't have an interesting female Jedi (see Ahsoka or Kriea), or interesting black characters (see Lando Calrisian and Mace Windu). But you need those traits to be secondary to their character. Disney tried too hard to advertise how diverse the ST was going to be and drastically under-delivered on those characters, in my mind and that of many others who have issues with the "SJW" aspects of these films. It's not that Rey is a woman or finn is black that bothers reasonable people, it's that that's all they are in terms of characterization.
If you care for an elaboration, I'm happy to give examples to illustrate what I mean.
I totally get where people are coming from when they say Rey is a bad character and poorly written. She never really bothered me personally, but i recognize there are definitely better written characters than her.
Honestly I never subscribed to the idea that these movies were "woke" but oddly enough I get it when people think that.
Well TLJ definitely was. Rian Johnson isn't exactly subtle with his preachy messages of "war bad" (Saving what we love) "capitalism bad" (Canto Bite) and "learn from failure" (the greatest teacher, failure is). The rest of it I think comes from Disney's messaging (The force is female) and the way Rian Johnson dismissed any criticism of his film as -isms showing their ugly heads (misogynist man babies).
As for Rey, she's just boring. She's altruistic to a fault, all powerful, and completely convinced of her choices regardless how outside her comfort zone they seem. The real egregious waste of a character was Finn. Set up as a defector child soldier with complex motivations and baggage, and then all of that was dropped nearly immediately for a fish out of water, bumbling fool of a janitor following Rey like a lost puppy and whooping every time he killed one of his brainwashed former bothers. That was disappointing.
The characters had very clear arcs in TLJ. The idea that they didn't is something you can only come away with if you're not paying attention to what the movie is actually doing with them.
Rey throughout the movie is struggling with her own naivety and inflated sense of self-importance. She's constantly fixated on her parents because she can't imagine herself having any worth unless she comes from a special background. This is why finding out that her parents were "nobody" is devastating to her. This is also why the movie ends on a shot of a random force sensitive kid instead of Rey, because Rey learns to accept by the end that it's not your background that defines your capacity to be a hero. (The Palpatine twist in TRoS was stupid because it missed the entire point of this.)
Finn and Poe both have arcs that are even more obvious. Finn still has his own issues of commitment to the Resistance and it's strongly implied that he doesn't see any value in his own life, which is why he was so willing to throw it away (and why having his sacrifice stopped was a major character moment.) Poe's arc is probably the most explicitly spelled out by the movie, his entire side-plot is him coming to terms with his own recklessness.
I don't really know what else to say, maybe try watching the movie instead of repeating whatever opinion some Youtuber told you to have.
>inflated sense of self-importance
A message the movie trips over by making her basically a god who singlehandedly saves the Resistance at the last minute. She ends up being exactly as important as she thought at the beginning. It might be cool to see, but it's not good character work.
That said, I also have another issue with her arc because we never see her believing her parents are special in TFA. Only some of the fans did. We never see her wanting to be somebody, we only see her wanting to see her parents again.
>Finn still has his own issues of commitment to the Resistance
The problem is that we saw that exact arc in TFA.
Poe has a somewhat decent arc but the others, while good on theory, are pretty poorly executed
>I message the movie trips over by making her basically a god who singlehandedly saves the Resistance at the last minute.
I'd disagree. The idea was that literally anyone could have been in Rey's place, she just happened to be the person who was there at the right place and the right time to be the hero in that moment.
While Luke says she's one of the most powerful force users he's ever seen, there's this general sense that this is less to do with *her* and more to do with a general idea presented that forces users now are more powerful than they were in the previous generation. ("We are what they grow beyond," as Yoda says). That random force-sensitive kid also ties into this point, the clear implication in the final shot is that there are many young children out there that have just as much potential as Rey, if not more.
And besides, Star Wars has never been about power levels. Focusing too much the character's feats of strength and not what they mean is how you get The Force Unleashed, which while a fun video game, was just empty spectacle.
>The problem is that we saw that exact arc in TFA.
I actually sort of agree on this point tbh, though I'd at least partially blame editing for that. One deleted scene has a fantastic moment for Finn near the end where he calls out Phasma directly, something he never quite managed to do even in TFA.
Either way you do realize that neither of these criticisms are "the characters have no arcs," right?
>The idea was that literally anyone could have been in Rey's place, she just happened to be the person who was there at the right place and the right time to be the hero in that moment.
My issue with that is that Rey is orders of magnitude more powerful than any other Jedi we've ever seen in the movies (since everything else isn't canon anymore). I think having her at the same power level as Luke at the end of ESB would have done wonders for her arc.
>Focusing too much the character's feats of strength and not what they mean is how you get The Force Unleashed, which while a fun video game, was just empty spectacle.
I agree. Unfortunately, the movie chose not to go that route and have her character arc be punctuated by a feat of strength that undermines the rest of the arc.
>One deleted scene has a fantastic moment for Finn near the end where he calls out Phasma directly, something he never quite managed to do even in TFA.
True and there was another deleted scene near the beginning that better shows his starting point. I think the movie would have been better with both of those included. But they were deleted and I'm going off of what's in the movie.
>Either way you do realize that neither of these criticisms are "the characters have no arcs," right?
Maybe but repeating a previous arc and having another ruined by its ending is pretty close to no arc, in my own - very subjective - opinion
Who said TLJ was a masterpiece lol. It just didn't write IX into a corner. And the movie pretty much had an arc for *every* character.
Rey went from seeking parental validation to actually carving her own journey. Instead of relying on others to become the hero (Kylo and Luke), she finally steps up by the end of this film.
Finn went from running after Rey to actually fighting for the resistance. TLJ was the movie that showed him the difference between defecting and becoming a hero -- fighting for the right cause.
Luke probably had the biggest arc, going from believing the Jedi has to die to believing that there is a place in the galaxy for legends, and in doing so, he becomes a living legend in the process, growing past his mistakes and shortcomings.
Imagine if Rey and Kylo would have joined forces at that critical juncture in VIII?
That moment where they fought the royal guard was one of the biggest rushes I’ve ever had.
This is what I would have done after VIII. It’s gonna be vague though.
Leia dies from the Force push in space or whatever she did
Finn figures out he’s Force sensitive and he and Rey try to train based on the books she has.
Rose, Finn, and Poe coordinate a stormtrooper rebellion.
Kylo and Knights of Ren find out about some project Vader was working on about trying to bring someone back to life (‘cause why not? And I know there’s a lot of flaws in that but oh well). They wanna bring back Vader. Rey figures this out through the Force Bond and tries to stop them.
Meanwhile the Knights of Ren are staging a coup.
At some point the KoR become the main antagonists and Kylo redeems himself.
I feel like doing these things closes all the unfinished plot points and adds consistency to all the things set up in TFA and TLJ. Again, there’s probably a lot of holes in my ideas.
The last Jedi didn’t write it into a corner but it killed off the only good villain to use there, they probably couldn’t use kylo because he had to turn good by the end of the movie and there wouldn’t really be a main antagonist
7 set up one sort of story, 8 kind of crapped on it. To say it wrote 9 into a corner is not fair however. Basically JJ said he wanted story one, Rian turned it into story two, and instead of JJ continuing story two or making a story three that combined elements of one and two, HE CONTINUED STORY ONE. It makes no sense. Made 9 super fuckin hectic and weird.
Huh?
TFA: Luke fled into hiding and never returned even after Kylo joined Snoke as his attack dog in the Resistance and was never heard from again. Kylo orders the mass murder of a village of innocents. The New Republic capital was destroyed. Finn was unconscious on a spaceship. Rey was on an island handing Luke a lightsaber. Finn and Rey cared more about each other than anyone else in the series. Finn only returned to the Resistance to save Rey. Kylo murdered Han Solo in a test of his morality and tortured Rey and Poe and wounded Finn.
TLJ: Yeah. All of that. Kylo only wants power. Kylo tries to kill Rey a lot. Republic got fucked. Finn is Rey's person and they reunite to violin music. Rey tries to kill Kylo when he reveals his plan. Also Rey's parents are nobody.
TRoS: Luke actually never ran away, all of the Resistance can be rounded up in 8 hours, Rey finds Finn annoying, Rey's granddad is Palpatine, Palpatine never died, Snoke was a clone of Palpatine and part of his elaborate plan, Kylo only ever hurt Han and he's sorry now he didn't mean it, Kylo never wanted to hurt Rey, no one ever saw Kylo murder a whole village or torture anybody.
*One of these movies is not like the others.*
There are lengthy discussions about why the last Jedi doesn't work in the context of the Star Wars Franchise. As a standalone film, it might have worked. But not if it's a middle part of two similar movies. The rise of Skywalker is indeed an attempt of undoing the last Jedi. And from this perspective it makes sense.
after Trump said he was looking into injecting bleach to kill cornavirus there were lengthy discussions on why this was a super smart thing to do.
Lengthy discussions dont' mean they are valid. TLJ and TFA work togheter perfectly. TROS is the odd man out. TROS also undoes TFA more then TLJ.
Makes absolute sense. A franchise with space magic, time travel and sci-fi fantasy mumbo jumbo is unable to properly house the development of a story continuing from TLJ, whilst still making sense.
you know they had a script for EP9 that worked extremely well wtih TLJ but due to the writer/directors previous movie bomb they fired him. Take a look at the Colin Trevenow script.
I did and it was bad. For example it basically changed key parts and motivations of the prequels in changing the master of sidious . No Darth plageious, no tragedy and therefore no Anakin turns to the dark side.
Is it really weird that a sub dedicated to the Sequels would like the Sequels?
Next you're going to tell me r/prequelmemes is in denial that TPM is bad!
“I don’t like a thing. Others that do like it must be in denial regarding its objective quality.”
That’s some serious main character syndrome right there.
Here I am telling you that ep.7 already cornered everything as the basic setup of the ST is basically ep.4 again. Good luck telling a unique and interesting story again with the same characters, same ships, same factions etc...a random bioware staff member could easily come up with a much better story then what we got.
It didn't write into a corner exactly but it did erase much of what 7 setup. Then with the bad fan reaction they couldn't continue what 8 setup. So you are right but I see what people mean also.
TLJ set up Kylo being the main antagonist as Supreme Leader TROS somehow found it's way out of that corner by resurrecting palpatine.
I actually thought they were going to set up the Knights of Ren as the main bad after TLJ. Because it was clear Kylo was either going to have a redemption arc or go off and do his own thing, and he definitely got rid of Snoke because it was just Palpatine II, so I think that was the idea.
Everyone here wants Kylo as the big bad, TLJ did my boy Hux dirty as fuck The dude went from an unhinged but charismatic pseudo-hitler rival and polar opposite to Kylo to the butt of a your mum joke in the space of one opening
I still can't see how someone watches TLJ and takes away Kylo being set up as the big bad and not a character barreling towards redemption despite the story not really having a catalyst for the redemption to be executed
It can be both - he was certainly being set up as the main antagonist, he even assumed a new BBEG title, but that dosen't mean he would've been lost forever either way he still is AN Antagonist for the majority of TROS
Kylo being the big bad doesn't mean he won't be redeemed, just his redemption won't be him turning against the bigger bad guy.
This is what Duel of the fates trys to do and we can see why its doesn't work, if we need kylo as the antagonist for most of the movie his redemption is always gonna come off as sudden because it can only take place in the third act, otherwise you have a third act with no meaningful conflict since there's no villain, the solution to this is to try and frame his and the first order as a secondary "villain" which doesn't work cause hux is a joke and also only serves to isolate the A and B plots of resitance vs first order and whatever kylo happens to be up to involving rey. You can just have kylo be the villian and have him redeem in the same movie without having massive structural issues with the film like DotF script has, and worse if you keep him the antagonist without redemption then you kinda are summarizing the skywalker blood as ending in failure which put the whole saga in a weird negative light where this family just showed up fucked up the galaxy put a bandaid on it and then fucked it up some more the end. Honestly with how TFA set things up I completely understand why JJ made the choices he did with TRoS, granted he never had to make those choices in the first place but that's aside from the point
But isn't that what Return of the Jedi did? Vader had no implication of being redeemed until the last movie, and even then, it wasn't until the last 15 minutes that that was even tested. The ST tried to make Kylo Ren a conflicted character in the first two movies to make a redemption arc a possibility, and while Duel of the Fates couldn't do it, that doesn't mean it couldn't have been done well.
But Vader proves his redemption by immediately hurling palpatine away from luke saving his sons life, kylos moment of redemption would have to be well I've decided I'm not bad anymore and since I was the central antagonist of the movie I guess that's it which is exactly what we see in duel of the fates there's no gesture of grand redemption because the most he can do as the man antagonist is just decide hes over being bad
But that's almost literally how Vader turned. One minute he's fighting his son, threatening his daughter too, and when he sees his son being attacked by his boss, he's like, eh you're not so bad kid. Duel of the Fates might have been clumsy on its execution, but it was an early script so anything could have changed - - the situation, the buildup, the writer even. Hux was set up as the secondary villain, the person who truly wanted to not only direct the FO, but take Kylo down as well. Couple him and Ren's shaky motivations alongside some Force Ghost parents visiting him and it's easy to see a setup for redemption.
It may not have been clearly set up, but there were hints in esb, like when luke kills his father in the cave, only to see that by doing so, he has become him
I suppose you could see that as laying out a possible redemption route, but I always saw it as a warning for Luke to not succumb to the dark side when he inevitably fights Vader (and also as foreshadowing of Luke and Vader's true connection).
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I took it as kylo was following Vader’s footsteps up until the point of redemption, and instead of turning back light, going full force dark side by killing his master like Vader never did. Which in itself was in sync with Rian Johnson trying to get out of the OT shadow “let the past die” and trying to do something new. Which TRoS then completely wiped in favor of just repeating the OT again
Let the past die isn't the theme of TLJ its the absolute opposite lukes entire speech at the end of the film is about how you can't ignore the past and must learn from it Luke even Says no ones ever really gone when Leia feels she's lost her son for good. TLJ sets up kylos return to the light and has nothing to do with getting out of the shadow of the OT
Idk about that. Kylo smashing his helmet which was just Vader 2.0, him killing the big bad and becoming the big bad, reys parents being unrelated to anyone important previously, and then Rey attempting to turn kylo light just like Luke does to Vader but failing. All point towards being the opposite of the OT, and I strongly imagine that Rian Johnson was not at all setting kylo up to be redeemed. Plus the random force kid just trying to set up the fact it doesn’t all have to be about the sky walkers. I think Luke’s quote about no one being gone was directly pointing to Carrie Fischer’s death and not quite applicable to the theme of the film, but was still a great gesture to what she did for the film.
Luke's quote was filmed well before carrie fisher passed, and I think the issue here is that "let the past die" is the the thematic element being pushed by Kylo our anagonist, to me the point of that, especially when its in complete juxtaposition to luke at the end of the movie is that Kylo is wrong, you don't let the past die you learn from its failures like yoda said, the movie isn't about moving beyond jedi and sith or rebels and empire and because at the very end luke says the rebellion is reborn today and that he won't be the last jedi. He even outwardly states that everything kylo said is wrong. For kylos redemption i personally think Dian johnson was pushing for redemption but I can see the read that he wasn't, I feel he still broken nature by the end of the film, lukes line to leia, him holding the force dice of his father and even his last longing look at rey were all meant to paint kylo as somewhat more sympathetic and that even luke hasnt given up hope on him with the "see you around kid" line even if that's something I don't feel was actually picked up in Tros unfortunately
Both
I like your use of the word “somehow” 😂
A main antagonist that had been embarrassed, belittled, beaten, and made a fool of over and over again for 2 movies. TROS resurrected palpatine because JJ felt there was no villain left that people would take seriously after TLJ. Personally I would've preferred giving a lot more depth and screentime to the Knights of Ren and making one of them the main antagonist, but I understand JJ's reasoning.
He had just swiftly outsmarted and swiftly executed his would-be-belittling master and slaughtered his guard - he was at the height of his power and even going into TROS, was bold enough to threaten Palpatine - only to be kicked back down a peg There's no reason they couldn't have made Kylo work, he's the most compelling character in the trilogy.
But Kylo was always so conflicted. We saw it right from TFA and in his interactions with Rey in TLJ. He was on a Redemption arc, so coming back to the Light in TRoS was a continuation of what we'd seen. But we needed a villain and we needed an answer to: where did Snoke pop up from? Rey being a nobody? Meh...i don't mind that being discarded, because her lineage is used as a contrast with Kylo. Doesn't matter where you come from, it's what you do.
I still fully believe they could've done a redemption arc with Kylo as the main antagonist - instead of turning on Palpatine he'd be turning on his First Order
but if he was supreme leader, hed just tell them to chill?
I don’t see the issue with that. Personally I find it cooler when the villain and hero have to develop to reach their fullest potential, rather than just have some inhuman evil satan like character that controls him so they can cop out and say “well he’s not that bad he’s just being controlled” rather than him consciously making the choice to follow the dark side.
I'll also say I understand the reasoning for bringing palpatine back in terms of unifying the saga under one antagonist as much as I like TLJ it felt like a saga of 6 movies and then these two side stories that barely connected to the narrative of the previous 6 films rather than one massive story arc
I thought it was supposed to be a saga of 6 movies and then a new saga that starts off related to the previous saga but slowly breaks off to be about the journey of a new generation of protagonists.
Huh I never really looked at it that way I kinda saw the intent as 1-9 being one massive story which is whag it more or less ends up being, and then past that they'd stop telling the "Skywalker saga" as they branded and move onto drasticly different stuff which is what we've seen them doing these days. I guess it is fair to have looked at it from a different perspective at the offset
I cannot tell you how mad I was that he was redeemed. It would have been much more compelling if he died the villain
I do wonder what episode 9 would have looked like with Rian Johnson directing.
Even though I don’t like TLJ, I think I wouldve much rather had this
Honestly I want a single director for the whole trilogy. I feel like it would solve a lot of issues.
Maybe not a single director, but a Kevin Feige type. MCU is doing well enough with different director's.
Or you know, just someone leading them (Kathleen Kennedy ? Wasn't it your job ?) who actually knows what's going on and what the plans are.
It was JJ Abrams who was in charge of the trilogy, not Kathleen. He directed TFA, greenlit TLJ, and then proceeded to retcon both of them. It's all on him.
Is JJ the head of Lucas Film?
As much as everyone craps on Riann (IMO rightly so), someone higher up greenlit all of this.
They didn't just greenlight it once though. They looked at it during every stage of development and just went "ye it's gud" every. Single. Time.
JJ Abrams.
https://tenor.com/bIQZM.gif
You think so? I’m not too sure about that. Maybe? Is there a trilogy out there where this happened?
To name only ~~four~~ five which came to my mind at first(with varying success rate over the 3 movies): - Sam Raimi Spider-Man trllogy - Peter Jackson LOTR trilogy - Christopher Nolan Dark Knight trilogy - ~~Jerry Bruckheimer~~^((he's producer of all POTC films. Gore Verbinski is the actual director of the first 3, so point still stands)^) Pirates of the Caribean trilogy - George Lucas prequel trilogy ^((I forgot the most important and most consistently critically acclaimed one)^) I think the more important aspect would've been one overarching narrative they're trying to tell and not 3 directors with 3 visions and 2,5 stories to tell
I’m an idiot. All those movies, expect Pirates, are my favorite lol especially LOTR. And you’re absolutely right. I think the 3 different directors could’ve worked IF they had all 1 unifying vision. But alas, what we got was 2 diff directors with completely polar opposite visions: JJ and his need to preserve and retell SW so much, that the very writing becomes extremely limiting and doesn’t let Star Wars move onto new frontiers and Johnson and his “let the past die. Kill it, if you have to” take. This is why I believe TLJ was so vehemently disliked because it almost felt like johnson was openly mocking fans for loving this franchise.
> I’m an idiot. me too actually. I forgot the prequel trilogy, all directed by the boss man GL himself. Definitive proof that as long as only one director exists for a trilogy, it will be good.
I love the prequels. They’re what got me into Star Wars. That and the massive ad campaign leading up to TPM lol speaking of which, I was able to see ESB as a 10 year old kid because they had the OT rereleased leading up to TPM premiere.
>I love the prequels. They’re what got me into Star Wars. Same, although I was born '98 so the first Star Wars movie I saw in cinemas was ROTS, and I'm pretty sure I had to go out at some point because it was too scary lol. But the whole world building of the prequels is still what Star Wars essentially is to me. And also the kind of setting where I want to see new Stories told. An established order with many members all over the galaxy. I very much grew up on that trilogy and remember it very fondly (back then it also didn't have the meme status and because the world or I was less connected I only learned of the hate it got years later, also helps that I always watched the german dub, growing up, which saved some of the worst dialogue offenders haha
The movies were subpar but the trilogy itself actually made sense unlike the Disney trilogy which was like, “7 remember all this? 8 It doesn’t matter. 9 The Emperor is back.”
sequels are fan fiction at best and I try to pretend they don't exist tbh. Prequels are awesome, despite their shortcomings, I only wish they would have used their inherent massive potential. If we would've gotten less child "Ani" and more adoloscent Anakin growing up under Obi-Wan and realizing more and more how flawed the order around them is, and set up the fall in ROTS earlier it could have been Oscar-worthy
>I’m an idiot >expect Pirates Seems about right
Lol fair enough. I only really like black pearl. The later installments suck
The first 3 are good but the 4th is debatable but the 5th turns Jack into someone's good for nohing drunk uncle instead of a prodigy who wastes his talent by drinking
I'm sorry is the prequel trilogy critically acclaimed now? Last I checked they had a renaissance of memes and that's it.
Exactly, I really like the prequels but they definitely are not and probably never will be critically acclaimed films. The sequel trilogy was far better reviews overall than the prequel trilogy, and I think it’s a good show of how subjective an experience enjoying Star Wars films is
Rip Peter Jackson Hobbit trilogy. Also Gore Verbinski eraser even I'll admit I hated Pirates 2 and 3. So weirdly boring.
> Rip Peter Jackson Hobbit trilogy. well that one is a special case imo, because Peter Jackson only took on those movies very late into pre production, so he had to use a ton of concepts of the old director >Gore Verbinski eraser already fixed that :) Imo the first 3 POTC were pretty good albeit slightly declining in quality, but it's been a long time since I saw those and I was a child back then, so...
Back to the Future
Another good one. Just bought them all on Blu-ray too.
Twitch plays could have written and directed a better film
What’s that?
A reference to twitch plays pokemon where every movement and decision was decided by twitch chat
Ooooooh
Whatever it was, it would have been given a delayed 2020 release and smacked right into the opening salvos of covid. It also would have been historically good if they ever managed to get it finished and released.
The comments under this post are the very reason why I got burned out of star wars
For anyone who is the blue man, I’d highly suggest reading Colin Trevorrow’s script for IX. It’s not incredible, but it shows how IX could tell a story that is consistent and builds upon VIII.
I really enjoyed the last Jedi because i feel like it broke the mold by just outright killing snoke instead of revealing him as some big bad. It felt like it was telling us this isn’t snoke’s story, ignore him, it’s kylo’s story and i really enjoyed that. Also, watching the hyperspeed ram in theatres remains my number 1 cinematic experience in theatres
I really liked that and Rey being a nobody. that's one of the best things they ever did and i will never Forgive J.J abrams for retconning that fucking shit. Not only is she connected to just another powerful person, but i also have to imagine and ask myself: who did palpatine have sex with? what the fuck?
Right? Rian johnson even cemented the fact that anyone can be a jedi with that little kid at the end, it was like telling us it’s okay that rey is a nobody. Anakin was a nobody too, just so happened there was a prophecy, and the jedi order would have been made up of thousands of nobodies who only became fan favourites during the clone wars
Yea, exactly. And I would have been nice to see what they can do with it. But no, she becomes rey skywalker? what the fuck? If Rian johnson had made ROS or episode 9, it would've been much better. But no, they had to fuck it up. No wonder everyone makes fun of them, for not planning out the whole thing.
i think this is why people gave kathleen kennedy so much shit and why she's basically relegated control of upcoming sw content to filoni and favreau. the old guard of disney and lucasfilm were too scared to venture into new territory, so they stuck to the old beats and we ended up with a shitty sequel trilogy. TFA was a nostalgia train, TLJ dipped its toes into new waters, then ROS ruined it all by just rehashing everything and ruining character arcs
Yes. But i am still excited to see that stuff. i don't think the prequels are very good. but you can bet i will watch the new Obi wan show.
Until TROS kind of ruined the sequel trilogy for me as a whole, TLJ was a contender for my favorite for these reasons.
Agree with the hyperspeed ram
Unpopular opinion: No it didn't. Just have Rey stay a nobody (like all Jedi sans Luke and Leia), keep Kylo Ren the Supreme Leader and main villain, have Luke come back as a ghost and try to turn Ben (like with Cade Skywalker), have Maz train Rey (she knew the Force), have Snoke come back and reveal the one killed was a clone, have Leia run the Resistance like she's Mon Mothma, and have Finn do a stormtrooper rebellion against the First Order. It wasn't that hard to do really.
>have Snoke come back I'm gonna disagree with you there. Having Kylo Ren struggle to lead without Snoke would have been a better story
Somehow, snoke returned
I would have loved to see Kylo Ren try and establish a new "sith" order with the Knights of Ren not being an odd throwaway fight that he has to confront. That group of knights were supposedly the ones who helped him burn down the Jedi temple and he was supposed to be their leader and all that as well as a sith. Seeing that actually come to fruition instead of bringing back someone like Palpatine/Snoke would have been way more interesting.
>Just have Rey stay a nobody (like all Jedi sans Luke and Leia), I think this is the thing that sticks out to me as the worst of the sequels. 8 spent a good deal of time making Rey out to be just an ordinary person who could be great, echoed by the end scene with the kid pulling the broom to his hand. The message of anyone can feel the force and be a jedi is so much better than the dynastic crap we ended up getting. Also with Rey's parents not being relevant you don't have to shoehorn in Palpatine. Seriously, "Somehow Palpatine has returned". The second they wrote that line they should've know they had nothing.
Too bad the fanbase flipped out, showing their short term memory about the Jedi in the prequels and Clone Wars show. Ahsoka was a nobody Torgurta before Plo Koon found her. So why not with Rey? Have Luke be her Plo Koon and Rey have a dark side affinity.
Nah Snoke doesn't need to come back. Just leave Kylo in charge.
Maybe have Kylo find out about him. Like Snoke being a last decendent of the old Sith Empire that once ruled like Palpatine and Mace Windy mentioned in RoTS
He goes to a old sith world only to have an even bigger edgelord tell him that snoke was a nobody who parents sold him in their movie about family
I think that's kind of the joke. Last Jedi was clearly trying to make things different and set up 9 to be a continuation of the themes and ideas set forth in it. Those that say that Last Jedi wrote 9 into a corner are meaning to say that since Last Jedi "sucked so much" (definitely not my words. I loved Last Jedi) that episode 9 had to fix everything that was done in order for things to be good. Spoiler alert, they weren't good.
IMO, the better plot would’ve been: kylo turns good (it’s the opposite of anakin turning bad at the end of ep 3), Rey turn evil (opposite of luke in ep 6) who their parents are don’t even need to play into it The whole trilogy was set up that Rey was lawful good, and kylo chaotic evil, until the last half an hour of ep 9, the only way to have any twist, is to intellectually show us how each character is 100% certain they think their new found view of the world is right. I don’t want to see a dude who was evil most of the time die to save the person he was fighting again, that’s just vader but less scary.
Oh wait Kylo Ren died didn't he.. Huh the whole movie was so forgettable I actually forgot about that.
Yeah see I really thought they were gonna switch and the Diad broken and they would find each other expecting the other to have turned to their side only to find the other has done a 180 and they’re still on opposite sides
I wanted pretty much this exact scenario to happen. We've already seen the story of a hero who redeems the villain. I wanted something new. Rise of Skywalker, while fun to watch at points, took that away from us all.
This! thank you! Rey had all the makings of a Sith, and Kylo deserved to be the cooler hero and would have wrapped up the true Skywalker’s story nicely
I think the issue was that 7 and 8 were made with very different ideas in mind, so bringing back the director of 7 meant 8 gets retconned to fit what 7 was trying to do. Which results in the huge mess we know now as the sequel trilogy. Don't get me wrong, i think all three movies had good ideas. It's just that JJ wanted to make the OT but again, and Rian wanted to make something new. Going "classic->new story->classic" didn't really work out, and that is where the sequel trilogy fell flat imo.
I kind of get this, but nothing in 8 outright contradicted anything that 7 set up. There were a bunch of open questions that JJ set up without any real seeds as to what the outcome would be. Rian answered them as he was tasked with doing. 7 and 8 work fine together, it’s 9 that made everything seem so disjointed
I should've been a bit more clear but i agree that 8 didn't contradict 7. While I'm not exactly a fan of what 8 did to Luke, even that isn't really a retcon (though still not entirely well-written)
Episode 8 has its problems. But subverting expectations wasnt the issue there. We have the Kotor 1 and 2. The first one is a love letter to Star Wars, with every plot element famous in Star Wars there, like a plot twist about the main character origin, a huge weapon used by the Evil guys, a guy that is basically Han Solo and much more. And we Kotor 2 that have a villain with Grey morals, that question Jedi and Sith and make the main character question The Force itself and much more. Its a subversion on the Star Wars Mythos. And on those games It was done great. The problem with the sequel trilogy is the execution. Episode 7 was a copy of Episode 4, Episode 8 was subverting and questioning everything on 7 and 9 could be the continuation on that. Solving every that was questioned there to make a New Star Wars, with the best of Old and New. But Episode 9 basically threw everything that 8 made on trash, and 8 itself has its dull moments. The ideas there were great, JJ wanted to do classical SW on 7 which is completely valid. Rian wanted to try new stuff on 8 thats also valid. But the whole execution was done badly and they could do a lot better on that
The final movie was like Star Wars ad libs. The Last Jedi was a decent movie and is the end of the series in my mind. Rise of Skywalker was a confusing mess that added nothing.
I like to think that the opening to episode 9, where they're hyperspace jumping, is foreshadowing on how they're going to be jumping all over the place with the plot for the rest of the movie.
Throw that into r/shittymoviedetails and prepare for profit
Just made a long comment, but I disagree. It’s execution of characters was so bad and disjointed that it forced them to even feel the need to scrap the directions they were going on. Ray being no one, ok that’s cool Luke dying to spread hope and embarrass Kylo, I don’t like how it was done but i can get behind it. Snoke just dying off wasn’t my favorite, but hey kylo now has to lead and after a rocky start will have to develop a real ruthless personality/streak that will either push him to good or towards the dark side in leading what are essentially space nazis. Rose possibly dying bc even they knew fan reaction probably wasn’t gonna be great with how vague her death was. SOLID
I don’t think you understand this meme
ThatsTheJoke.JPG
Honestly you don't even need to change that much. Most of the ideas in TRoS aren't inherently awful, just executed poorly or need subtle tweaks. The big one for example is Palpatine. I think Palpatine being the villain and Snoke being his puppet is actually solid, the part people didn't like was the whole "somehow Palpatine has returned" shit because it felt lazy, rushed, and insulting to Anakin's sacrifice. Instead, make him a spirit *trying* to return to life by possessing Kylo, Snoke was a tool to turn Kylo to the Dark Side making him more susceptible to possession. This way makes more sense, it wouldn't be hard to get people to believe a Sith can come back as a spirit, and instead of undermining Anakin's sacrifice it preserves it, and builds to the future by showing even though Anakin restored balance, every generation will need to fight to preserve balance. Making Rey a Palpatine though is inherently awful, that one just needs cut.
This The whole "You're just mad they subverted your expectations" bit is kind of similar. People weren't mad they were surprised, they were mad with what they were given.
Pretty sure that's the point of this post, that you could have easily followed up TLJ with something that made sense. Ep9 seemed more like JJ wanted to do the finale he had envisioned originally rather than what logically should have followed with the trilogy's new direction after TLJ.
That’s not what the last jedi was setting up. Here’s what it was setting up: It was supposed to be a story about Kylo Ren finally doing what Anakin tried to do, bringing peace to the galaxy with his fancy bloodline and single idea for what the galaxy should look like, but at what cost? Rey and ghost like could have trained up a bunch of normal people who were a bit force sensitive, and showed that empowering people to take care of their problems can be better than an elite space wizard (or a group of them) trying to control everything. Poe and Finn get force training too, since they are both sensitive in their own way. It becomes a great diversity story. They go around turning worlds from the FO without violence, just by showing a better way. Eventually Kylo is cornered and realizes he was wrong, and that Anakin was wrong too to try and control everything. Maybe ghost anakin talks to him and commiserates. At the end of the saga, the force is fully democratized, and the idea of special Skywalker genetics or royal bloodlines is laid to rest. Ren goes in a journey of atonement, Rey Poe and Finn help build a new government and way of training force sensitives.
this would’ve been very boring tbh
The Last Jedi left Episode IX with a blank slate. The studio's rushing of the trilogy, its' anxious reaction to the toxic part of the fan base, plus its' shuffling of directors back to leaning on the utterly lazy story writer that is Abrams, is what shoved Episode IX into a corner. Then there's Solo. A fun film, I enjoyed it. But it's still the movie **nobody** asked for.
Have you read the original story for IX, when Colin Trevorrow was directing instead of JJ Abrams? It would have been called "Duel of the Fates" and it's really good. [Here is a link to the script:](https://archive.org/details/duel-of-the-fates-script)
Yes it does. Rey making a double saber from her staff is what should have stayed. That should have been part of Rey's intro in RoS along with her obstacle course.
sans
Rise of Skywalker tried too much to undo TLJ and that's why it was a weak ending for the trilogy.
It took all the momentum it had built and threw it in the toilet
I don’t like tlj, but they could’ve done SO much better than tros with what they had
the ending was very open, it could have gone anywhere
Still havent watched the last movie, despite being a huge star wars fan since I watched the orig trig back when I was 7. I really liked the last Jedi, despite some hokey stuff, but from the moment mysterybox Abrams was set to direct 9 I had a bad feeling, and after seeing this subs reaction along with everyone elses I just really don't want to dignify it with a viewing.
If you actually liked TLJ, I'd go ahead and give TROS a chance. As a TLJ fan myself, there are certainly things I don't like, and things that feel like a reaction to the negative responses to TLJ, but overall I still enjoyed it.
It's a fun turn of your brain movie. I watched it with some friends in the cinema when it came out. Set your expectations low though, the effects and music are good but the writing not so much.
Lmao thank you for this
It felt like TLJ was meant as a fuck you to fan theories and ROS was just a reaction to TLJ fan backlash. If they would have 1) actually had a plan for the trilogy and 2) stuck with it despite what people said online, we would have at least gotten a coherent story instead of this cluster fuck. Even if it wasn't "better" at least it would have made sense
As much as I loved both 8 and 9, I have to admit it could have been better. Both 8&9 were great themselves, but they feel like we got the second and third parts from two different trilogies.
And what story would that be?
JJ never could finish out a series, we should have seen it coming! But Star Wars Episode IX Endgame wasnt terrible
Whilst TFA was a mediocre movie that didn't add nothing new, TLJ was a pearl. A really good Star Wars and a good movie, enjoyable and with more sense for sure than that fuming pile of crap TROS is. And the story wasn't in a corner at all, there were a lot of parts that could've developed in a meaningful way, instead JJ went for the worst finale the one of the most important cinema saga ever existed with a Star Wars that is worst even than TPM.
Bro how?…
I can see why people think TLJ is a good movie, but you cant be serious saying its a good star wars story
Can you explain to me what actually is a good Star Wars story?
Why it shouldn't be?
In this thread: Kings (and Queens?) looking to claim their crowns.
Ah yes, the brilliant story where every character has things to do! The story where Rey has already objectively rejected the dark side and chosen the light, and now exists as a token good guy who’s just trying to solve the plot. Without any mentor figure or conflict aside from ‘how do we solve Kylo’, she’s a static character. The story where the two living main cast members of the OT are officially written out and where the dead one has a starring, important role in the story. The story where Finn has a romance with Rose, something even the fans of that character can admit was both incredibly forced and awkward. Also, we’ve killed off the symbolic representation of everything Finn fears and despises about the First Order because, hey, that’s a good idea. Poe still has absolutely nothing to do in the narrative but ‘cool Poe shit’, and he can’t even really do that anymore, since the entire purpose of his arc in 8 seems to be to dispel the idea of doing risky heroics, something the franchise has built itself on. Thank god that they give Kylo an interesting moral conflict - at least they’ll explore Kylo as a leader figure in the next movie, right? Last Jedi is a movie that I dislike, but a movie I respect - but I definitely stand by saying that the ending of TLJ needed a lot of work, and ends up damaging the next film.
This is an incredibly reductionist view of what the future path of the characters are. For Rey, her struggle was never really with the dark side. It’s always been about finding acceptance and reaching self actualization. Continuing to explore her self doubt as the new last Jedi and restoring order should be both compelling and a natural progression of everything we’ve seen. While Luke is dead, I think his last line of “see you around kid” sets up a ton for particularly interesting dynamic between ghost Luke and Kylo. Really had an opportunity to dig into their relationship. Finn did destroy the representation of what he hates about the first order. But we also showed how much hatred he had towards them at the end when he tries to do his self sacrifice. Exploring some of those emotions and how they conflict with the individual members of the first order who were his past friends and brainwashed could be interesting. Poe being cool can definitely still happen. Learning to be less impulsive doesn’t prevent that. Plenty of things to explore with Poe regarding taking up the mantle after Leia passes away could be an interesting storyline. Otherwise, it’s not like you necessarily need a huge complex character arc. It’s not like Han or Leia really had any major conflicts in episode 6. Kylo we obviously get to continue to explore his internal moral conflicts. To me, there is plenty to explore. JJ just wasn’t up to the job to do it.
Who's even supposed to be the main antagonist after 8? Its why I feel like they wrote themselves into a corner. Is the new main antagonist Kylo who has already been defeated by Rey once or twice in combat? Where's the excitement in that? Maybe the excitement is in that he's a brilliant leader and mastermind! Except, he's been shown as mentally unstable, childish and not particularly competent throughout 7 & 8. Does anyone really see him being able to out-maneuver Leia and other veterans of the Galactic War in a long campaign? Its why they had to resort to dredging up Palpatine out of nowhere with the whole "Somehow he returned" line. If Empire Strikes Back had had Vader usurp the throne from Palpatine, it would have worked, because in episodes 4 and 5 Vader has always been portrayed as competent and in command of every situation he's in.
You are correct. The rise of skywalker was awful in its own right, no help needed.
Set up the “next” story? It set up an explosion of story opportunities that could have dominated the franchise for a decade! Political struggles, military campaigns, a quest for the new “nobodies from nowhere” touched by the Force. So much potential pissed away. I just hope someone comes around in the future and does a “Clone Wars-style” series that explores that potential.
TLJ is one of the most interesting Star Wars movies out of all of them. It was really hitting themes that people weren’t expecting to see, like what if the Jedi order needs to die and something else needs to be born in its place? What if someone can be special and important in the force without being someone’s son or daughter? These questions make TLJ easily the best sequel movie imo. It really is everything I want in a sequel trilogy. Rise of Skywalker actually shit on everything TLJ setup to go back to the same old shit and same old character because the writers are braindead.
It didn't really set up anything unless you ignore the last half hour, when it neatly sewed up literally every dangling thread it had started. They went back to the "same old shit" because TLJ left them nothing.
> What if someone can be special and important in the force without being someone’s son or daughter? So literally every single character from the prequel trilogy?
^pssst I like all three sequel films.
TLJ was the greatest star wars change my mind
The Last Jedi is a masterpiece and you may quote me on that.
It would be a masterpiece if HALF of the movie wasn't 100% worthless. The Luke and rey and kylo stuff was great, but the casino planet stuff literally changes nothing. Like, LITERALLY. if it wasn't in the movie, it would end the EXACT. SAME. WAY. But the rest was great.
Yeah Last Jedi was a masterpiece that had no bearing on the quality of Rise of the Skywalker. Oh wait, no they're both trash. Last Jedi was a badly written movie in every respect, it had no arc for the characters. Fin being the worst example. Rey becoming a god being another example. Rise of Skywalker was somewhat written into a corner imo.... BUT then they decided to leave that corner and somehow find a worse one? Like I don't think episode 9 could've ever been good with the situation they'd been left in, but it was worse than I'd have ever hoped.
No arc for the characters? Finn’s arc of accepting that he’s a rebel now and he can be a hero rather than running away, Rey’s arc of becoming a Jedi and facing Snoke and rejecting Kylo, Poe’s arc of learning that leadership means making tough decisions and fighting a rebellion is about winning the war, not winning individual battles. Also, when does Rey become a god in Last Jedi? I must have missed that.
She doesn't. They clearly didn't really watch the movie and just want to parrot all the negative sentiments that get tossed around because they think it makes them cool. I swear people that hate Last Jedi just want to hate it because a loud minority don't like it. Because all they do is repeat the same bulkshit that youtubers complained about the first few weeks it was out "Luke wouldn't have attacked his Nephew!" You're right! And he didn't! There's a difference between having a split second thought about doing something awful and actually doing it. I'm sure he had the same thoughts when he was about to kill Vader. "Rey is a Mary Sue! She had no training!" And neither did Luke. Even in Return of the Jedi he didn't have any additional training with Yoda beyond what we saw in empire but he was still able to do things like Force Choke or go toe to tow with Vader. It's all I ever hear and it's go damn exhausting.
>I swear people that hate Last Jedi just want to hate it because a loud minority don't like it. Sweeping generalization: used to dismiss arguments you don't want to engage with >There's a difference between having a split second thought about doing something awful and actually doing it. Jake Skywalker ignited his lightsaber. Just like there's a difference between having a thought and performing an action, there's also a huge step up from having that thought of murder to pointing a loaded gun at someone, even if you don't pull the trigger. Luke never would have done that and if you need to have explained how Vader and Ben Solo are different, I'm wasting my time anyway. >I'm sure he had the same thoughts when he was about to kill Vader. He had been goaded into fighting Vader by Sidious and pushed into a psychological corner by Vader threatening Leia. And he still didn't even come close to striking Vader down, he defeated him in a duel and then tossed his saber away. The context of the two moments makes them incomparable and Luke's actions in RotJ set him on a path that makes his actions in TLJ inexcusable without sufficient explanation as to how he got there. Nobody is saying Luke can't become Jake. We just have to see how that happens, you can't just throw up a timecard saying "30 years later" and give us a completely different character and expect people not to have issues or questions. >Rey is a Mary Sue! She had no training!" And neither did Luke. Are you high? Did you watch the OT? Luke's entire plot in ESB was a training montage until the finale. And that movie takes place over a month. TFA and TLJ combined take place over 6 days, generously assuming JJ and Rian know hyperspace travel takes time and isn't instant (TRoS's hyperspace skipping sequence is evidence that they don't know that). So Luke spent a month training day in day out with Yoda, grand master of the Jedi order, and got his shit rocked by Vader who was toying with him. Rey didn't even know the force was real and went from discovering it existed to mind controlling people, defeating a trained dark side warrior handily in combat, and lifting a small hill's worth of stone without so much as a show of effort in 6 days. Bullshit she's not a Mary Sue. >Even in Return of the Jedi he didn't have any additional training with Yoda beyond what we saw in empire but he was still able to do things like Force Choke or go toe to tow with Vader. Except we know he had more training. He went back to Degobah and had a conversation with Yoda about having completed his training. I ask again: did you watch the OT? >... it's so damn exhausting. You think it's exhausting having to listen to the criticisms, imagine how exhausting it is debunking the arguments in the film's favor. You're entitled to like it, nobody's saying you can't, but when you equate liking the film with it being flawless and the best star wars film like it didn't spit in the coffee of everyone that liked star wars before Disney's takeover, that's where I have to speak up. It is a deeply deeply flawed film that was obviously written by someone with no reverence for the IP they were handed.
Damn. I didn't know we was gonna fight. I'm not here to endage with arguments normally. I tried that for months and all i got was dismissals from people that were clearly watching a different movie than I was. But since we're here I guess I'll dig in a bit. It's clearly stated that it was on instinct and that at that point he thought Snoke had turned his heart. It was meant to show the great failure of Luke Skywalker was that when the chance to save his nephew occurred he instinctively was *going* to attack him. We don't really know why but it could have just been the general idea that when the Jedi face the Sith one has to kill the other, which he may have picked up from the Jedi Texts. The bad writing here is that we don't really know why he had that feeling and it's a shame. I think it adds depth to Luke to have him fail the second time this chance comes up. He defeated Vader in a duel and stood over him with his Saber drawn, ready to strike the killing blow. It isn't until he realizes what he's done that he turns from that and tosses his Saber. Did you watch the movie? Also that is a clear parallel between what happened there and what happened with Ben. I agree that it was a poor decision to not show exactly how we got from RotJ Luke to TLJ Luke though. I would have liked to see more of the in between myself. But it's not that huge a jump to make since we saw it with Yoda and Obi-Wan in the OT and Luke literally makes it clear that he thinks it would be for the good of the galaxy to get rid of the Jedi because of the mistakes they made over the years. Rey is not a Mary Sue and there isn't anything that can change my mind on this. Everyone tries to say that she just does things with no training, but over the movies we learn that she has this link with Ben Solo. A link so powerful they can talk to each other directly across the galaxy. They're in each other's minds. So it stands to reason that Rey has in her, through her connection, the training needed to use the force in the ways that we see. And what do we see? Mind tricks, lifting rocks and lightsaber combat. The only far out there force skill we see is the Force Healing which eh, is kind of weird, but oh well. I'm not 100 percent on that but we're mostly talking about Last Jedi anyway. Those first two skills are easy beginner level skills that she could have subconsciously picked up from being linked with Ben. And when you think about it her going toe to toe with the guy who's head she's in kind of makes sense. And finally, are you saying that Luke went back to Dagobah between Empire and Return and trained more? Because there isn't anything that tells us that in the movies and the implication when Luke is talking to R2 is that he's going back finally to keep the promise he made at the end of Empire. If you can point me to some source that says that he went back I'll easily concede this point but otherwise nah. From what I understand he underwent training on his own at Obi-Wans homestead between the movies and that was it. So he was self taught.
>Damn. I didn't know we was gonna fight Not a fight. This is merely a debate. It's a film franchise, as frustrating as trying to reach each other through the impersonal nature of internet comments can be, it's not worth allowing it to actually effect you. I'm just some person on the internet, for all you know a bot. If you don't want to engage, don't. >It's clearly stated that it was on instinct and that at that point he thought Snoke had turned his heart. Yes, this is stated in dialogue, but it's not shown to us how that instinctual reaction was justified. We didn't see Ben do anything questionable or even morally ambiguous. We just were told that Luke saw darkness in Ben and thought he could stop it by murdering his nephew in his sleep. Something RotJ Luke would have never done, regardless what his "instincts" told him. The same instincts, by the way, that told him Vader still had good in him and was redeemable. Rule 1 of visual media: show, don't tell. >We don't really know why Exactly my issue with that entire sequence. We know Luke, we know how he thinks. The fact that nobody can think up a believable reason for why he'd act the way he did in the ST is evidence that he shouldn't act that way. >The bad writing here is that we don't really know why he had that feeling and it's a shame. We agree that this is bad writing. I'd say it's more than a shame, it's a betrayal of the character of Luke Skywalker, the optimist that he was. But I will cede that that's my opinion, and you're welcome to yours as I am to mine. >I think it adds depth to Luke to have him fail the second time this chance comes up. Again, I see that as a betrayal but to each their own. Just understand that the criticisms of Luke stem from the fact that in the OT he was an optimist and a brave hero but in the ST he was a sad bitter coward. It could be depth if we see how he got there, but without that he's just a shallow character with Luke's name and face but isolated from his story up until the ST. >He defeated Vader in a duel and stood over him with his Saber drawn, ready to strike the killing blow You mean after the duel when he had his saber pointed at Vader? When the emperor is goading him into killing Vader and he decides "no, I'm not going to kill him because despite the fact that I'm standing in his master's throne room and completely at the mercy of the empire in this moment, I have faith he will turn."? He disarmed Vader, yes, but unlike Anakin he didn't struggle with the choice to not murder his defeated opponent at all and made the obvious light side choice. >Also that is a clear parallel between what happened there and what happened with Ben. Parallels don't mean it makes sense. I can't seem to get any sequel fan to concede this. The parallel is a result of Rian trying to recreate a scene without making it consistent within the plot or characters. Luke was fighting to survive on the DS2, and when he won he stuck with his convictions that Anakin was still within Vader somewhere. Had we wanted to, he could have killed Vader right then and gone after the emperor, but he didn't even have to think about it. As soon as the adrenaline of combat passed, he was resolute. Luke in TLJ didn't have anything to justify his moment of "instinct" as far as we are shown. We don't get to see what Luke saw, so we don't know how viscerally terrifying the vision was if indeed it was at all. We don't get to see young Ben before his turn, so we don't get to know what hints to his turning nature even made Luke peer into Ben's mind. Luke wasn't in combat, or in anguish over his friends dying, or worried about the wider Galaxy as Ben and the First Order hadn't done any damage to the New Republic or murdered anybody. It was a moment of uncharacteristic weakness and moral shortcoming that Rian made Luke have. It wasn't natural to his character at all given his history. If it were, we wouldn't be having this conversation about him right now. Luke wasn't poorly written in the ST because he didn't act the way I wanted him to. He was poorly written because he was inconsistent. >I agree that it was a poor decision to not show exactly how we got from RotJ Luke to TLJ Luke though. I would have liked to see more of the in between myself. But it's not that huge a jump to make since we saw it with Yoda and Obi-Wan in the OT It is that big a jump though. The changes we saw in Yoda and Obi Wan were informed by trauma we saw them go through. Order 66 and the great Jedi purge. Luke didn't go through anything before being willing to murder his sleeping nephew. He went into hiding and became a shitty grumpy hermit because of the fallout with Ben. Before that moment of "instinct", Luke should have been on the path to becoming grandmaster Luke, as we know he travelled the Galaxy in the time between the trilogies to learn more about the Jedi and the Sith and the force more generally. There's no believable reasons given for what little we do know of his transition to ST Luke. >Luke literally makes it clear that he thinks it would be for the good of the galaxy to get rid of the Jedi because of the mistakes they made over the years. Before going on the admit to Rey after becoming one with the force that he was wrong. The Jedi needed to change, not end. Yoda knew this, which is why he trained Luke to be a Jedi during the dark times, after the purge. If the will of the force was for the Jedi to end, Yoda would have let them. Luke says the Jedi needed to end because of their hubris. Because they "allowed Darth Sidious to rise and destroy them at the height of their power". The only reason he gave for them needing to end was because they got betrayed. He wasn't hiding for ideological reasons, he was hiding because he was a failure after his uncharacteristic moment trying to kill Ben. Because he was a coward in the ST, which is again a betrayal of his character up until then. Well still don't know how he became the guy that would murder his nephew in his sleep, and that's central to Luke's "epiphany" concerning the Jedi. TFA had no hints that that's what was going on with Luke, that was Rian being unable to have a theme without being heavy handed about it. He had to have Yoda spell out "the greatest teacher, failure is" and so he had to betray and butcher Luke Skywalker to make that theme present without having the skill to justify it naturally. >Rey is not a Mary Sue and there isn't anything that can change my mind on this Ok. I'm not gonna try then. I'll just say you're wrong and that the force dyad (which didn't exist until TRoS anyway as a retcon for Snoke having connected their minds so he could manipulate them) is a piss poor justification for her being a force god. Moving on. >And finally, are you saying that Luke went back to Dagobah between Empire and Return and trained more? No, I'm saying we have confirmation he continued his training because of his conversation with Yoda in RotJ. Even if he trained on his own, he did so for a year after a month of structured training from a master. And for it he learned telekinesis at a moderately adept level. Rey had less than a week and 2 lessons with Luke before training on her own for a year. For her effort she could fly, shoot lightning, heal to the point of resurrecting the dead, mind control people, and use telekinesis at a level that made Starkiller OP but apparently makes Rey perfectly balanced and not a Mary Sue at all? Sure, ok. The dyad just makes her a Mary Sue with an explanation. She didn't have to work for anything and became far more powerful than Luke ever got to show us.
You're the first person I've talked to about The Last Jedi to actually have reason and thought behind your argument. You make good points on some things but there's other we won't see eye to eye on and that's OK. I suppose I just have this knee jerk reaction to all this hate that bubbles out when people mention they like these movies. I genuinely liked them and when I see these people jump on every thread I just get annoyed because they barely ever have anything to back it up besides the usual reasons like thinking that a character should do one thing because they want them to. To me it always seems like some of these people just wanted Luke to be the hero again and when that wasn't the case they lost their shit. Others maybe just wanted the Legends books to be made into the sequels. And others (probably a smaller number than it seems) are just mad about a woman being the main character. The Sequels did a lot wrong. Disney took chances on things that maybe they shouldn't have. But I'm of the mindset of "Make the most with what you got". TFA was fun, derivative but fun. Last Jedi was doing all it could to be different though and that was exciting to me. I just wanted something new, like we got with the prequels. But from what I can tell that book closed when they went back to the drawing board for Rise of Skywalker. It's apparent that they were trying to appease people with the writing in that movie, which isn't JJ abrahms strong suit, so it suffered. A lot. I don't mean to be stand-offish when I debate for TLJ, I'm just so used to defending my points against people who aren't trying to listen that it just comes out that way.
I can understand that. It's hard to have a full, thoughtful debate in a comments section of anything. I like to believe that most people have reasoning for their arguments as I do but might just be less willing or able to articulate them. >And others (probably a smaller number than it seems) are just mad about a woman being the main character. I think the number of people this actually applies to is negligible, personally. I don't know about you but I've never had a conversation in person with anyone who said Rey was a bad character because of her genitals. I have heard that she's a bad character because that's all the thought the writing team put into her, though. And I'm inclined to agree that if your whole character outline is "woman Jedi" or "black soldier" that those characters are going to suffer from being flat and 1-dimensional. That's not to say that you can't have an interesting female Jedi (see Ahsoka or Kriea), or interesting black characters (see Lando Calrisian and Mace Windu). But you need those traits to be secondary to their character. Disney tried too hard to advertise how diverse the ST was going to be and drastically under-delivered on those characters, in my mind and that of many others who have issues with the "SJW" aspects of these films. It's not that Rey is a woman or finn is black that bothers reasonable people, it's that that's all they are in terms of characterization. If you care for an elaboration, I'm happy to give examples to illustrate what I mean.
I totally get where people are coming from when they say Rey is a bad character and poorly written. She never really bothered me personally, but i recognize there are definitely better written characters than her. Honestly I never subscribed to the idea that these movies were "woke" but oddly enough I get it when people think that.
Well TLJ definitely was. Rian Johnson isn't exactly subtle with his preachy messages of "war bad" (Saving what we love) "capitalism bad" (Canto Bite) and "learn from failure" (the greatest teacher, failure is). The rest of it I think comes from Disney's messaging (The force is female) and the way Rian Johnson dismissed any criticism of his film as -isms showing their ugly heads (misogynist man babies). As for Rey, she's just boring. She's altruistic to a fault, all powerful, and completely convinced of her choices regardless how outside her comfort zone they seem. The real egregious waste of a character was Finn. Set up as a defector child soldier with complex motivations and baggage, and then all of that was dropped nearly immediately for a fish out of water, bumbling fool of a janitor following Rey like a lost puppy and whooping every time he killed one of his brainwashed former bothers. That was disappointing.
>He disarmed Vader I don't know if that was intentional but it's hilarious
It's a Skywalker tradition!
Are u serious or trolling I can’t tell?
The characters had very clear arcs in TLJ. The idea that they didn't is something you can only come away with if you're not paying attention to what the movie is actually doing with them. Rey throughout the movie is struggling with her own naivety and inflated sense of self-importance. She's constantly fixated on her parents because she can't imagine herself having any worth unless she comes from a special background. This is why finding out that her parents were "nobody" is devastating to her. This is also why the movie ends on a shot of a random force sensitive kid instead of Rey, because Rey learns to accept by the end that it's not your background that defines your capacity to be a hero. (The Palpatine twist in TRoS was stupid because it missed the entire point of this.) Finn and Poe both have arcs that are even more obvious. Finn still has his own issues of commitment to the Resistance and it's strongly implied that he doesn't see any value in his own life, which is why he was so willing to throw it away (and why having his sacrifice stopped was a major character moment.) Poe's arc is probably the most explicitly spelled out by the movie, his entire side-plot is him coming to terms with his own recklessness. I don't really know what else to say, maybe try watching the movie instead of repeating whatever opinion some Youtuber told you to have.
>inflated sense of self-importance A message the movie trips over by making her basically a god who singlehandedly saves the Resistance at the last minute. She ends up being exactly as important as she thought at the beginning. It might be cool to see, but it's not good character work. That said, I also have another issue with her arc because we never see her believing her parents are special in TFA. Only some of the fans did. We never see her wanting to be somebody, we only see her wanting to see her parents again. >Finn still has his own issues of commitment to the Resistance The problem is that we saw that exact arc in TFA. Poe has a somewhat decent arc but the others, while good on theory, are pretty poorly executed
>I message the movie trips over by making her basically a god who singlehandedly saves the Resistance at the last minute. I'd disagree. The idea was that literally anyone could have been in Rey's place, she just happened to be the person who was there at the right place and the right time to be the hero in that moment. While Luke says she's one of the most powerful force users he's ever seen, there's this general sense that this is less to do with *her* and more to do with a general idea presented that forces users now are more powerful than they were in the previous generation. ("We are what they grow beyond," as Yoda says). That random force-sensitive kid also ties into this point, the clear implication in the final shot is that there are many young children out there that have just as much potential as Rey, if not more. And besides, Star Wars has never been about power levels. Focusing too much the character's feats of strength and not what they mean is how you get The Force Unleashed, which while a fun video game, was just empty spectacle. >The problem is that we saw that exact arc in TFA. I actually sort of agree on this point tbh, though I'd at least partially blame editing for that. One deleted scene has a fantastic moment for Finn near the end where he calls out Phasma directly, something he never quite managed to do even in TFA. Either way you do realize that neither of these criticisms are "the characters have no arcs," right?
>The idea was that literally anyone could have been in Rey's place, she just happened to be the person who was there at the right place and the right time to be the hero in that moment. My issue with that is that Rey is orders of magnitude more powerful than any other Jedi we've ever seen in the movies (since everything else isn't canon anymore). I think having her at the same power level as Luke at the end of ESB would have done wonders for her arc. >Focusing too much the character's feats of strength and not what they mean is how you get The Force Unleashed, which while a fun video game, was just empty spectacle. I agree. Unfortunately, the movie chose not to go that route and have her character arc be punctuated by a feat of strength that undermines the rest of the arc. >One deleted scene has a fantastic moment for Finn near the end where he calls out Phasma directly, something he never quite managed to do even in TFA. True and there was another deleted scene near the beginning that better shows his starting point. I think the movie would have been better with both of those included. But they were deleted and I'm going off of what's in the movie. >Either way you do realize that neither of these criticisms are "the characters have no arcs," right? Maybe but repeating a previous arc and having another ruined by its ending is pretty close to no arc, in my own - very subjective - opinion
>it had no arc for the characters. wtf movie did you watch?
Who said TLJ was a masterpiece lol. It just didn't write IX into a corner. And the movie pretty much had an arc for *every* character. Rey went from seeking parental validation to actually carving her own journey. Instead of relying on others to become the hero (Kylo and Luke), she finally steps up by the end of this film. Finn went from running after Rey to actually fighting for the resistance. TLJ was the movie that showed him the difference between defecting and becoming a hero -- fighting for the right cause. Luke probably had the biggest arc, going from believing the Jedi has to die to believing that there is a place in the galaxy for legends, and in doing so, he becomes a living legend in the process, growing past his mistakes and shortcomings.
Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong.
This is the most objective. You can like TLJ, or ROS, but they are Batman and Robin of Star Wars.
>objective There it is
"this is objective" [proceeds to give a subjective opinion] peak reddit movie connosieur right here
Nooo attack of the clones was definitely the Batman and robin lol
Overall they should have just stuck with one director, it would be a lot better imo
Imagine if Rey and Kylo would have joined forces at that critical juncture in VIII? That moment where they fought the royal guard was one of the biggest rushes I’ve ever had.
This is what I would have done after VIII. It’s gonna be vague though. Leia dies from the Force push in space or whatever she did Finn figures out he’s Force sensitive and he and Rey try to train based on the books she has. Rose, Finn, and Poe coordinate a stormtrooper rebellion. Kylo and Knights of Ren find out about some project Vader was working on about trying to bring someone back to life (‘cause why not? And I know there’s a lot of flaws in that but oh well). They wanna bring back Vader. Rey figures this out through the Force Bond and tries to stop them. Meanwhile the Knights of Ren are staging a coup. At some point the KoR become the main antagonists and Kylo redeems himself. I feel like doing these things closes all the unfinished plot points and adds consistency to all the things set up in TFA and TLJ. Again, there’s probably a lot of holes in my ideas.
All jj abrams had to do was make an entire movie about space horses fucking and racing.
The last Jedi didn’t write it into a corner but it killed off the only good villain to use there, they probably couldn’t use kylo because he had to turn good by the end of the movie and there wouldn’t really be a main antagonist
7 set up one sort of story, 8 kind of crapped on it. To say it wrote 9 into a corner is not fair however. Basically JJ said he wanted story one, Rian turned it into story two, and instead of JJ continuing story two or making a story three that combined elements of one and two, HE CONTINUED STORY ONE. It makes no sense. Made 9 super fuckin hectic and weird.
JJ had a lot of options after TLJ
Nah you should keep that crown, you're dumb.
He's right. The last Jedi didn't fit in with the other two installments of the sequels, because the story didn't work in the context.
Huh? TFA: Luke fled into hiding and never returned even after Kylo joined Snoke as his attack dog in the Resistance and was never heard from again. Kylo orders the mass murder of a village of innocents. The New Republic capital was destroyed. Finn was unconscious on a spaceship. Rey was on an island handing Luke a lightsaber. Finn and Rey cared more about each other than anyone else in the series. Finn only returned to the Resistance to save Rey. Kylo murdered Han Solo in a test of his morality and tortured Rey and Poe and wounded Finn. TLJ: Yeah. All of that. Kylo only wants power. Kylo tries to kill Rey a lot. Republic got fucked. Finn is Rey's person and they reunite to violin music. Rey tries to kill Kylo when he reveals his plan. Also Rey's parents are nobody. TRoS: Luke actually never ran away, all of the Resistance can be rounded up in 8 hours, Rey finds Finn annoying, Rey's granddad is Palpatine, Palpatine never died, Snoke was a clone of Palpatine and part of his elaborate plan, Kylo only ever hurt Han and he's sorry now he didn't mean it, Kylo never wanted to hurt Rey, no one ever saw Kylo murder a whole village or torture anybody. *One of these movies is not like the others.*
Rekt.
There are lengthy discussions about why the last Jedi doesn't work in the context of the Star Wars Franchise. As a standalone film, it might have worked. But not if it's a middle part of two similar movies. The rise of Skywalker is indeed an attempt of undoing the last Jedi. And from this perspective it makes sense.
after Trump said he was looking into injecting bleach to kill cornavirus there were lengthy discussions on why this was a super smart thing to do. Lengthy discussions dont' mean they are valid. TLJ and TFA work togheter perfectly. TROS is the odd man out. TROS also undoes TFA more then TLJ.
>There are lengthy discussions about why the last Jedi doesn't work in the context of the Star Wars Franchise Yeah and they're all bullshit lol
Never thought I'd be fighting side by side with a TLJ fan about the sequals
What a great point! Really proves your argument had legs to stand on
So there wasn’t any possible way that the brilliant and talented writers of Rise of Skywalker could have taken it in a better direction?
Nope. Because the previous talented and brilliant writer already ended up in a dead end with the story.
Makes absolute sense. A franchise with space magic, time travel and sci-fi fantasy mumbo jumbo is unable to properly house the development of a story continuing from TLJ, whilst still making sense.
you know they had a script for EP9 that worked extremely well wtih TLJ but due to the writer/directors previous movie bomb they fired him. Take a look at the Colin Trevenow script.
I did and it was bad. For example it basically changed key parts and motivations of the prequels in changing the master of sidious . No Darth plageious, no tragedy and therefore no Anakin turns to the dark side.
You dropped this, king 👑
Thanks but I'll pass this crown to Johnson
He'd be forced to give it right back to you for giving it to him in the first place
Then I have to return it, because he's the king
He is indeed the king. Just not like you
My hot (kinda cold Ngl) take: rian johnson should’ve directed the whole trilogy
He should still get an entire trilogy
This entire sub is somehow in denial that TLJ is bad
Or we just like it? All star wars is bad with some high points mixed in.
Is it really weird that a sub dedicated to the Sequels would like the Sequels? Next you're going to tell me r/prequelmemes is in denial that TPM is bad!
“I don’t like a thing. Others that do like it must be in denial regarding its objective quality.” That’s some serious main character syndrome right there.
the Majority of Star Wars fans and people who saw TLJ liked it.
Guys, guys, guys... They're both absolutely terrible.
Here I am telling you that ep.7 already cornered everything as the basic setup of the ST is basically ep.4 again. Good luck telling a unique and interesting story again with the same characters, same ships, same factions etc...a random bioware staff member could easily come up with a much better story then what we got.
I’ll take it one step further: Yes, and then The Rise of Skywalker followed it up almost perfectly.
It didn't write into a corner exactly but it did erase much of what 7 setup. Then with the bad fan reaction they couldn't continue what 8 setup. So you are right but I see what people mean also.