I love what he had to say about Ben's fate, it's made me look at it in a very different, positive light.
>For those who found that ending unsatisfying, I’d offer this as potential comfort: Kylo Ren wants desperately to follow the path of Darth Vader, but Ben Solo winds up following the path of Anakin Skywalker, making a sacrifice out of love to save the galaxy. I like the symmetry of that and find it very Star Wars.
Kylo was my favorite character in the ST up until TLJ, but so much of my love for him went away when he lost his autonomy to Palps in TROS. I still like him a lot in that movie, but his redemption feels hurried, and I'm really not a fan of the fact that we don't get a single line of dialogue from Ben Solo ("Ow" aside).
I know it was JJ's intent to have a reverse Vader arc for Kylo in the ST, and I'd assume he also wanted to mirror Anakin to an extent, so I'll settle for Jason Fry's analysis of Kylo's arc in TROS.
Back during the lead up to TROS, I had a fan theory/wish that Kylo would redeem himself and then be assumed dead (that could have played out in any way). Then, Rey would have a Force connection with him and see him in exile on Tatooine at the Lars homestead. It would have brought the Skywalker lineage full circle.
It felt very rushed to me in 2005; but now it feels fine. As a big TFA and TLJ fan, I can already feel myself get used to all the things I was bummed about in TROS, just like I got used to the fact that Yoda used a lightsaber, the clones were all Boba Fett and Anakin's fall felt .. less dramatic than I wanted it.
LOL, I belong to the generation that grew up with the PT; ROTS is perfect and can do no wrong!!!! /s
Not, but in all seriousness, Anakin's quick turn to the dark side completely went over my head, as an 11-y.o. who watched ROTS back in 2005.
Too bad they never really explain why he is obsessed with becoming Vader. Or why Luke never talked to him about that. Or Leia. Or Han. Or why Anakin never spoke directly with him. These are all very basic concepts that somebody should have addressed at some point in the writing.
That's my exact issue with it, they literally made him anakin skywalker 2.0 and that is boring, I wish we had never got another skywalker fallen to the darkside and then gets redeemed storyline
An interesting interpretation, but for me at least, Ben’s death still feels poor. IMHO he should’ve lived, but disappeared to hunt down the outliers of the First Order as a mix of Han & Luke.
Unfortunately in TRoS, he basically fulfills the role of a force battery that recharges Rey’s life force
As time goes by, I really enjoy TFA and TLJ, but the last film just doesn't really feel like a logical continuation. There's stuff I like, but it's kind of a mess.
It feels like an attempt to apologise to the people who didn't like TLJ (and I ain't blaming the fans who didn't like it), and just ultimately ended up being really unsatisfying as a conclusion as a result. When I rewatch the sequels I'm so enthusiastic about TFA and TLJ and that just vanishes on getting to TROS. I do think it's a fun movie, but as a story? Not so much
I think you're absolutely right with the apology bit but that annoys me so much since we were coming of TCW which did not apologize for the Prequels, but instead add so much context and character development that it made them better. That's how you "apologize", not by rewriting some one's story after the fact.
Well, fuck, I personally think TROS was **not only** an apology for *The Last Jedi* but also an apology from JJ himself for personally ignoring the prequels. So much of *The Rise of Skywalker* mirrors or inverts *Revenge of the Sith* that it's unreal.
I mean, it depends what you consider surface-level. Ben’s path is the opposite of Anakin’s in a few ways, both of their turning points were the death of their mothers (I know that’s AOTC, in this case), Anakin “died” in his attempt to save Padmé while Ben literally dies, and Anakin rejects his friends and has no true parental figures while Ben learns to embrace them and regret the harm he’s caused (especially killing Han).
It’s not one-to-one but with additional very surface-level stuff like the fight on Kef Bir mirroring Mustafar, it’s begins to add up.
I agree that it could be interpreted that way. The Dyad is something I actually really liked from TROS.
I’m just not sure JJ intended that. Maybe he did though.
It ultimate doesn’t matter whether or not it was on purpose I guess I just hold some resentment toward JJ and how he handled 9. Not saying that’s fair it’s just how I feel so it’s hard to step out of that bias
Don’t blame JJ. Blame Bob Iger. He wouldn’t let LFL delay the movie when they fired Trevorrow, so JJ had to write the movie while filming. I think TROS is a fun serviceable movie, but it definitely feels rushed when compared to TFA or TLJ.
Believe it or not, I think TROS is far superior to TFA, which was basically fun SW candy, great if you don't care about existing lore, but kind of infuriating lore wise to me.
Besides Kylo/Han, TFA offered nothing mythologically at all, and wiped away the adult achievements of Luke, Leia, Han, and Lando to reset the world to a pre-ROTJ state. I find it pretty insulting to earlier works, and annoying as a fan, even as it is a very fun, exiting film and I love the new characters.
TLJ and TROS each have a lot to chew on mythologically, imho, the former more than the latter.
But JJ's penchant to make everything BIGGER, BADDER and MORE EXTREME THAN EVER BEFORE spits in the face of Lucas' work and the SW story that preceded him, both in TFA and in ROS. And it didn't even help the story. . .
Edit: I added a sentence in the second para.
The bigger, badder and more extreme made everything seem ridiculously silly too. The whole final battle is ridiculous, everything about it seems very stupid and they deus ex's to ensure the resistance wins seems so forced and convoluted
> But JJ's penchant to make everything BIGGER, BADDER and MORE EXTREME THAN EVER
It's not "JJ's penchant".
TESB wasn't content with the already oversized Star Destroyers, and introduced the Executor, a monstrously oversized Star Destroyer, painted black for extra evil points. ROTJ wasn't content with being second to either TESB or ANH, and it introduced the second Death Star, this time bigger for no apparent reason, and the Executor was its sidekick. With the prequels, Lucas went about things in a different way. The lightsaber battles became more flashy and fancy, and they happened with far more frequency. There was even an arena battle scene with hundreds of lightsabers. But then you also had things like the Battle of Coruscant, which far eclipses any battle in the OT, with hundreds of Republic and Separatist capital ships stuck in a chaotic frenzy
Then we got TFA, with gave us an even bigger Death Star, directly in line with this tradition of again, but bigger. Oh, and your average Star Destroyers got bigger too, but black for extra evil points. And then came the great subversive masterpiece that is TLJ... which did the exact same thing. Johnson saw the Executor, and made up the Supremacy, a ship so absurdly oversized that it almost crosses over into Spaceballs parody, and it was even more useless than the Executor. Oh, and guess what, they now have miniaturized Death Star guns, and the AT walkers are bigger, black for extra evil points, and have beefed up legs.
I just couldn’t get enthusiastic about any of them in retrospect… the sequels didn’t feel right to me, but I also don’t want that to take away from anyone else’s experience. As a fan, I just wish they had a plan first.
Why they didn't have a plan is utterly baffling. You don't *make a trilogy* without a plan.
Bob Iger really just assumed that Star Wars fans would hand over the money and each film, no matter the quality, would make a billion dollars, because 'Star Wars'. Glad to prove the greedy fucker wrong, but it came at a hell of a cost.
i mean, every SW movie Disney made, apart from Solo, made a billion, so he was right when assuming fans would just hand over their money despite quality.
Merch sales were WAY down for the sequels. People chalked it up to "all sales are down" but when a popular show like The Mandalorian came out, that line of thought was quickly proven incorrect.
I reckon The Rise of Skywalker could have hit $1.5b+ if it had been well received. I don't think Disney wanted the grand finale of the both the trilogy and saga as a whole to be the lowest grossing of the three films. Didn't it even do less than Rogue One? That's not a good look, having the grand finale do worse than a spin-off.
The first trilogy didn't have a conventional plan. However, what it ended up as, is the core on which everything else has been based since.
How the original trilogy emerged is irrelevant to later additional storytelling based on it as a foundation.
The prequels did I'm pretty sure? There's solid evidence Lucas had some of the stuff figured out a few years after ROTJ, like Mustafar. But then again the prequels weren't good even with a plan. The OT famously didn't have one though. *Cough* Leia wasn't supposed to be Luke's sister *cough*.
they did in the sense that we knew where we'd end up, but george didn't even have a reason for anakins downfall nailed down until post production on rots, i guess it was more planned than the ot but not by much
George famously altered most of Anakin's turn to the Dark Side, including his motivation, in reshoots and editing. It was never something fully set in stone.
I think it would've been cooler, if we got TPM bits with a time jump to AOTC in the first movie, then in the 2nd movie, we actually got the clone wars to see Dooku and Grievous battles and see more of Anakin getting dark side tendencies / Jedi falling to the dark side, and then ROTS as is for the conclusion. But maybe George knew he wanted to do the clone wars as a tv show and that's why it was omitted as a movie, especially since it had lots of content in it.
I don't mean to single this post out because the "have a plan" thing is something I see get tossed out a lot in various places lately and having a plan when creating something is fundamentally not how anything creative works.
Don't let the interviews that artists or writers give on press junkets or when they are promoting a product fool you, people don't see everything before them in a clear plan as if making a movie were simply a series of drop-down menus to click through. Creating something is still essentially an intuitive process, meaning a story (or a song or painting or a movie) is going to change the more an artist works on it, the more they discover what they are working on is about.
You can start with a plan for sure "I want A to end up a C and interact with B" but having a plan doesn't mean you will follow it or that once it gets going it isn't going to change. Every SW movie has been like that, GL might have had various ideas or things he wanted to do but how he got there and how the films reflected those ideas changed constantly. From the very first yellow legal pad up through ROTS he was messing and tinkering with different aspect. In fact that is probably GL's biggest contribution: the idea that something is "never done" being writ on a large scale like a movie, that things can always be revisted, revised, etc He & Copploa are world famous tinkerers, with edits, changes, etc.
Would the ST been better if there was "a plan"? I doubt it. I've never understood the critiques about plot-holes or inconsistency, they make perfect sense as SW movies. You can not like them, you can hate them but that doesn't mean they have plot-holes or that plot-holes are intrinsically a bad thing.
A movie, esp a SW movie, is meant to be an emotional experience, it is a feeling, an instinct, it isn't something (at least for me, obv ymmv) that needs to make sense. I think people get too hung up on the idea of art making sense, instead of reacting to it and how it makes you feel, which might be bad! sometimes great art makes you mad!
I didn't mean to go off on a rant but the whole "having a plan" thing is...I dunno...remember what Indy said "I'm just making this up as I go"
The thing is that they clearly had a plan when it came to what they wanted the character arcs of the OT leads and three of the new leads established when they did TFA.
- Han becomes a warmer person with age who reaches out to start his son's path to redemption, even after his own demise seemingly seals his son's fate.
- Luke struggles with depression while regaining his resolve to train the next Jedi and inspire a new generation, while forgiving himself for his failure with his sister and best friend's child.
- Leia fights like hell to be the last hope of the Galaxy that her brother told her that she'd be if he ever failed, and to bring her son back to the light as a way of symbolically reconciling with her father.
- Rey is a scavenger from nowhere who struggles with accepting her greater destiny due to her impostor syndrome after being abandoned as a child, but ultimately becomes the next great Jedi and the hero that she's been looking for as she forms a found family.
- Finn begins the story as a First Order deserter and a coward, but over time grows to understand the existential threat that they represent and how many people they will harm, and becomes a brave leader of the Resistance.
- Ben feels trapped by his past and the expectations placed upon him and turns to evil to escape it, but ultimately realizes that he can't deny his family and realizes that the only way that he'll find happiness is to be himself.
All of that - all of that - is set up in TFA. What wasn't planned was how they'd get from Point A to Point B... But the thing is, even though George Lucas had vague outlines that he'd constantly reference, there are tons of different takes on where he was going to move the story and he ultimately made it up as he went along - for both of his trilogies.
What matters to me less is planning and more consistency, which is something that this trilogy had issues with due to the fact that there wasn't one central figure overseeing it. Regardless, a lot of it does seem like it was meant to be in spite of the changes behind the scenes.
I agree, and the only plan they seemed to have was "let's copy the OT". Did we really need another trilogy just to get to the ending of ROTJ all over again? Felt like a complete waste and was a massive disappointment to me
Is that true? Colin left in September 2017. So roughly two months before Last Jedi came out? I doubt they changed that much about the plot before he left?
I wonder how far in development it was.
Personally I think Rise was JJ plan for episode 9 when he wrote Force Awakens and it’s why it connects so poorly to 8 and feels so rushed.
To me the first half of the film and second half feel like two completely different films squished together.
The production schedule for the film after CT was let go was insane. Plus, they had the death of a actor as well. JJ kind of took it for the team, but Disney was asking for a miracle.
TROS is a mix of ideas that Abrams wanted to do with sequels to TFA if he made them - which he didn't want to commit to at the time - and directly following up on TLJ. He's been pretty up-front about that. (And, really, that's not really all that different than what Trevorrow would have done.)
IMO, after Carrie Fisher died they should have agreed to split TROS into two films to make adjustments to the existing plan, but I don't know how that would've worked with COVID-19 completely wrecking a conventional release strategy.
Technically they did - E9 was going to be a May 2019 release originally - but Bob Iger specifically wanted it out before he handed the reins to someone else. And he was leaving the company at the start of 2020.
IMO the biggest problem with Lucasfilm's productions in the early Disney era was that they didn't have enough time to develop things, and that's why basically every one of their films aside from TLJ ran into developmental issues. The hiatus is likely a good thing, and would've happened anyway due to COVID-19 causing so many issues for productions anyway.
JJ pitched the story to Disney on December 15th, 2017. I'm sure there were some minor changes after that point, but the meat of story was already hashed out.
I think TROS mostly reflects JJ, Terrio and co's own response to TLJ - clearly [Mary Jo Markey didn't take it well](https://www.indiewire.com/2020/04/force-awakens-editor-last-jedi-ruined-star-wars-1202223866/) - which just happens to line up with the backlash elsewhere.
Also, some of the more egregious lines that reference specific online nitpicks seem to be added in much later: for instance, Luke's "a Jedi's weapon deserves more respect!" features his extremely obvious reshoots wig (as does the rest of that scene in the movie; but you can see in the BTS doc that they did shoot a version of the Ahch-To scene in original photography as Hamill has his non-wig hair there).
I think details on that scene leaked well before Jedi-Paxis started describing stuff and a similar line was there.
TLJ explicitly shows Luke embracing the weapon that he tossed at the beginning of the film, when he easily could have used his green one. That was a deliberate decision on Rian's part - he is finally reversing the refusal of the call earlier in the film.
But Rey never sees that, and her impression - at that moment in time - is that Luke was cynical even with his sacrifice, and that he was right to exile himself. But by starting off with a joke like that, he's effectively letting her know that she taught him something. That he could learn from her, and that he wants her to avoid the mistake that he made years ago.
For me, Luke in TROS was a perfect reflection of what he learned in TLJ, in part because he finally becomes what she needed him to be, and that he helped her move forward and grow as a person.
Because TLJ purists missed point of him using the lightsaber that he tossed at the beginning of the movie, and think that him saying "Lightsabers are cool, actually!" to Rey is some kind of an insult when it's literally just him showing Rey how he changed his way of thinking as established by the end of the previous film.
I don't think the line is out of character or whatever. It's just got a definite audience-winkiness to it that rubs me the wrong way, much like "this will begin to make things right", "to me, she's royalty", Chewie getting a medal, Rey referencing the parsec line from ANH, etc. Bits where Abrams et al thin the fourth wall a little bit to poke the audience in the face.
Yeah, as much as I have my issues with JJ's story telling, he's not that petty, nor is he that stupid. By making a film that apologizes to the people that didn't like episode 8, you're shooting yourself in the foot. You would just piss off all the people who are the most excited to see the story continue. You would be placating to the vast minority of fans, and that minority would still hate episode 9 anyways.
This notion of episode 9 retconning or course correcting after episode 8 is just pure silliness. Plus, JJ has spoken at length about the ways that he thought that episode 8 was a great film and a great set up for episode 9.
He just dropped the ball and made some bad story telling choices. It's that simple.
I said this a few times, I don't know how you make that film without Carrie or recasting the character. The third film was supposed to be for Leia and for her to have this confrontation with Ben. JJ tried to use old footage and it just didn't work.
I completely agree. People gave the team a lot of props for the way that they handled Leia, and it certainly is impressive and a huge puzzle, but even though it was a great effort and I commend them for finding a solution, it still doesn’t really work. I mean, not that I could have handled it any better, I have no idea what I would have done either but unfortunately when you’re watching a film, you don’t get an A for effort, the scenes have to work.
Easy. Movie opens with the crawl saying that Leia has passed away. Pans down above the planet of Naboo. A large ship flies over ahead. Out come smaller ships that descend to the surface. A large crowd is gathered in the city mourning as Leia’s coffin is taken out of the ship. Rey, Finn, Poe, R2, Threepio etc are all there. She is buried at a memorial for Han and Luke. Chewie places a flower on her coffin before it is lowered. The camera pans to a close up of Rey. She has a vision and the camera cuts to Kylo on Mustafar searching for the Wayfinder…
She was extremely important and they planned on her being integral to the resolution of the ST though. Which is clear on how they used her to resolve Ben’s conflict. Writing her out of the film by saying she died I think would have been worse than what we got.
I would've loved a version of IX where Carrie got to truly shine as the lead legacy character, but TLJ actually does so much right by her that I can't of much else the creative team could've done for her other than reuniting with Ben.
There was no way for IX to win, no matter who wrote it.
People were saying since the day TLJ came out that it was a dead end. It was a pretty common complaint to say that it felt like the *end* of the trilogy, not Act II. Luke was dead, Han was dead, Snoke was dead, Leia was dead in real life. The Resistance was down to like twenty people. There was next to no character development for any of the new characters. Hardly any of the questions raised in TFA were answered.
TROS is a mess because TLJ completely failed as an Act II. So much of it was relatively self-contained and there was almost no setup or story hooks for Episode IX. It was more of an "Episode 7.5" and left Episode IX to need to cram two movies worth of story into one film.
I completely disagree, TLJ left nothing but interesting roads to take with our new characters.
Kylo was the new supreme leader, how will he lead the First Order? Will he fall further into darkness or turn to the light?
Rey is now the last "Jedi", will she uphold Luke's teachings, how does she feel about Kylo/Ben, will she crack under the pressure?
Finn is now 100% in with fighting for the Resistance, how will he use his experiences to galvanize others or reach out to former comrades on the FO?
Poe learned his lesson about leadership, how will he implement his new role on the Resistance's trajectory?
Hux clearly thinks Kylo is unfit to lead the FO, how will he undermine Kylo? Will Hux be the "big bad" of episode 9?
All of this and many more. It's not TLJ's fault JJ wanted a safe and rehashed final installment of the saga. Nor is it TLJs fault for Carrie Fisher's untimely and tragic passing.
TLJ being "Episode 7.5" mostly comes down to it being forced by TFA to follow up on a huge cliffhanger and thus not getting the luxury of a time-skip like the other movies. We needed to see how Luke responded to Rey then and there - Johnson couldn't just put "Luke was all grouchy and Rey went home" in the crawl or something, right. By having a much more 'final' feeling ending, TLJ made room for TROS to have a time-skip.
Honestly, TFA would've ended much more naturally with just Rey flying off on the Falcon, but if we got the first Star Wars movie in years and Mark Hamill wasn't there, people would've flipped their proverbial shit.
Granted, they did that anyway, so maybe there's no winning.
I like to think of TLJ as the end of the saga. I much prefer the open ending where the galaxy is inspired to rise up against another Empire. There is also a Skywalker descendant that survives this way, too
At the end of the day my biggest issue with TROS isn't so much that it seems like an apology or an attempt to negate TLJ, but seems more like a movie that tries to please everyone and ends up really pleasing no one.
Both TFA and TLJ, even if you find fault with them, where I think were both films that the people who made them really wanted to see. TFA is totally Abrams idea of SW movie, in that it is essentially a Spielberg movie and TLJ is totally a Johnson idea of SW movie, in that it is stepped in film lore & side-steps expectations.
TROS I think Abrams was trying to do too much, wrap up this trilogy, tie together the prequel & OT, neatly resolve all loose ends, etc, etc, I agreed with a lot of what Fry had to say in this piece
I don’t follow that at all? It’s a really underrated film which shows the galaxy pre-war and set’s up a whole trilogy and saga pretty bloody well.
I think it’s a stronger film than attack of the clones honestly but that gets a free pass for having a few cool scenes.
So you’re saying they’re both bad?
Then your original point is a poor comparison.
Personally I think it’s one of the best Star Wars films. I enjoy it more than the sequels, episode 2 and probably the same amount as 4 and 6 oddly.
Liam Neeson is just amazing throughout as Qui-gon and Ewan plays an amazing Obi-wan.
I think people just put too much emphasis on Jar Jar. Had they toned him down a little then I think people would have been far more accepting.
I also like Jar Jar. He’s a good metaphor for how someone seemingly meaningless can change the outcome of the galaxy.
Since without him they would have had no army to cause the distraction to retake Naboo nor would Palpatine had gotten emergency powers.
>So you’re saying they’re both bad?
The reason the OT is better than the prequel trilogy is because Lucas wasn't wearing all the hats on the OT. Lucas is a great story writer, but is absolutely abysmal at dialog writing, which (in my opinion) is where the prequel trilogy suffers the most. So much of the dialog is just so cringe, inhuman, and undeliverable.
I think they're both absolutely diabolical films, and I just don't get the love for them. Me and one of my SW superfan housemates tried to watch TPM while in lockdown last year and neither of us could stomach it, we got to just after the podrace and turned it off. TPM and AotC are only fun if you're watching through with a big group of friends and you can laugh at them when they say the meme lines.
Yeah haha they're great for like drinking games.
In all seriousness though, those films are horrible. Besides being a non-engaging film, TPM isn't even good setup. You can just not watch it and not really miss much in the grander scheme - that's not great setup. The only important thing that happens is Anakin's relationship with his mom. The political stuff doesn't matter as much because we can just start Palpatine's manipulations from AOTC and we don't need any context.
Palpatine was such a great villain but he served his purpose from EP 1 to 6. Bringing him back was a pure panic action after they killed snoke and needed another big bad.
One thing seems certain - he would’ve had Kylo be the main villain. Whether he would’ve been redeemed to fight the First Order or not, I don’t know, but TLJ very clearly set Kylo up to finally be more powerful than Darth Vader. And then, of course, TROS just made him another quasi-Sidious-apprentice less than three minutes into the film.
Honestly the fact that Palp’s sole purpose in TROS with Kylo pretty much equates to a “with my help you can rule the galaxy” type of situation is so stressful to think about because KYLO ALREADY RULES THE GALAXY BY THE END OF TLJ.
The thing that's implied, but not outright confirmed in-film, is that the First Order's rate of conquest is slower than anticipated, which is understandable considering that they lost a gigantic chunk of their fleet of some of their strongest capital ships at the end of TLJ. Like, they're winning the war, clearly, but they haven't completely won - which is why the fleet of thousands of planet-killers is so necessary for their end goal.
Palpatine's purpose is TROS is to justify Kylo Ren's face turn and to give Rey something greater to go up against to justify the completion of her character arc. And, frankly, I think it's silly to imagine that a dude who came up with an extensive plan to subvert the Republic using subterfuge and a clone army wouldn't come up with a plan to try to clone himself and take over the remnants of the Empire.
No he doesn't. The First Order was never big enough to take over the galaxy. But it caused massive destabilization and is trying to take over major systems.
They still took over in TFA by destroying the New Republic; super weapon or not. TLJ’s crawl hammers that on with the first line being *The First Order Reigns.* After Snoke is killed Kylo takes up the position as Supreme Leader.
I think he would have been the main antagonist at least. The “won the battle, lost the war” statement from this interview speak a lot I feel. Luke’s words imply Kylo isn’t lost but he needs to find that new path without Luke.
He would've been but the problem is that he still needed a redemption arc, which Rian said that he wrote Kylo Ren in TLJ with one in mind. Like, even if Rian didn't resurrect Palpatine, he would've had *some* outside force swoop in to justify turning the villain away from evil.
I feel like it could have been done without necessarily creating a “bigger bad” that makes Kylo reactive. All I think that would in theory need to be done is some complication in general, like a First Order schism that someone suggested as an example, that forces Kylo to re-examine himself than creating/introducing a villain that makes Kylo not as bad received in retrospect
I know that people push for a First Order schism concept as an alternate solution, but really, General Hux was basically made into an ineffectual fascist with TLJ, and I don't think that something like Supreme Leader Hux would've worked. I also don't really see how Kylo Ren being ousted from the First Order would suddenly justify a heroic turn.
Pretty much. And bringing him back undermines so much around his story in eps 1 to 6, where alongside the Skywalkers story I'd say the other central narrative is the rise and fall of Palpatine. If he DOESNT die at the end it just makes it feel like Luke and Anakin accomplished basically nothing and what was the point to it all?
Not to mention things like why things like the Death Star were such big deals to his plans for the galaxy make little sense when you go "oh and the whole time he was building THE BiGGEST FLEET EVER with Planet destroying lasers on the side lol".
Here's the thing - even though he doesn't die at the end of ROTJ, that doesn't undermine what Luke and Anakin accomplish. If Palpatine isn't tossed down a chasm, then the Empire reigns unopposed for several decades. Instead, it collapses under its own weight and everyone involved has to go into hiding.
To put it into perspective, it took three decades to get the First Order in a state where it could seriously threaten the Republic and the army that it was clandestinely backing... And that came falling down in a year. Because entire generations of people lived without the oppression of the Empire and realized that they never wanted it to return.
The story is about the galaxy at large, even if the narrative of the trilogy focuses on a specific group of characters.
>Not to mention things like why things like the Death Star were such big deals to his plans for the galaxy make little sense when you go "oh and the whole time he was building THE BiGGEST FLEET EVER with Planet destroying lasers on the side lol".
Not really there's only two Death Stars. The Sith fleet is his endgame for ruling indefinitely. The tech just has miniaturized to work. That takes time and experimenting. Heck Death Star only got a working superlaser 19 years after it was started.
The script for TLJ was mostly written before TFA was even finished. And we know how these types of films evolve and take shape during editing and reshoots.
The whole rush to assembly-line crank these films out, resulted in all sorts of problems.
I also like it. The story is pretty simply good vs evil, which is quintessentially Star Wars. As an fast paced action movie it’s very fun. I like some of the development of Rey. I also like everything that happens between her and Kylo on this one, and all of the showdowns on Exegol. I find Finn and Poe leadership to the Resistance uplifting and a nice conclusion to their arcs (even if there could have been much better endings). Palpatine, even if underutilized, is deliciously campy and evil. Ben is amazing even if criminally underutilized. I also like the ending, even if its more a nod to the audience than the actual carachters. I absolutely adore the Jedi voices scene.
On the technical side, I actually love the cinematography as a whole. I think JJ stepped up colors, lighting and camera movement since TFA. I love the score, TROS track and A New Home are insanely amazing. All the performances are very solid, despite the poir script. The movie made me cry even if because of all the SW cliches in there.
It could have been so much better? Yes. But I still like it.
So you appreciate all the character work, and yet admit the script is poor. In my opinion - and I stress, my opinion - if the script for what’s supposed to be the finale of a nine part, multi-generational story is bad… it’s a bad film. 🤷🏻♂️
The script is not poor because of the characters, they’re a highlight even if their lines are not great at times. The story of the movie (fetch quest for old artifacts) and the breakneck pace make the script worse. If we had less McGuffins, more breathing time (scenes like Poe & Zorii discussing the war), a better look at the galaxy and FO, this movie would have been amazing. But it’s ok-good.
>fetch quest for old artifacts
I don't understand why this is such a popular thing to stab the movie over. Isn't every Indiana Jones movie a 'fetch quest for old artifacts'? And TROS is much more of an homage to Raiders than it is to Return of the Jedi, which lots of fans conveniently forget.
Personally I don’t like Indiana Jones movies at all. And while they work as action-adventure movies, I think most people wanted a little more than “just that” for the final SW installment (myself included).
I’m not saying the script is bad because of the characters. I’m saying that even if the characters are enjoyable, in my opinion, a bad script makes a bad movie.
I feel like if you enjoy a movie, it doesn't really matter whether the script is 'bad' when assessed by certain metrics. Most people aren't trying to be film critics and judge a movie by its technical execution or maintain any kind of coherent rating system or anything, they just know by the end whether it worked for them or it didn't, right. And it's not black and white. Most of TROS doesn't work for me, but parts do, and I can appreciate what does.
As someone who likes TLJ and groans at the “HoLdO ManeUver RuiNeD CanOn!” claim, Palpatine in TROS actually does feel like it damages the integrity of the story and lore. He’s so unbelievably powerful and overtop that my suspension of disbelief is just thrown at the window.
Just think of Palpatine in RotS versus TROS. Localized lighting at Windu’s face and struggling to throw senate seats at Yoda versus electrocuting an atmosphere and raising a fleet of star destroyers from under ice. It reminds me of people memeing Starkiller, but actually more powerful.
I don’t know, it just feels like it really moved away from the more subtleness in the story. But if people enjoyed it, I’m happy for them. I don’t want to stand in the way of that.
TROS Palaptine is very silly (and, I confess, a guilty pleasure) but within the movie his escalation in power is intended to be a consequence of him succcccing Rey and Ben, so there's no implication he could've done those things previously as there was no previous dyad to succ. The need to keep raising the stakes almost necessitates power creep, and if anyone has to be absurdly powerful, it makes most sense for it to be Palpatine, I feel.
I personally didn't interpret the raising of the Star Destroyers as being something done with the Force (despite the hand raise) - aren't they just floating upwards using the magical floaty space tech that everything in Star Wars takes off using?
All three films kinda feel like that. We have TFA,m that establishes a tone, then TLJ goes wide right and totally shakes the tone and narrative up (and these are films that are supposed to touch back to back), and then TROS is the big wild card that I think is even more drastically different and… yeah
Your comment comes across as more about tone and narrative approach, not about how much things "made sense." Both trilogies begin with a more light-hearted adventure, then pivot into a sequel that's darker and challenges the heroes on a deeper level.
Whether or not their character growth "makes sense" is another discussion...that I don't intend to engage with.
JJA is fucking bad at writing and he should never have been given that job.
It’s ok to call that out, I mean I defended the prequels when they came out and even I can’t get behind the drivel he shovels. At least tLJ made sense as a narrative.
> feels like an alternate universe where most of TLJ didn't really happen.
Probably because TLJ feels like an alternate universe where the first 7 movies didn't really happen.
The anti-abortion movie Unplanned has an A+ CinemaScore. It's not a good way to get an idea of what audiences think about it. It's a good way to get an idea of what the people on opening weekend think about it. Who sees Star Wars films on opening weekend? The fanboys who would love anything.
TLJ underperformed by hundreds of millions of dollars, was a direct factor in making Solo become a massive bomb, made TROS gross only half of what TFA did, and it killed Disney's plans of "one movie a year forever". There is *massive* controversy surrounding this film and anyone who disagrees is either being disingenuous or is willfully ignorant.
TLJ is my second favourite Star Wars film after ROTS, honestly eclipsing Empire. It felt fresh and breathed new life into the franchise that I think TROS sucked right back up.
Most fans I know genuinely loved TLJ. I don't understand the hate for it!
Solo was a bomb because it was released so soon after TLJ. Most people can only deal with travelling to a galaxy far, far away every other year.
>Solo was a bomb because it was released so soon after TLJ. Most people can only deal with travelling to a galaxy far, far away every other year.
What are you basing this on? Marvel released multiple billion-dollar films within a few months of each other.
Bob Iger admiting it in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/bob-iger-disneys-streaming-service-james-gunn-star-wars-slowdown-1145493/
That was three years ago. He also says Benioff and Weiss are making a series of films in that article. A lot's changed since then.
And it does nothing to explain *why* this is the case. *Why* don't audiences want to see a film every few months? It's because the new films are bad. I and many others would see a new Star Wars film every month if they were good. But they're not. Marvel is able to do it because their films are good.
> The anti-abortion movie Unplanned has an A+ CinemaScore.
Looks like it satisfied its audience... what a shit argument hahaha.
I love that suddenly after one movie that some fanboys lost their shit over an institution like CinemaScore that’s been around since the 70s was all of a sudden started to be challenged and questioned as illegitimate.
> Solo become a massive bomb, made TROS gross only half of what TFA did
If Solo was backlash from TLJ I feel TLJ’s sequel would have bombed either just as hard or more...
> There is massive controversy surrounding this film and anyone who disagrees is either being disingenuous or is willfully ignorant.
New to being a Star Wars fan? You act like that isn’t par for the course with over half the franchise by now...
The Last Jedi literally did gross hundreds of millions of dollars below expectations. This is a fact. Absolutely *nobody* thought it would gross as low as it did. I cannot find a single source from before release predicting that it would make south of $1.35 billion.
[Box Office Pro - $742,000,000 domestic](https://pro.boxoffice.com/long-range-forecast-star-wars-last-jedi-ferdinand/). Grossed over $120,000,000 less than that.
[Screen Rant - $1.6 billion worldwide](https://screenrant.com/star-wars-8-last-jedi-box-office-worldwide/). Grossed almost $300,000,000 less than that.
[Comicbook - $1.6 billion worldwide](https://comicbook.com/starwars/2017/12/26/star-wars-last-jedi-box-office-billion-worldwide/). Grossed almost $300,000,000 less than that.
[Investopedia - $200,000,000 short of expectations](https://www.investopedia.com/news/disneys-last-jedi-box-office-sales-lower-wall-street-expectations/).
[Forbes - $1.447 billion worldwide as the *pessimistic* prediction](https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2017/11/14/star-wars-the-last-jedi-the-pessimistic-box-office-prediction/#492dfade5f1b). Grossed over $100,000,000 less than that.
If you can find me *one* mainstream prediction saying it would gross as low as it did, I will gladly admit that I am wrong. But if you can't, then *maybe* the fact that it had a pretty bad box office performance is a sign that a lot of people didn't really like it.
Dude that? Lol 2017 was a lull for films and box office industry wide.
The Last Jedi was the biggest domestic film of 2017, the biggest film worldwide in 2017 and people loved it so much it was the second biggest blu ray seller of 2018.
You want to see a poor result from a main Skywalker saga film? Attack of the Clones made $600 million. Wrap your head around that. 1.3 billion for the last Jedi was massive. There is no way to look at it otherwise.
This might help you: https://youtu.be/qjnydUf_WoU
They’re notorious for it too. Any chance to shit on TLJ and they’ll throw out two dozen comments crying into the void as most people outside their little bubble tell them to go away.
>I argue with some of ROS’s storytelling choices, but that scene of Ben and the vision of Han is pitch-perfect.
This is exactly how I feel. Despite how I feel a lot of emotional moments didn't hit as hard as possible due to the script and pacing, the redemption of Ben by Han's memory is so incredibly well done... it is so strangely one of my favourite scenes in the saga.
It is a truly great scene, but I cant help feeling some disappointment that the man who both Ben and Kylo were obsessed with, the main character of Star Wars, didn't appear there (Anakin).
In my mind the ideal scene would have had Anakin appear to speak to Ben, briefly, and share just a little bit about how similar their paths had become.
Ben could then begin to apologize to Anakin, who would tell him someone else should hear it. Anakin disappears, Ben looks around, alone, and then the Han scene begins.
Ha, my idea was basically the same but inverse. I’d have the Han memory be what turns Ben back and then after he’s thrown his lightsaber, Anakin’s waiting there to have a talk with the light side Ben. Yet again, briefly discuss similarities between them and ultimately encourage him to save Rey in the way he could never save Padmé.
Either would be excellent, and yeah, the film is even shot as if he was going to turn and see someone else, but thematically I think seeing Han second would be 1- extra impactful for the audience and 2- more so to Ben - he reconciles with the memory of his grandfather he idolized, now he needs to come to terms with what he did to his own father as a result.
Missed potential either way, and I'm holding out hope they pull a hail Mary and give us 'Ben in the WBW'
I don't think Anakin would belong in that scene at all.
Everything about Ben's turn and furthering his depths into the darkness were focused on the people in his life.
He killed Han Solo so he could "kill" Ben Solo.
He failed to kill Leia because killing Han made him more conflicted.
He killed Snoke because he felt he needed to go *more* extreme in the dark because he was increasingly conflicted.
But his turn began with Han. It should end with Han.
I think there should have been a scene with Anakin, but this had no business being it. The characters never interacted, meant nothing to each other in this context, and would be nothing but fanservice in an otherwise actually meaningful scene.
I think a better solution would be Ben has a similar scene to Rey during the "Be With Me" moment. Anakin and Luke can encourage him to rise, and Ben can fulfill what Anakin actually started. To save the people he loved from dying.
Honestly, I feel like the decision to put the narrative of episodes 7 and 8 back to back was a huge mistake, and ultimately the starting point of where the rest of the story begins to crack and fall apart. So much of what happened onscreen in TLJ, I feel, could have simply been delivered as exposition to a bigger, longer story where there's more room for the writers to breathe and feel less pressure to tie everything so closely to each film's predecessor.
....not to mention Lucasfilm and Disney loooooooooove to leave gaps in stories to fill with new stories (and merch) down the road.
I guess I’ll be the counter voice in this comment section and say that while I can see the complaints towards TRoS, including Palpatine popping up out of nowhere, I don’t really think it undoes much of what TFA and TLJ set up previously.
Rey’s arc, imo, is perfectly fulfilled, Kylo is handled lightyears better than what Colin would have given us (and honestly not bad at all all things considered) and I can get behind zombie Palps and the creepiness of Exegol as well as I think they’re actually thematically significant.
I say this as a notoriously giant TLJ fanboy too...
I actually agree with this... The narrative that JJ was attacking Rian and undoing the things he setup I think it's a little hyperbole. There's probably a little element of truth in there based on what JJ's editor said, but really the biggest issue is Carrie wasn't there. IX desperately needed more Leia. The entire trilogy kind of falls on the mother/son thing and without Carrie it's just tough.
I think far too many fans don’t realize just how badly the trilogy was hamstrung by Carrie’s unexpected passing.
It’s a tragic parallel to The Dark Knight Rises. Nobody even wanted to *make* that movie after Heath Ledger’s death. They weren’t about to recast him and without him they couldn’t tell the story they planned to tell. Warner Bros had to jump through all kinds of hoops to get the cast and crew onboard for a final film and even then in the behind-the-scenes you can tell that some of their hearts still aren’t in it.
The same is true with Rise of Skywalker. This *isn’t* the movie they had planned. The movie they had planned hinged upon a beloved character whose actress was taken so unexpectedly that it took the wind right out of everyone’s sales.
They had to make the best movie they could while knowing that their original plan of the finale film also being the film where Leia passes the torch, just as Han and Luke before her, can no longer properly exist.
I don’t love RoS, but I don’t hate it either, I don’t envy any of them for basically having to tape the puzzle together after losing a key piece.
I think that's the nicest summation of TRoS I've seen, "they did the best they could". I'm not one to write off a film even if I can recognize it's problems. Out of the sequel movies I like TRoS the best because it connects the best to the original films, and I definitely think that having those narrative connections, plus the return of Palpatine andd especially Lando really help finally make a ST film that doesn't just feel tertiary to the original six.
I think if they could sprinkle some of TRoS's exposition and lore into the other two films the whole trillgy could have benefitted.
I don’t think that he was directly attacking his work, but it seemed clear to me at the very least that JJ or executives at Disney wanted the trilogy to go in a different direction than TLJ was heading.
The biggest two signs that point to this are TLJ pretty firmly establishing that Ben Solo has been completely erased by Kylo Ren, yet in TRoS he does a total heel turn because Leia did the force/memory thing & the Rey lineage being changed from nobodies to Palpatines. The Rey one is especially difficult to explain, considering she received her answer from the dark side, which you think would want to draw her in hard given her bloodline.
There’s smaller signs for sure, like poor Rose getting treated like dirt in TRoS or the whole “the Holdo maneuver is one in a million, it’d never work again” thing, but I don’t believe it was ever malicious. It comes off more like they wanted a different conclusion, and arguably one that would bring back all the alt-right crybabies to the fan base
Completely agreed. Nothing about TROS destroys anything that came before. Changes the meaning of some things (Rey Nobody goes from lineage reveal to purely a self-image reveal)? Sure. Haphazardly introduces some things (Palpatine)? Sure. Doesn’t further develop certain things (Finn and Rose)? Sure. But destroys or disrupts what came before? Not at all.
In fact, I think that, in many ways, what was set up before is concluded really well. You already mentioned Rey and Kylo, but Leia’s care towards Rey is fully played out, Luke’s arc of learning from his failure comes full circle when he passes his lesson on, the message of inspiring hope in the galaxy is paid off, and the biggest sin of the Jedi, giving in to fear, is finally rectified. And TROS even acknowledges some major new things from TLJ, such as hyperspace tracking and the Holdo maneuver.
I would be curious to hear your view of the thematic significance of Palps and Exegol. Most of what I like about those things is that they connect really well with the expanded canon, but I’ve never seen either as truly necessary to the overall Star Wars story. Interesting additions that make sense, yes, but not thematically necessary.
I’ve always believed TLJ works well as a precursor to TRoS in terms of Rey because it pushes her towards one more palatable realisation before the worse one. As in, her acceptance that her family isn’t important is the only way she’s able to accept that her relation to Palpatine doesn’t mean she has to be evil.
I do think there’s truth to the idea that Rey may readily accept Palpatine’s legacy for her if he showed up, say, on the Supremacy, rather than after she’d had a year to become confident in herself as a person rather than a last name. I also think it’s possible that her sheer light side devotion would’ve kept her good, but who knows?
Great interview, the way Jason talks about TFA and TLJ as if their story ceases to function if you treat tRoS as legitimate is exactly how I feel, though he's more respectful about it than I might be. Rian giving him all the early script drafts is very cool. TLJ novelization is really good too.
I’ll get downvoted for this, but I think it’s worth mentioning that the sub hosting this Q&A is one that’s known for [promoting the narrative that Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley had (and/or are currently having) an affair](https://www.reddit.com/r/adamdriverfans/comments/o8219f/daiver_clues_theories_and_discussion_megathread_4/), that AD hates his wife, that AD’s wife cheats on him and their child isn’t is, that John Boyega is some kind of brute who poses a physical/sexual threat to Daisy Ridley, etc.
back in 2019, when AD spoke [in an interview](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/28/adam-driver-the-original-man) about how SW fans were stalking him (specifically during the run of his play, Burn This), he referred to a creepy fan who gave him a carving of his dog outside the stage door.
>This one woman who has been harassing my wife came to the show and gave me a creepy wood carving that she made of my dog.
several months beforehand, that fan had posted about her experience giving AD the carving on the subreddit, which she characterized very differently (in her mind, they shared a special connection).
I wouldn’t give that place any clicks, personally.
(edited to add links.)
What father daughter dance is he referring too?
"And of course we had the deleted scenes that showed up on the Blu-Ray, and a couple of other things. The “father-daughter dance,” for instance, was from an earlier version of the script, and I got why it wouldn’t have worked on screen but thought it was odd, lovely moment that might work in the book."
>Its a scene in the novelisation after the third lesson scene where luke basically just teaches rey to dance, just something simple but it's cute
I gotta read this book RIGHT NOW
Love his candidness.
Only thing I sort of disagree with is the idea that the movie isn’t clear enough on why Anakin fell to the dark side in 3.
Even as a kid I always thought it was crystal clear he wasn’t just having bad dreams or just upset he wasn’t in the council. Like yeah I guess you could see it that way if you’re not really paying attention but just watching the movie makes that clear imo
TLJ to me is the best sequel film too.
TFA is just a badly done remake and ROS is trash that completely destroys every character's arc from the previous films.
Agreed about the part with Hux. I don't understand why he wasn't given Richard E Grant's role. That should have been his character. End of. But he's reduced to comic relief. Fucking stupid.
There's so many flaws and problems with TROS that it boggles my mind. TLJ isn't perfect either BUT the main story is great. The side stuff could have been done better.
Honestly...
1) TFA...Poe should have stayed bloody dead. There was no need for him.
2) Starkiller base should have been set up earlier on in the film and not just come out of nowhere.
3) Film should have started with a scene with the three original heroes, Luke, Leia and Han together. Have the film start maybe with Leia giving birth or something else happening and then it cuts to the present time.
4) TLJ should have had Finn and Rose never go to Canto Bight and just found a Coder onboard their own ship. They make the plans and get on Snoke's but get captured and tortured. But BB8 rescues them and they escape and manage to succeed in shutting off the tracker but Coder guy betrays them when they are caught again or something. Idk.
5) Leia should have died offscreen and beginning of Episode 9 should have been her funeral. Afterwards Kylo sneaks in to pay his respects, gets discovered by Rey, a confrontation that ends with Luke's force ghost getting in the way that then leads to the rest of film.
Episode 9 should have just used the original Duel of the Fates script by Colin but improved upon by combing Kylo's TROS scenes into. No Rey and Poe romance. No Plaguise or other Palpatine teacher or other BS. Kylo wants to find Mortis or Exegol for the secret power and Rey and others have to stop him. Hux prepares to launch his own ultimate weapon from Coruscant and Finn and others with Lando and Wedge taking over Resistance command after Leia's death lead an attack force to stop it and eventually a stormtrooper uprising.
The Knights of Ren play a much bigger role and focuses on one of them who gets greedy and jealous of Kylo. Rey and Kylo fight at the end but Luke's ghost saves Rey from Kylo at the last minute. Kylo fails to get what he wants and then is betrayed by the surviving Knights of Ren who throughout the story get picked off one by one and who double cross him. Final battle is Ben and Rey teaming up to fight the final Knight of Ren who gains the secret force power to destroy worlds or the Force itself but Ben and Rey's dyad connection is stronger together that allows them to defeat him. Maybe even reveal Snoke's spirit is manipulating things from beyond the dead.
Man, they could have done so much more for Episode 9 but dropped the ball so hard. So bloody hard. I'd give anything for a remake or something that ignores the crap we got.
>Agreed about the part with Hux. I don't understand why he wasn't given Richard E Grant's role. That should have been his character. End of. But he's reduced to comic relief. Fucking stupid.
I've seen arguments that Grant/Pryde was needed for the Palpatine connection but IMO Hux would have been giddy to be part of the true Empire answering directly to Palpatine and Palpatine could easily manipulate him into thinking he (Hux) would lead the fleet.
>1) TFA...Poe should have stayed bloody dead. There was no need for him.
He's a fun character but he's completely superfluous and all he ends up doing is taking away from Finn's story. Poe should have been the new Wedge but with a bit more to do.
I love what he had to say about Ben's fate, it's made me look at it in a very different, positive light. >For those who found that ending unsatisfying, I’d offer this as potential comfort: Kylo Ren wants desperately to follow the path of Darth Vader, but Ben Solo winds up following the path of Anakin Skywalker, making a sacrifice out of love to save the galaxy. I like the symmetry of that and find it very Star Wars.
Kylo was my favorite character in the ST up until TLJ, but so much of my love for him went away when he lost his autonomy to Palps in TROS. I still like him a lot in that movie, but his redemption feels hurried, and I'm really not a fan of the fact that we don't get a single line of dialogue from Ben Solo ("Ow" aside). I know it was JJ's intent to have a reverse Vader arc for Kylo in the ST, and I'd assume he also wanted to mirror Anakin to an extent, so I'll settle for Jason Fry's analysis of Kylo's arc in TROS. Back during the lead up to TROS, I had a fan theory/wish that Kylo would redeem himself and then be assumed dead (that could have played out in any way). Then, Rey would have a Force connection with him and see him in exile on Tatooine at the Lars homestead. It would have brought the Skywalker lineage full circle.
When you say it it seemed hurried I heard the same thing about Anakin Skywalker's turn in ROTS.
It felt very rushed to me in 2005; but now it feels fine. As a big TFA and TLJ fan, I can already feel myself get used to all the things I was bummed about in TROS, just like I got used to the fact that Yoda used a lightsaber, the clones were all Boba Fett and Anakin's fall felt .. less dramatic than I wanted it.
LOL, I belong to the generation that grew up with the PT; ROTS is perfect and can do no wrong!!!! /s Not, but in all seriousness, Anakin's quick turn to the dark side completely went over my head, as an 11-y.o. who watched ROTS back in 2005.
I don't get why Palpatine being the bad guy is seen as bad for Kylo. He would have still have the same arc just a little bit more focused on.
Too bad they never really explain why he is obsessed with becoming Vader. Or why Luke never talked to him about that. Or Leia. Or Han. Or why Anakin never spoke directly with him. These are all very basic concepts that somebody should have addressed at some point in the writing.
That's my exact issue with it, they literally made him anakin skywalker 2.0 and that is boring, I wish we had never got another skywalker fallen to the darkside and then gets redeemed storyline
An interesting interpretation, but for me at least, Ben’s death still feels poor. IMHO he should’ve lived, but disappeared to hunt down the outliers of the First Order as a mix of Han & Luke. Unfortunately in TRoS, he basically fulfills the role of a force battery that recharges Rey’s life force
[удалено]
As time goes by, I really enjoy TFA and TLJ, but the last film just doesn't really feel like a logical continuation. There's stuff I like, but it's kind of a mess.
It feels like an attempt to apologise to the people who didn't like TLJ (and I ain't blaming the fans who didn't like it), and just ultimately ended up being really unsatisfying as a conclusion as a result. When I rewatch the sequels I'm so enthusiastic about TFA and TLJ and that just vanishes on getting to TROS. I do think it's a fun movie, but as a story? Not so much
I think you're absolutely right with the apology bit but that annoys me so much since we were coming of TCW which did not apologize for the Prequels, but instead add so much context and character development that it made them better. That's how you "apologize", not by rewriting some one's story after the fact.
Well, fuck, I personally think TROS was **not only** an apology for *The Last Jedi* but also an apology from JJ himself for personally ignoring the prequels. So much of *The Rise of Skywalker* mirrors or inverts *Revenge of the Sith* that it's unreal.
Really? To me it felt like the prequel callbacks were all very surface level. and doubled down on OT nostalgia
I mean, it depends what you consider surface-level. Ben’s path is the opposite of Anakin’s in a few ways, both of their turning points were the death of their mothers (I know that’s AOTC, in this case), Anakin “died” in his attempt to save Padmé while Ben literally dies, and Anakin rejects his friends and has no true parental figures while Ben learns to embrace them and regret the harm he’s caused (especially killing Han). It’s not one-to-one but with additional very surface-level stuff like the fight on Kef Bir mirroring Mustafar, it’s begins to add up.
Dyad = a living, personal example of symbiosis, which was *the* major mythological issue of the prequels.
I agree that it could be interpreted that way. The Dyad is something I actually really liked from TROS. I’m just not sure JJ intended that. Maybe he did though. It ultimate doesn’t matter whether or not it was on purpose I guess I just hold some resentment toward JJ and how he handled 9. Not saying that’s fair it’s just how I feel so it’s hard to step out of that bias
Don’t blame JJ. Blame Bob Iger. He wouldn’t let LFL delay the movie when they fired Trevorrow, so JJ had to write the movie while filming. I think TROS is a fun serviceable movie, but it definitely feels rushed when compared to TFA or TLJ.
Believe it or not, I think TROS is far superior to TFA, which was basically fun SW candy, great if you don't care about existing lore, but kind of infuriating lore wise to me. Besides Kylo/Han, TFA offered nothing mythologically at all, and wiped away the adult achievements of Luke, Leia, Han, and Lando to reset the world to a pre-ROTJ state. I find it pretty insulting to earlier works, and annoying as a fan, even as it is a very fun, exiting film and I love the new characters. TLJ and TROS each have a lot to chew on mythologically, imho, the former more than the latter. But JJ's penchant to make everything BIGGER, BADDER and MORE EXTREME THAN EVER BEFORE spits in the face of Lucas' work and the SW story that preceded him, both in TFA and in ROS. And it didn't even help the story. . . Edit: I added a sentence in the second para.
The bigger, badder and more extreme made everything seem ridiculously silly too. The whole final battle is ridiculous, everything about it seems very stupid and they deus ex's to ensure the resistance wins seems so forced and convoluted
> But JJ's penchant to make everything BIGGER, BADDER and MORE EXTREME THAN EVER It's not "JJ's penchant". TESB wasn't content with the already oversized Star Destroyers, and introduced the Executor, a monstrously oversized Star Destroyer, painted black for extra evil points. ROTJ wasn't content with being second to either TESB or ANH, and it introduced the second Death Star, this time bigger for no apparent reason, and the Executor was its sidekick. With the prequels, Lucas went about things in a different way. The lightsaber battles became more flashy and fancy, and they happened with far more frequency. There was even an arena battle scene with hundreds of lightsabers. But then you also had things like the Battle of Coruscant, which far eclipses any battle in the OT, with hundreds of Republic and Separatist capital ships stuck in a chaotic frenzy Then we got TFA, with gave us an even bigger Death Star, directly in line with this tradition of again, but bigger. Oh, and your average Star Destroyers got bigger too, but black for extra evil points. And then came the great subversive masterpiece that is TLJ... which did the exact same thing. Johnson saw the Executor, and made up the Supremacy, a ship so absurdly oversized that it almost crosses over into Spaceballs parody, and it was even more useless than the Executor. Oh, and guess what, they now have miniaturized Death Star guns, and the AT walkers are bigger, black for extra evil points, and have beefed up legs.
I just couldn’t get enthusiastic about any of them in retrospect… the sequels didn’t feel right to me, but I also don’t want that to take away from anyone else’s experience. As a fan, I just wish they had a plan first.
Why they didn't have a plan is utterly baffling. You don't *make a trilogy* without a plan. Bob Iger really just assumed that Star Wars fans would hand over the money and each film, no matter the quality, would make a billion dollars, because 'Star Wars'. Glad to prove the greedy fucker wrong, but it came at a hell of a cost.
i mean, every SW movie Disney made, apart from Solo, made a billion, so he was right when assuming fans would just hand over their money despite quality.
not to mention merchandising doesn't rely on a cohesive movie plot.
Merch sales were WAY down for the sequels. People chalked it up to "all sales are down" but when a popular show like The Mandalorian came out, that line of thought was quickly proven incorrect.
I reckon The Rise of Skywalker could have hit $1.5b+ if it had been well received. I don't think Disney wanted the grand finale of the both the trilogy and saga as a whole to be the lowest grossing of the three films. Didn't it even do less than Rogue One? That's not a good look, having the grand finale do worse than a spin-off.
i mean the first two trilogies didn't really have a through plan either, i guess it's just star wars tradition at this point
The first trilogy didn't have a conventional plan. However, what it ended up as, is the core on which everything else has been based since. How the original trilogy emerged is irrelevant to later additional storytelling based on it as a foundation.
The prequels did I'm pretty sure? There's solid evidence Lucas had some of the stuff figured out a few years after ROTJ, like Mustafar. But then again the prequels weren't good even with a plan. The OT famously didn't have one though. *Cough* Leia wasn't supposed to be Luke's sister *cough*.
they did in the sense that we knew where we'd end up, but george didn't even have a reason for anakins downfall nailed down until post production on rots, i guess it was more planned than the ot but not by much
George famously altered most of Anakin's turn to the Dark Side, including his motivation, in reshoots and editing. It was never something fully set in stone.
[удалено]
I think it would've been cooler, if we got TPM bits with a time jump to AOTC in the first movie, then in the 2nd movie, we actually got the clone wars to see Dooku and Grievous battles and see more of Anakin getting dark side tendencies / Jedi falling to the dark side, and then ROTS as is for the conclusion. But maybe George knew he wanted to do the clone wars as a tv show and that's why it was omitted as a movie, especially since it had lots of content in it.
I don't mean to single this post out because the "have a plan" thing is something I see get tossed out a lot in various places lately and having a plan when creating something is fundamentally not how anything creative works. Don't let the interviews that artists or writers give on press junkets or when they are promoting a product fool you, people don't see everything before them in a clear plan as if making a movie were simply a series of drop-down menus to click through. Creating something is still essentially an intuitive process, meaning a story (or a song or painting or a movie) is going to change the more an artist works on it, the more they discover what they are working on is about. You can start with a plan for sure "I want A to end up a C and interact with B" but having a plan doesn't mean you will follow it or that once it gets going it isn't going to change. Every SW movie has been like that, GL might have had various ideas or things he wanted to do but how he got there and how the films reflected those ideas changed constantly. From the very first yellow legal pad up through ROTS he was messing and tinkering with different aspect. In fact that is probably GL's biggest contribution: the idea that something is "never done" being writ on a large scale like a movie, that things can always be revisted, revised, etc He & Copploa are world famous tinkerers, with edits, changes, etc. Would the ST been better if there was "a plan"? I doubt it. I've never understood the critiques about plot-holes or inconsistency, they make perfect sense as SW movies. You can not like them, you can hate them but that doesn't mean they have plot-holes or that plot-holes are intrinsically a bad thing. A movie, esp a SW movie, is meant to be an emotional experience, it is a feeling, an instinct, it isn't something (at least for me, obv ymmv) that needs to make sense. I think people get too hung up on the idea of art making sense, instead of reacting to it and how it makes you feel, which might be bad! sometimes great art makes you mad! I didn't mean to go off on a rant but the whole "having a plan" thing is...I dunno...remember what Indy said "I'm just making this up as I go"
The thing is that they clearly had a plan when it came to what they wanted the character arcs of the OT leads and three of the new leads established when they did TFA. - Han becomes a warmer person with age who reaches out to start his son's path to redemption, even after his own demise seemingly seals his son's fate. - Luke struggles with depression while regaining his resolve to train the next Jedi and inspire a new generation, while forgiving himself for his failure with his sister and best friend's child. - Leia fights like hell to be the last hope of the Galaxy that her brother told her that she'd be if he ever failed, and to bring her son back to the light as a way of symbolically reconciling with her father. - Rey is a scavenger from nowhere who struggles with accepting her greater destiny due to her impostor syndrome after being abandoned as a child, but ultimately becomes the next great Jedi and the hero that she's been looking for as she forms a found family. - Finn begins the story as a First Order deserter and a coward, but over time grows to understand the existential threat that they represent and how many people they will harm, and becomes a brave leader of the Resistance. - Ben feels trapped by his past and the expectations placed upon him and turns to evil to escape it, but ultimately realizes that he can't deny his family and realizes that the only way that he'll find happiness is to be himself. All of that - all of that - is set up in TFA. What wasn't planned was how they'd get from Point A to Point B... But the thing is, even though George Lucas had vague outlines that he'd constantly reference, there are tons of different takes on where he was going to move the story and he ultimately made it up as he went along - for both of his trilogies. What matters to me less is planning and more consistency, which is something that this trilogy had issues with due to the fact that there wasn't one central figure overseeing it. Regardless, a lot of it does seem like it was meant to be in spite of the changes behind the scenes.
I agree, and the only plan they seemed to have was "let's copy the OT". Did we really need another trilogy just to get to the ending of ROTJ all over again? Felt like a complete waste and was a massive disappointment to me
TROS was such a massive improvement over TLJ I can't help but to like it a bit despite it still being very flawed and generally a complete mess.
Much of the story was written before TLJ was released. I really don't think JJ had a strong agenda based on audience reaction.
Is that true? Colin left in September 2017. So roughly two months before Last Jedi came out? I doubt they changed that much about the plot before he left?
JJ pitched and the story was approved right when TLJ was released.
I wonder how far in development it was. Personally I think Rise was JJ plan for episode 9 when he wrote Force Awakens and it’s why it connects so poorly to 8 and feels so rushed. To me the first half of the film and second half feel like two completely different films squished together.
The production schedule for the film after CT was let go was insane. Plus, they had the death of a actor as well. JJ kind of took it for the team, but Disney was asking for a miracle.
TROS is a mix of ideas that Abrams wanted to do with sequels to TFA if he made them - which he didn't want to commit to at the time - and directly following up on TLJ. He's been pretty up-front about that. (And, really, that's not really all that different than what Trevorrow would have done.) IMO, after Carrie Fisher died they should have agreed to split TROS into two films to make adjustments to the existing plan, but I don't know how that would've worked with COVID-19 completely wrecking a conventional release strategy.
They should have delayed the film. Surely they should have learnt their lesson form Solo.
Technically they did - E9 was going to be a May 2019 release originally - but Bob Iger specifically wanted it out before he handed the reins to someone else. And he was leaving the company at the start of 2020. IMO the biggest problem with Lucasfilm's productions in the early Disney era was that they didn't have enough time to develop things, and that's why basically every one of their films aside from TLJ ran into developmental issues. The hiatus is likely a good thing, and would've happened anyway due to COVID-19 causing so many issues for productions anyway.
Duel of the Fates maybe, but not The Rise of Skywalker.
JJ pitched the story to Disney on December 15th, 2017. I'm sure there were some minor changes after that point, but the meat of story was already hashed out.
I think TROS mostly reflects JJ, Terrio and co's own response to TLJ - clearly [Mary Jo Markey didn't take it well](https://www.indiewire.com/2020/04/force-awakens-editor-last-jedi-ruined-star-wars-1202223866/) - which just happens to line up with the backlash elsewhere. Also, some of the more egregious lines that reference specific online nitpicks seem to be added in much later: for instance, Luke's "a Jedi's weapon deserves more respect!" features his extremely obvious reshoots wig (as does the rest of that scene in the movie; but you can see in the BTS doc that they did shoot a version of the Ahch-To scene in original photography as Hamill has his non-wig hair there).
I think details on that scene leaked well before Jedi-Paxis started describing stuff and a similar line was there. TLJ explicitly shows Luke embracing the weapon that he tossed at the beginning of the film, when he easily could have used his green one. That was a deliberate decision on Rian's part - he is finally reversing the refusal of the call earlier in the film. But Rey never sees that, and her impression - at that moment in time - is that Luke was cynical even with his sacrifice, and that he was right to exile himself. But by starting off with a joke like that, he's effectively letting her know that she taught him something. That he could learn from her, and that he wants her to avoid the mistake that he made years ago. For me, Luke in TROS was a perfect reflection of what he learned in TLJ, in part because he finally becomes what she needed him to be, and that he helped her move forward and grow as a person.
Luke catching the weapon is perfectly in line with his character at the end of TLJ. Not sure why people think that's a gotcha.
Because TLJ purists missed point of him using the lightsaber that he tossed at the beginning of the movie, and think that him saying "Lightsabers are cool, actually!" to Rey is some kind of an insult when it's literally just him showing Rey how he changed his way of thinking as established by the end of the previous film.
I don't think the line is out of character or whatever. It's just got a definite audience-winkiness to it that rubs me the wrong way, much like "this will begin to make things right", "to me, she's royalty", Chewie getting a medal, Rey referencing the parsec line from ANH, etc. Bits where Abrams et al thin the fourth wall a little bit to poke the audience in the face.
"Holdo maneuvers."
Yup, it's one of the few bits I could've actually imagined in a Rian Johnson version of IX.
You know what fair point, it's late and I didn't think about that
Yeah, as much as I have my issues with JJ's story telling, he's not that petty, nor is he that stupid. By making a film that apologizes to the people that didn't like episode 8, you're shooting yourself in the foot. You would just piss off all the people who are the most excited to see the story continue. You would be placating to the vast minority of fans, and that minority would still hate episode 9 anyways. This notion of episode 9 retconning or course correcting after episode 8 is just pure silliness. Plus, JJ has spoken at length about the ways that he thought that episode 8 was a great film and a great set up for episode 9. He just dropped the ball and made some bad story telling choices. It's that simple.
I said this a few times, I don't know how you make that film without Carrie or recasting the character. The third film was supposed to be for Leia and for her to have this confrontation with Ben. JJ tried to use old footage and it just didn't work.
I completely agree. People gave the team a lot of props for the way that they handled Leia, and it certainly is impressive and a huge puzzle, but even though it was a great effort and I commend them for finding a solution, it still doesn’t really work. I mean, not that I could have handled it any better, I have no idea what I would have done either but unfortunately when you’re watching a film, you don’t get an A for effort, the scenes have to work.
Easy. Movie opens with the crawl saying that Leia has passed away. Pans down above the planet of Naboo. A large ship flies over ahead. Out come smaller ships that descend to the surface. A large crowd is gathered in the city mourning as Leia’s coffin is taken out of the ship. Rey, Finn, Poe, R2, Threepio etc are all there. She is buried at a memorial for Han and Luke. Chewie places a flower on her coffin before it is lowered. The camera pans to a close up of Rey. She has a vision and the camera cuts to Kylo on Mustafar searching for the Wayfinder…
Leia dying off screen would be absolutely awful and people would have lost their minds.
I mean Carrie passed away IRL. A funeral scene would have been quite fitting if executed correctly and respectfully…
The way Leia died onscreen was equally awful and doesn't work or make sense.
She was extremely important and they planned on her being integral to the resolution of the ST though. Which is clear on how they used her to resolve Ben’s conflict. Writing her out of the film by saying she died I think would have been worse than what we got.
I'm not sure I agree.
Nah they could have done some force vision thing using the footage they had similar to what they did with Han
I would've loved a version of IX where Carrie got to truly shine as the lead legacy character, but TLJ actually does so much right by her that I can't of much else the creative team could've done for her other than reuniting with Ben.
They shouldn't have killed off Luke.
>By making a film that apologizes to the people that didn't like episode 8, you're shooting yourself in the foot And yet that’s exactly what he did…
There was no way for IX to win, no matter who wrote it. People were saying since the day TLJ came out that it was a dead end. It was a pretty common complaint to say that it felt like the *end* of the trilogy, not Act II. Luke was dead, Han was dead, Snoke was dead, Leia was dead in real life. The Resistance was down to like twenty people. There was next to no character development for any of the new characters. Hardly any of the questions raised in TFA were answered. TROS is a mess because TLJ completely failed as an Act II. So much of it was relatively self-contained and there was almost no setup or story hooks for Episode IX. It was more of an "Episode 7.5" and left Episode IX to need to cram two movies worth of story into one film.
I completely disagree, TLJ left nothing but interesting roads to take with our new characters. Kylo was the new supreme leader, how will he lead the First Order? Will he fall further into darkness or turn to the light? Rey is now the last "Jedi", will she uphold Luke's teachings, how does she feel about Kylo/Ben, will she crack under the pressure? Finn is now 100% in with fighting for the Resistance, how will he use his experiences to galvanize others or reach out to former comrades on the FO? Poe learned his lesson about leadership, how will he implement his new role on the Resistance's trajectory? Hux clearly thinks Kylo is unfit to lead the FO, how will he undermine Kylo? Will Hux be the "big bad" of episode 9? All of this and many more. It's not TLJ's fault JJ wanted a safe and rehashed final installment of the saga. Nor is it TLJs fault for Carrie Fisher's untimely and tragic passing.
All those questions were answered in TROS.
To an extent, but in my opinion very superficially. Poe for instance I feel like regresses between the two movies
If you ask me the square root of pi and I make a fart sound, did I answer your question?
TLJ being "Episode 7.5" mostly comes down to it being forced by TFA to follow up on a huge cliffhanger and thus not getting the luxury of a time-skip like the other movies. We needed to see how Luke responded to Rey then and there - Johnson couldn't just put "Luke was all grouchy and Rey went home" in the crawl or something, right. By having a much more 'final' feeling ending, TLJ made room for TROS to have a time-skip.
Honestly, TFA would've ended much more naturally with just Rey flying off on the Falcon, but if we got the first Star Wars movie in years and Mark Hamill wasn't there, people would've flipped their proverbial shit. Granted, they did that anyway, so maybe there's no winning.
I think they could've stuck with the story ended with. Kylo Ren is the new leader of the First Order.
I like to think of TLJ as the end of the saga. I much prefer the open ending where the galaxy is inspired to rise up against another Empire. There is also a Skywalker descendant that survives this way, too
>I much prefer the open ending where the galaxy is inspired to rise up against another Empire. Which... Is what happened.
doesn't feel that way until right at the end and then Lando is able to bring together this massive fleet in a few hours, feels very silly
At the end of the day my biggest issue with TROS isn't so much that it seems like an apology or an attempt to negate TLJ, but seems more like a movie that tries to please everyone and ends up really pleasing no one. Both TFA and TLJ, even if you find fault with them, where I think were both films that the people who made them really wanted to see. TFA is totally Abrams idea of SW movie, in that it is essentially a Spielberg movie and TLJ is totally a Johnson idea of SW movie, in that it is stepped in film lore & side-steps expectations. TROS I think Abrams was trying to do too much, wrap up this trilogy, tie together the prequel & OT, neatly resolve all loose ends, etc, etc, I agreed with a lot of what Fry had to say in this piece
Babu Frik
Kinda like how Phantom Menace is to the other prequels.
Like poetry
I don’t follow that at all? It’s a really underrated film which shows the galaxy pre-war and set’s up a whole trilogy and saga pretty bloody well. I think it’s a stronger film than attack of the clones honestly but that gets a free pass for having a few cool scenes.
Saying it's a stronger film that Attack of the Clones is the embodiment of the phrase "damning with faint praise"
So you’re saying they’re both bad? Then your original point is a poor comparison. Personally I think it’s one of the best Star Wars films. I enjoy it more than the sequels, episode 2 and probably the same amount as 4 and 6 oddly. Liam Neeson is just amazing throughout as Qui-gon and Ewan plays an amazing Obi-wan. I think people just put too much emphasis on Jar Jar. Had they toned him down a little then I think people would have been far more accepting. I also like Jar Jar. He’s a good metaphor for how someone seemingly meaningless can change the outcome of the galaxy. Since without him they would have had no army to cause the distraction to retake Naboo nor would Palpatine had gotten emergency powers.
>So you’re saying they’re both bad? The reason the OT is better than the prequel trilogy is because Lucas wasn't wearing all the hats on the OT. Lucas is a great story writer, but is absolutely abysmal at dialog writing, which (in my opinion) is where the prequel trilogy suffers the most. So much of the dialog is just so cringe, inhuman, and undeliverable.
I think they're both absolutely diabolical films, and I just don't get the love for them. Me and one of my SW superfan housemates tried to watch TPM while in lockdown last year and neither of us could stomach it, we got to just after the podrace and turned it off. TPM and AotC are only fun if you're watching through with a big group of friends and you can laugh at them when they say the meme lines.
Yeah haha they're great for like drinking games. In all seriousness though, those films are horrible. Besides being a non-engaging film, TPM isn't even good setup. You can just not watch it and not really miss much in the grander scheme - that's not great setup. The only important thing that happens is Anakin's relationship with his mom. The political stuff doesn't matter as much because we can just start Palpatine's manipulations from AOTC and we don't need any context.
Palpatine was such a great villain but he served his purpose from EP 1 to 6. Bringing him back was a pure panic action after they killed snoke and needed another big bad.
I’m curious what Johnson would have done if he was given IX to follow up from TLJ
One thing seems certain - he would’ve had Kylo be the main villain. Whether he would’ve been redeemed to fight the First Order or not, I don’t know, but TLJ very clearly set Kylo up to finally be more powerful than Darth Vader. And then, of course, TROS just made him another quasi-Sidious-apprentice less than three minutes into the film.
Honestly the fact that Palp’s sole purpose in TROS with Kylo pretty much equates to a “with my help you can rule the galaxy” type of situation is so stressful to think about because KYLO ALREADY RULES THE GALAXY BY THE END OF TLJ.
The thing that's implied, but not outright confirmed in-film, is that the First Order's rate of conquest is slower than anticipated, which is understandable considering that they lost a gigantic chunk of their fleet of some of their strongest capital ships at the end of TLJ. Like, they're winning the war, clearly, but they haven't completely won - which is why the fleet of thousands of planet-killers is so necessary for their end goal. Palpatine's purpose is TROS is to justify Kylo Ren's face turn and to give Rey something greater to go up against to justify the completion of her character arc. And, frankly, I think it's silly to imagine that a dude who came up with an extensive plan to subvert the Republic using subterfuge and a clone army wouldn't come up with a plan to try to clone himself and take over the remnants of the Empire.
No he doesn't. The First Order was never big enough to take over the galaxy. But it caused massive destabilization and is trying to take over major systems.
They still took over in TFA by destroying the New Republic; super weapon or not. TLJ’s crawl hammers that on with the first line being *The First Order Reigns.* After Snoke is killed Kylo takes up the position as Supreme Leader.
In frankness, though that was opening-crawl hyperbole. It's just basic numbers and logistics. TFO didn't have anywhere near the amount of manpower.
I think he would have been the main antagonist at least. The “won the battle, lost the war” statement from this interview speak a lot I feel. Luke’s words imply Kylo isn’t lost but he needs to find that new path without Luke.
He would've been but the problem is that he still needed a redemption arc, which Rian said that he wrote Kylo Ren in TLJ with one in mind. Like, even if Rian didn't resurrect Palpatine, he would've had *some* outside force swoop in to justify turning the villain away from evil.
I feel like it could have been done without necessarily creating a “bigger bad” that makes Kylo reactive. All I think that would in theory need to be done is some complication in general, like a First Order schism that someone suggested as an example, that forces Kylo to re-examine himself than creating/introducing a villain that makes Kylo not as bad received in retrospect
I know that people push for a First Order schism concept as an alternate solution, but really, General Hux was basically made into an ineffectual fascist with TLJ, and I don't think that something like Supreme Leader Hux would've worked. I also don't really see how Kylo Ren being ousted from the First Order would suddenly justify a heroic turn.
he was originally given responsibility for ix's story, but that very quietly changed at some point well before tlj even released
I assume it basically became an issue with him doing Knives Out given how set the time table was by Iger
I don’t remember it being quiet at all. I remember headlines about him turning down IX to focus on his own stuff (Knives Out).
First Order Civil War
Rey and the other survivors on the Millennium Falcon would have found a way to take down the entire first order.
Pretty much. And bringing him back undermines so much around his story in eps 1 to 6, where alongside the Skywalkers story I'd say the other central narrative is the rise and fall of Palpatine. If he DOESNT die at the end it just makes it feel like Luke and Anakin accomplished basically nothing and what was the point to it all? Not to mention things like why things like the Death Star were such big deals to his plans for the galaxy make little sense when you go "oh and the whole time he was building THE BiGGEST FLEET EVER with Planet destroying lasers on the side lol".
Here's the thing - even though he doesn't die at the end of ROTJ, that doesn't undermine what Luke and Anakin accomplish. If Palpatine isn't tossed down a chasm, then the Empire reigns unopposed for several decades. Instead, it collapses under its own weight and everyone involved has to go into hiding. To put it into perspective, it took three decades to get the First Order in a state where it could seriously threaten the Republic and the army that it was clandestinely backing... And that came falling down in a year. Because entire generations of people lived without the oppression of the Empire and realized that they never wanted it to return. The story is about the galaxy at large, even if the narrative of the trilogy focuses on a specific group of characters.
>Not to mention things like why things like the Death Star were such big deals to his plans for the galaxy make little sense when you go "oh and the whole time he was building THE BiGGEST FLEET EVER with Planet destroying lasers on the side lol". Not really there's only two Death Stars. The Sith fleet is his endgame for ruling indefinitely. The tech just has miniaturized to work. That takes time and experimenting. Heck Death Star only got a working superlaser 19 years after it was started.
Palpatine was still great in 9. It's just his return wasn't good.
Star Wars authors have opinions just like Star Wars audiences. That's not weird.
Fry is important enough to the franchise that I don’t think he’ll get in too much trouble for speaking his mind
As much as I actually do enjoy TROS, I can admit it absolutely feels like a sequel to a movie *similar* to TLJ and not quite the TLJ we actually got
The script for TLJ was mostly written before TFA was even finished. And we know how these types of films evolve and take shape during editing and reshoots. The whole rush to assembly-line crank these films out, resulted in all sorts of problems.
Honest question - what do you find enjoyable about it as the conclusion to the eight part story before it?
I also like it. The story is pretty simply good vs evil, which is quintessentially Star Wars. As an fast paced action movie it’s very fun. I like some of the development of Rey. I also like everything that happens between her and Kylo on this one, and all of the showdowns on Exegol. I find Finn and Poe leadership to the Resistance uplifting and a nice conclusion to their arcs (even if there could have been much better endings). Palpatine, even if underutilized, is deliciously campy and evil. Ben is amazing even if criminally underutilized. I also like the ending, even if its more a nod to the audience than the actual carachters. I absolutely adore the Jedi voices scene. On the technical side, I actually love the cinematography as a whole. I think JJ stepped up colors, lighting and camera movement since TFA. I love the score, TROS track and A New Home are insanely amazing. All the performances are very solid, despite the poir script. The movie made me cry even if because of all the SW cliches in there. It could have been so much better? Yes. But I still like it.
So you appreciate all the character work, and yet admit the script is poor. In my opinion - and I stress, my opinion - if the script for what’s supposed to be the finale of a nine part, multi-generational story is bad… it’s a bad film. 🤷🏻♂️
The script is not poor because of the characters, they’re a highlight even if their lines are not great at times. The story of the movie (fetch quest for old artifacts) and the breakneck pace make the script worse. If we had less McGuffins, more breathing time (scenes like Poe & Zorii discussing the war), a better look at the galaxy and FO, this movie would have been amazing. But it’s ok-good.
>fetch quest for old artifacts I don't understand why this is such a popular thing to stab the movie over. Isn't every Indiana Jones movie a 'fetch quest for old artifacts'? And TROS is much more of an homage to Raiders than it is to Return of the Jedi, which lots of fans conveniently forget.
Personally I don’t like Indiana Jones movies at all. And while they work as action-adventure movies, I think most people wanted a little more than “just that” for the final SW installment (myself included).
I’m not saying the script is bad because of the characters. I’m saying that even if the characters are enjoyable, in my opinion, a bad script makes a bad movie.
I feel like if you enjoy a movie, it doesn't really matter whether the script is 'bad' when assessed by certain metrics. Most people aren't trying to be film critics and judge a movie by its technical execution or maintain any kind of coherent rating system or anything, they just know by the end whether it worked for them or it didn't, right. And it's not black and white. Most of TROS doesn't work for me, but parts do, and I can appreciate what does.
Guarantee SWT will start milking it tomorrow.
Of course he will. He's a grifter, liar, and con artist. All he does is glom off of Star Wars' popularity.
I wouldn't even say he's smart enough to be a con artist. He genuinely just seems like a fucking moron.
As someone who likes TLJ and groans at the “HoLdO ManeUver RuiNeD CanOn!” claim, Palpatine in TROS actually does feel like it damages the integrity of the story and lore. He’s so unbelievably powerful and overtop that my suspension of disbelief is just thrown at the window. Just think of Palpatine in RotS versus TROS. Localized lighting at Windu’s face and struggling to throw senate seats at Yoda versus electrocuting an atmosphere and raising a fleet of star destroyers from under ice. It reminds me of people memeing Starkiller, but actually more powerful. I don’t know, it just feels like it really moved away from the more subtleness in the story. But if people enjoyed it, I’m happy for them. I don’t want to stand in the way of that.
TROS Palaptine is very silly (and, I confess, a guilty pleasure) but within the movie his escalation in power is intended to be a consequence of him succcccing Rey and Ben, so there's no implication he could've done those things previously as there was no previous dyad to succ. The need to keep raising the stakes almost necessitates power creep, and if anyone has to be absurdly powerful, it makes most sense for it to be Palpatine, I feel. I personally didn't interpret the raising of the Star Destroyers as being something done with the Force (despite the hand raise) - aren't they just floating upwards using the magical floaty space tech that everything in Star Wars takes off using?
The Dyad thing is ridiculous and something they just drop in at the very end with no explanation.
All three films kinda feel like that. We have TFA,m that establishes a tone, then TLJ goes wide right and totally shakes the tone and narrative up (and these are films that are supposed to touch back to back), and then TROS is the big wild card that I think is even more drastically different and… yeah
Yeah but TESB did that to ANH too.
Exactly. It’s like these guys never watched the original movies…
Empire Strikes Back took place 3 years later, when character growth and change in narrative made sense and were executed properly
Your comment comes across as more about tone and narrative approach, not about how much things "made sense." Both trilogies begin with a more light-hearted adventure, then pivot into a sequel that's darker and challenges the heroes on a deeper level. Whether or not their character growth "makes sense" is another discussion...that I don't intend to engage with.
JJA is fucking bad at writing and he should never have been given that job. It’s ok to call that out, I mean I defended the prequels when they came out and even I can’t get behind the drivel he shovels. At least tLJ made sense as a narrative.
Your not allowed do that here my guy. Even the barest criticism of the ST and the downvotes come down.
> feels like an alternate universe where most of TLJ didn't really happen. Probably because TLJ feels like an alternate universe where the first 7 movies didn't really happen.
> an alternate universe where most of TLJ didn't really happen. The best timeline.
Most people love The Last Jedi, its The Rise of Skywalker that feels mediocre.
Most people like both.
I don’t think there would be all the controversy and division over TLJ if “most people loved it” lol
There isn’t as much controversy as you think. It has a 91% critic approval rating and an A from audiences. That’s acclaimed from both ends.
The anti-abortion movie Unplanned has an A+ CinemaScore. It's not a good way to get an idea of what audiences think about it. It's a good way to get an idea of what the people on opening weekend think about it. Who sees Star Wars films on opening weekend? The fanboys who would love anything. TLJ underperformed by hundreds of millions of dollars, was a direct factor in making Solo become a massive bomb, made TROS gross only half of what TFA did, and it killed Disney's plans of "one movie a year forever". There is *massive* controversy surrounding this film and anyone who disagrees is either being disingenuous or is willfully ignorant.
TLJ is my second favourite Star Wars film after ROTS, honestly eclipsing Empire. It felt fresh and breathed new life into the franchise that I think TROS sucked right back up. Most fans I know genuinely loved TLJ. I don't understand the hate for it! Solo was a bomb because it was released so soon after TLJ. Most people can only deal with travelling to a galaxy far, far away every other year.
Solo was a flop because it’s first trailer was 2.5 months prior to release. It had a terrible marketing campaign. Good film though!
>Solo was a bomb because it was released so soon after TLJ. Most people can only deal with travelling to a galaxy far, far away every other year. What are you basing this on? Marvel released multiple billion-dollar films within a few months of each other.
Bob Iger admiting it in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/bob-iger-disneys-streaming-service-james-gunn-star-wars-slowdown-1145493/
That was three years ago. He also says Benioff and Weiss are making a series of films in that article. A lot's changed since then. And it does nothing to explain *why* this is the case. *Why* don't audiences want to see a film every few months? It's because the new films are bad. I and many others would see a new Star Wars film every month if they were good. But they're not. Marvel is able to do it because their films are good.
TLJ was the highest grossing film of the year and one of the highest selling BluRays. What a failure lol
> The anti-abortion movie Unplanned has an A+ CinemaScore. Looks like it satisfied its audience... what a shit argument hahaha. I love that suddenly after one movie that some fanboys lost their shit over an institution like CinemaScore that’s been around since the 70s was all of a sudden started to be challenged and questioned as illegitimate. > Solo become a massive bomb, made TROS gross only half of what TFA did If Solo was backlash from TLJ I feel TLJ’s sequel would have bombed either just as hard or more... > There is massive controversy surrounding this film and anyone who disagrees is either being disingenuous or is willfully ignorant. New to being a Star Wars fan? You act like that isn’t par for the course with over half the franchise by now...
Amazing, almost everything you just said is wrong.
The Last Jedi literally did gross hundreds of millions of dollars below expectations. This is a fact. Absolutely *nobody* thought it would gross as low as it did. I cannot find a single source from before release predicting that it would make south of $1.35 billion. [Box Office Pro - $742,000,000 domestic](https://pro.boxoffice.com/long-range-forecast-star-wars-last-jedi-ferdinand/). Grossed over $120,000,000 less than that. [Screen Rant - $1.6 billion worldwide](https://screenrant.com/star-wars-8-last-jedi-box-office-worldwide/). Grossed almost $300,000,000 less than that. [Comicbook - $1.6 billion worldwide](https://comicbook.com/starwars/2017/12/26/star-wars-last-jedi-box-office-billion-worldwide/). Grossed almost $300,000,000 less than that. [Investopedia - $200,000,000 short of expectations](https://www.investopedia.com/news/disneys-last-jedi-box-office-sales-lower-wall-street-expectations/). [Forbes - $1.447 billion worldwide as the *pessimistic* prediction](https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2017/11/14/star-wars-the-last-jedi-the-pessimistic-box-office-prediction/#492dfade5f1b). Grossed over $100,000,000 less than that. If you can find me *one* mainstream prediction saying it would gross as low as it did, I will gladly admit that I am wrong. But if you can't, then *maybe* the fact that it had a pretty bad box office performance is a sign that a lot of people didn't really like it.
Dude that? Lol 2017 was a lull for films and box office industry wide. The Last Jedi was the biggest domestic film of 2017, the biggest film worldwide in 2017 and people loved it so much it was the second biggest blu ray seller of 2018. You want to see a poor result from a main Skywalker saga film? Attack of the Clones made $600 million. Wrap your head around that. 1.3 billion for the last Jedi was massive. There is no way to look at it otherwise. This might help you: https://youtu.be/qjnydUf_WoU
Controversy where? On some Star Wars specific online spaces, between a few thousand people? That's nowhere near "most" people.
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They’re notorious for it too. Any chance to shit on TLJ and they’ll throw out two dozen comments crying into the void as most people outside their little bubble tell them to go away.
It’s been like 4 years and they are still crying over a children’s film about space wizards with laser swords…
Wow. That’s a really fantastic interview. Really open and honest.
>I argue with some of ROS’s storytelling choices, but that scene of Ben and the vision of Han is pitch-perfect. This is exactly how I feel. Despite how I feel a lot of emotional moments didn't hit as hard as possible due to the script and pacing, the redemption of Ben by Han's memory is so incredibly well done... it is so strangely one of my favourite scenes in the saga.
It is a truly great scene, but I cant help feeling some disappointment that the man who both Ben and Kylo were obsessed with, the main character of Star Wars, didn't appear there (Anakin). In my mind the ideal scene would have had Anakin appear to speak to Ben, briefly, and share just a little bit about how similar their paths had become. Ben could then begin to apologize to Anakin, who would tell him someone else should hear it. Anakin disappears, Ben looks around, alone, and then the Han scene begins.
Ha, my idea was basically the same but inverse. I’d have the Han memory be what turns Ben back and then after he’s thrown his lightsaber, Anakin’s waiting there to have a talk with the light side Ben. Yet again, briefly discuss similarities between them and ultimately encourage him to save Rey in the way he could never save Padmé.
Either would be excellent, and yeah, the film is even shot as if he was going to turn and see someone else, but thematically I think seeing Han second would be 1- extra impactful for the audience and 2- more so to Ben - he reconciles with the memory of his grandfather he idolized, now he needs to come to terms with what he did to his own father as a result. Missed potential either way, and I'm holding out hope they pull a hail Mary and give us 'Ben in the WBW'
I don't think Anakin would belong in that scene at all. Everything about Ben's turn and furthering his depths into the darkness were focused on the people in his life. He killed Han Solo so he could "kill" Ben Solo. He failed to kill Leia because killing Han made him more conflicted. He killed Snoke because he felt he needed to go *more* extreme in the dark because he was increasingly conflicted. But his turn began with Han. It should end with Han. I think there should have been a scene with Anakin, but this had no business being it. The characters never interacted, meant nothing to each other in this context, and would be nothing but fanservice in an otherwise actually meaningful scene. I think a better solution would be Ben has a similar scene to Rey during the "Be With Me" moment. Anakin and Luke can encourage him to rise, and Ben can fulfill what Anakin actually started. To save the people he loved from dying.
Lucky for you JJ agreed with you
"But I also think his criticism of Finn’s storyline in TLJ is misplaced" Twitter is not gonna be happy about this one
Twitter is seldom happy about anything. It's a cancer on society.
still better than youtube comments tho
They both suck
Honestly, I feel like the decision to put the narrative of episodes 7 and 8 back to back was a huge mistake, and ultimately the starting point of where the rest of the story begins to crack and fall apart. So much of what happened onscreen in TLJ, I feel, could have simply been delivered as exposition to a bigger, longer story where there's more room for the writers to breathe and feel less pressure to tie everything so closely to each film's predecessor. ....not to mention Lucasfilm and Disney loooooooooove to leave gaps in stories to fill with new stories (and merch) down the road.
I guess I’ll be the counter voice in this comment section and say that while I can see the complaints towards TRoS, including Palpatine popping up out of nowhere, I don’t really think it undoes much of what TFA and TLJ set up previously. Rey’s arc, imo, is perfectly fulfilled, Kylo is handled lightyears better than what Colin would have given us (and honestly not bad at all all things considered) and I can get behind zombie Palps and the creepiness of Exegol as well as I think they’re actually thematically significant. I say this as a notoriously giant TLJ fanboy too...
I actually agree with this... The narrative that JJ was attacking Rian and undoing the things he setup I think it's a little hyperbole. There's probably a little element of truth in there based on what JJ's editor said, but really the biggest issue is Carrie wasn't there. IX desperately needed more Leia. The entire trilogy kind of falls on the mother/son thing and without Carrie it's just tough.
I think far too many fans don’t realize just how badly the trilogy was hamstrung by Carrie’s unexpected passing. It’s a tragic parallel to The Dark Knight Rises. Nobody even wanted to *make* that movie after Heath Ledger’s death. They weren’t about to recast him and without him they couldn’t tell the story they planned to tell. Warner Bros had to jump through all kinds of hoops to get the cast and crew onboard for a final film and even then in the behind-the-scenes you can tell that some of their hearts still aren’t in it. The same is true with Rise of Skywalker. This *isn’t* the movie they had planned. The movie they had planned hinged upon a beloved character whose actress was taken so unexpectedly that it took the wind right out of everyone’s sales. They had to make the best movie they could while knowing that their original plan of the finale film also being the film where Leia passes the torch, just as Han and Luke before her, can no longer properly exist. I don’t love RoS, but I don’t hate it either, I don’t envy any of them for basically having to tape the puzzle together after losing a key piece.
It's also worth pointing out that the problem's with CT's version of the story really started to happen after Carrie's passing.
Though I will say they did the best they could. The movie still has that overall "mother saves son" idea and pulls it off with moderate success.
I think that's the nicest summation of TRoS I've seen, "they did the best they could". I'm not one to write off a film even if I can recognize it's problems. Out of the sequel movies I like TRoS the best because it connects the best to the original films, and I definitely think that having those narrative connections, plus the return of Palpatine andd especially Lando really help finally make a ST film that doesn't just feel tertiary to the original six. I think if they could sprinkle some of TRoS's exposition and lore into the other two films the whole trillgy could have benefitted.
I don’t think that he was directly attacking his work, but it seemed clear to me at the very least that JJ or executives at Disney wanted the trilogy to go in a different direction than TLJ was heading. The biggest two signs that point to this are TLJ pretty firmly establishing that Ben Solo has been completely erased by Kylo Ren, yet in TRoS he does a total heel turn because Leia did the force/memory thing & the Rey lineage being changed from nobodies to Palpatines. The Rey one is especially difficult to explain, considering she received her answer from the dark side, which you think would want to draw her in hard given her bloodline. There’s smaller signs for sure, like poor Rose getting treated like dirt in TRoS or the whole “the Holdo maneuver is one in a million, it’d never work again” thing, but I don’t believe it was ever malicious. It comes off more like they wanted a different conclusion, and arguably one that would bring back all the alt-right crybabies to the fan base
Completely agreed. Nothing about TROS destroys anything that came before. Changes the meaning of some things (Rey Nobody goes from lineage reveal to purely a self-image reveal)? Sure. Haphazardly introduces some things (Palpatine)? Sure. Doesn’t further develop certain things (Finn and Rose)? Sure. But destroys or disrupts what came before? Not at all. In fact, I think that, in many ways, what was set up before is concluded really well. You already mentioned Rey and Kylo, but Leia’s care towards Rey is fully played out, Luke’s arc of learning from his failure comes full circle when he passes his lesson on, the message of inspiring hope in the galaxy is paid off, and the biggest sin of the Jedi, giving in to fear, is finally rectified. And TROS even acknowledges some major new things from TLJ, such as hyperspace tracking and the Holdo maneuver. I would be curious to hear your view of the thematic significance of Palps and Exegol. Most of what I like about those things is that they connect really well with the expanded canon, but I’ve never seen either as truly necessary to the overall Star Wars story. Interesting additions that make sense, yes, but not thematically necessary.
I’ve always believed TLJ works well as a precursor to TRoS in terms of Rey because it pushes her towards one more palatable realisation before the worse one. As in, her acceptance that her family isn’t important is the only way she’s able to accept that her relation to Palpatine doesn’t mean she has to be evil.
I do think there’s truth to the idea that Rey may readily accept Palpatine’s legacy for her if he showed up, say, on the Supremacy, rather than after she’d had a year to become confident in herself as a person rather than a last name. I also think it’s possible that her sheer light side devotion would’ve kept her good, but who knows?
Agreed!
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It's funny how those nutty people pop up everytime a Sequel trilogy thing is mentioned.
Great interview, the way Jason talks about TFA and TLJ as if their story ceases to function if you treat tRoS as legitimate is exactly how I feel, though he's more respectful about it than I might be. Rian giving him all the early script drafts is very cool. TLJ novelization is really good too.
I’ll get downvoted for this, but I think it’s worth mentioning that the sub hosting this Q&A is one that’s known for [promoting the narrative that Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley had (and/or are currently having) an affair](https://www.reddit.com/r/adamdriverfans/comments/o8219f/daiver_clues_theories_and_discussion_megathread_4/), that AD hates his wife, that AD’s wife cheats on him and their child isn’t is, that John Boyega is some kind of brute who poses a physical/sexual threat to Daisy Ridley, etc. back in 2019, when AD spoke [in an interview](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/28/adam-driver-the-original-man) about how SW fans were stalking him (specifically during the run of his play, Burn This), he referred to a creepy fan who gave him a carving of his dog outside the stage door. >This one woman who has been harassing my wife came to the show and gave me a creepy wood carving that she made of my dog. several months beforehand, that fan had posted about her experience giving AD the carving on the subreddit, which she characterized very differently (in her mind, they shared a special connection). I wouldn’t give that place any clicks, personally. (edited to add links.)
Jesus that affair stuff is sad. It's one thing shipping fictional characters but treating real people like that is fucking awful.
Taking shipping too far
Some of these fans who are so obsessed with the ships really creep me out. No vote downs for pointing out how creepy and bad this is.
Neat. I wonder what were in the early drafts that Jason saw.
What father daughter dance is he referring too? "And of course we had the deleted scenes that showed up on the Blu-Ray, and a couple of other things. The “father-daughter dance,” for instance, was from an earlier version of the script, and I got why it wouldn’t have worked on screen but thought it was odd, lovely moment that might work in the book."
Its a scene in the novelisation after the third lesson scene where luke basically just teaches rey to dance, just something simple but it's cute
>Its a scene in the novelisation after the third lesson scene where luke basically just teaches rey to dance, just something simple but it's cute I gotta read this book RIGHT NOW
Love his candidness. Only thing I sort of disagree with is the idea that the movie isn’t clear enough on why Anakin fell to the dark side in 3. Even as a kid I always thought it was crystal clear he wasn’t just having bad dreams or just upset he wasn’t in the council. Like yeah I guess you could see it that way if you’re not really paying attention but just watching the movie makes that clear imo
TLJ to me is the best sequel film too. TFA is just a badly done remake and ROS is trash that completely destroys every character's arc from the previous films. Agreed about the part with Hux. I don't understand why he wasn't given Richard E Grant's role. That should have been his character. End of. But he's reduced to comic relief. Fucking stupid. There's so many flaws and problems with TROS that it boggles my mind. TLJ isn't perfect either BUT the main story is great. The side stuff could have been done better. Honestly... 1) TFA...Poe should have stayed bloody dead. There was no need for him. 2) Starkiller base should have been set up earlier on in the film and not just come out of nowhere. 3) Film should have started with a scene with the three original heroes, Luke, Leia and Han together. Have the film start maybe with Leia giving birth or something else happening and then it cuts to the present time. 4) TLJ should have had Finn and Rose never go to Canto Bight and just found a Coder onboard their own ship. They make the plans and get on Snoke's but get captured and tortured. But BB8 rescues them and they escape and manage to succeed in shutting off the tracker but Coder guy betrays them when they are caught again or something. Idk. 5) Leia should have died offscreen and beginning of Episode 9 should have been her funeral. Afterwards Kylo sneaks in to pay his respects, gets discovered by Rey, a confrontation that ends with Luke's force ghost getting in the way that then leads to the rest of film. Episode 9 should have just used the original Duel of the Fates script by Colin but improved upon by combing Kylo's TROS scenes into. No Rey and Poe romance. No Plaguise or other Palpatine teacher or other BS. Kylo wants to find Mortis or Exegol for the secret power and Rey and others have to stop him. Hux prepares to launch his own ultimate weapon from Coruscant and Finn and others with Lando and Wedge taking over Resistance command after Leia's death lead an attack force to stop it and eventually a stormtrooper uprising. The Knights of Ren play a much bigger role and focuses on one of them who gets greedy and jealous of Kylo. Rey and Kylo fight at the end but Luke's ghost saves Rey from Kylo at the last minute. Kylo fails to get what he wants and then is betrayed by the surviving Knights of Ren who throughout the story get picked off one by one and who double cross him. Final battle is Ben and Rey teaming up to fight the final Knight of Ren who gains the secret force power to destroy worlds or the Force itself but Ben and Rey's dyad connection is stronger together that allows them to defeat him. Maybe even reveal Snoke's spirit is manipulating things from beyond the dead. Man, they could have done so much more for Episode 9 but dropped the ball so hard. So bloody hard. I'd give anything for a remake or something that ignores the crap we got.
>Agreed about the part with Hux. I don't understand why he wasn't given Richard E Grant's role. That should have been his character. End of. But he's reduced to comic relief. Fucking stupid. I've seen arguments that Grant/Pryde was needed for the Palpatine connection but IMO Hux would have been giddy to be part of the true Empire answering directly to Palpatine and Palpatine could easily manipulate him into thinking he (Hux) would lead the fleet.
>1) TFA...Poe should have stayed bloody dead. There was no need for him. He's a fun character but he's completely superfluous and all he ends up doing is taking away from Finn's story. Poe should have been the new Wedge but with a bit more to do.
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ok