Star Wars Discussion Here [SPOILERS]

[zoraster]

Leia was born to padma at the end of Episode 3. If we assume Palpatine's child was also born at the same moment and then they both lived 30 years and then had Rey/Kylo and then those kids went 30 years to this movie (or whatever the supposed timeline) then Leia is 60 in the movies and Kylo/Rey are 30. It seems fine?

[panthaleon]

Did we even know Palpatine had a kid? Like who cares about the timeline? Narratively this comes out of nowhere just because people apparently can't handle a strong character that doesn't come from original trilogy lineage.

And again given that she is supposed to be the foil to Kylo Ren, what does that say thematically about them? The villain being a hero's descendant and vise versa is cool, but that was not seeded or foreshadowed at all in the rest of the trilogy.

The twist is just really cheap and unearned.

[gobbledygook]

I am interested to see what Star Wars does after TRoS. After seeing how unimportant made everything feel in TRoS I am actually excited for Rian Johnson’s triology where the films will at least have cinematic value even if it’s not as blockbuster-y.

I saw a thing on reddit the other day that said TLJ had the longest playtime before a lightsaber was actually deployed. I think that says everything you probably need to know about TLJ as a movie.

[chamber]

I thought the movie was bad until they got to the Sith planet. Then it became Phantom Menace bad (at least its still better than attack of the clones). When they kissed I couldn't stop myself from audible groaning.

[Firebringer]

this movie was phantom menace levels of bad. yeah.

[zoraster]

i feel like it's a very different kind of bad than phantom menace. but to me at least it's far more enjoyable than the phantom menace.

and yes. the kiss made me internally groan. i didn't feel like i needed a love story for rey at all, but if i did and if they were going to almost entirely erase rose anyway, i wish it had been finn rather than the emo wizard. also didn't need a random love interest for poe.

[chamber]

I agree with a different type of bad, just same magnitude.

[panthaleon]

But zor how would we know they're straight if they don't get female girl love interests?

[zoraster]

Or that black men shouldn't end up with white women?

[caledfwitch]

OK I JUST SAW THIS AND I HAVE 2 THINGS TO SAY:

1. i was mad about rey kissing kylo but he died immediately so i wasn't as mad. i'm still mad tho
2. rey-finn-poe polycule is my endgame ship this is my universe brain take

carry on

[Aronis]

I'm just going to list all my complaints with this movie because I feel like it.

The plot was a disaster. We had to watch them go to every freaking planet in the star wars universe in 2-3 hours and some of the planets they visited were unnecessary to the story line. I think visiting a few planets in a movie makes for much better pacing and doesn't rush things too much. It was a silly and poorly put together plot.

The Leia situation was a mess. I realize there was no easy way for them to remedy this, but at the point that they literally use the same scene twice in the same movie and explicitly reuse a scene that was in TFA is just excusable. Leia's dialogue wasn't particularly good either- like Leia wasn't even good in TFA, so it just made for a mess. I don't really fault them that much for this, but it was painful to watch.

Rey being Palpatine's grandchild was a colossal act of stupidity. It was one of those "twists" that they continually tried to implement throughout this movie that felt gimmicky and poor. Rey's parents are nobodies, BUT WAIT- her grandfather is someone! It also completely contradicts TLJ, something they did too much. Watching this "trilogy" would make your head hurt. There was literally no established connection or relationship between Rey and Palpatine, so naturally this didn't work. It added nothing. I can't help but question the logic behind this too- Did Palpatine have a kid at 60? Because he was already old in TPM. And I can't possibly imagine Palpatine as a lover, father, etc. This is another case where they completely ignored the character and just reshaped them as needed to fit their awful plot. It's just a twist for the sake of having a twist and it fell flat. The scenes where Rey adopts the Skywalker family name would have been just as, if not more, powerful if she was an orphan without a background. This also leads me into my next complaint, constantly "resurrecting" characters. I don't get why Palpatine needed to come back from the dead at all- he didn't uniquely add anything to this film. Snoke could have fulfilled his exact role without any issues. In TFA, Snoke was literally a straight up rip off of Palpatine, so just leave him alive and use him here. There were much more egregious errors of bringing characters back to life too. Chewbacca, Zorii Bliss, Kylo Ren, C-3PO, etc. all died (3PO's death was more symbolic) and were then brought back to life within minutes. It completely undermines any emotional gravity in the film. A character dying is only meaningful when they're truly gone, they need to commit. If not, I'm literally not going to care every time a character dies because I know they'll be back. Whenever they inevitably make Episode 10, I fully expect to see Kylo Ren at some point. I would also keep the force ghosts to a minimum. Not everybody should be able to communicate from the grave, limit it to actual trained Jedi.

Rey's character was flat and boring. For the second time in three films, she felt like a Mary Sue that had complete control of the force and it was boring. Save for a rare moment or two like at the end against Palpatine, she had no troubles or weaknesses and it makes for a very boring heroine.

This is probably a complaint more with star wars in general than this particular film, but I've grown very tired of the Empire's weapons of mass destruction and blatantly obvious achilles heel. They're constantly trying to make the villains more powerful than ever before to the point it's gotten ridiculous and lost all emotional gravity to me. Instead of 1 death star there's now 1000 death stars. And of course they still have their obvious weakness of a single communications tower/flagship being the only way to fly their ships because god forbid they build multiple comm towers or equip the star destroyer death stars with a navigation system. It felt silly, but with 4-5/9 star wars movies utilizing this, it's probably just me getting tired and outgrowing star wars and not a problem unique to this film.

Then my last (for right now, I'll probably remember more problems later) complaint is the horrific message this sends. Disney and consequently Star Wars tries to be progressive, but fails massively. In fact, when this film had an opportunity to make a big stand and be progressive- it consistently went in the exact opposite direction without fail. Having token progressives scenes and characters in the background means absolutely nothing when they overarching plot strongly features racist and sexist themes. The way Kelly Marie Tran was treated after TLJ was horrific, but it presented Disney with an opportunity to double down on inclusiveness and send a message and they massively failed. This film would have been stronger if her character accompanied Finn/Poe/Rey and they chose to completely sideline her to appease racists. There was no logical reason to make her this irrelevant except for pure racism on Disney's part. Disney then doubled down on this by pairing Rey with a physically and mentally abusive SO and then proceeded to glorify that connection between them. It was sickening to watch and the way Disney portrayed that in the film was absolutely horrific and irresponsible. Rather then sending a message against that, it condoned abuse.

The music was amazing and there were scenes and moments I appreciated, but they were few and far between. It was a sad end to the franchise.

[BBmolla]

I'm just really disappointed because I feel like the takeaway continues to be 'never do anything new. Never challenge the fans. Make the same movie over and over.' But I guess if you really liked the original trilogy, it makes sense you would like TFA and RoS

They're all part of the same series, they should seem congruent.

now with the newer sets of series and such we could see new takes on Star Wars. Like with the mandalorian.

[pirate mollie]

Also I am working on a theory

I like the idea you're sitting in a dark room somewhere with only a small lamp illuminating the desk that you are stooped over as you tirelessly work out a star wars theory, muttering to yourself and crumpling up papers as it just. doesn't. quite. work. But you know the truth is there, so you keep working because we've got to figure it out.

More seriously, don't think too hard about a JJ Abrams movie. He's there to raise questions whether purposefully or through shoddy storytelling, not to provide a logical line to a real answer (see: Lost).

its only

half

full, tyvm

I actually have had this theory since since Episode 3 when Palpatine had his pep talk with Anaken about preventing Padme from dying when they were watching that play of what looked like spirillum swiimming around on a petri dish. It was also a popular theory in the fanfiction books that I read as a child. Aren't the scripts taken from a rough outline of the entire story to work from?

I rewatched the first 3 Episodes and man that is some cringeworthy writing and dialogue. BUT. It heavily alluded that Palpatine knew how to manipulate the midiclorians and how to prevent death. I mean that is the whole reason Anaken turned to the darkside was because he thought Palpatine knew how to do those things.

WRT the age thing, I am wondering when he had his daughter...she wld have had to be born pre-Palpatine's self-elcetrocution, right? I mean as rough as he looked I wld assume he would be sterile.

So yeah, the return of Palpatine did not just come out of nowhere.

Also I loved how they worked in some of the Old Republic lore. That was needed I think.

[panthaleon]

Aronis hitting us with that good shit.

Can I also say the dagger was the stupidest thing? Apparently it fixes the 'ploy hole' of why the death star is shaped stupid, but it only works if you're a few hundred yards away. You know a few hundred yards away from that thing that is supposed to fly in space. Also it just points to the throne room next to which is a vault. Why is the dagger a compass? Why does it belong to a random fucko bounty hunter? Why couldn't the good guys have just crept onto the death star and found the Emperor's throne for the wayfinder?

Instead they had to find the McGuffin texts to point to where Luke was looking for the McGuffin bounty hunter, only to find the McGuffin dagger which can't be translated until they find a McGuffin mechanic, who then leads them to the McGuffin planet where they find the throne room inside of which is the McGuffin wayfinder. Why is this movie just a series of uninterrupted fetch quests?

[Flavor Leaf]

Y’all they were setting up Reylo since the beginning, you can clearly see Adam Driver portraying his love and obsession for Rey.

I couldn’t not think about it when I watch TLJ.

Also, it’s a perfect example of why trilogies should all be directed by the same person. RJ completely drops all of the crumbs JJ left in TFA in TLJ, so JJ had to make due.

Narratively, it actually works pretty well as a character story, despite execution being done poorly mainly because of TLJ and the trash Casino third of the movie.

Kylo has a fantastic arc. Rey’s got a solid arc.

Finn/Poe, yeah whatever. They’re just there.

Prequels have a good story with crap execution too.

—

On the subject of Rose, the casino was a major side quest, that’s fine to have happened, but it didn’t need to really be shown onscreen especially because the thief didn’t show up in Rise. Rose should have just been a smaller character in TLJ, and then it wouldn’t have been jarring in Rise. Billie Lourde’s character size.

[Flavor Leaf]

Also Phantom Menace is better than Attack of the Clones. Phantom Menace just is burdened with literal pointless Jar Jar filler comic scenes, and trash bad directing (even for this standard) for all of Anakin’s scenes.

I actually just recorded a podcast for the new trilogy as a whole, and another one for explaining the intricacies of the prequels, and nailing the main reasons it was taken as bad and what to do to fix them.

[panthaleon]

Just because they're setting up the same tired romance from the first movie doesn't mean an audience is required to find it interesting or narratively compelling. Literally everyone saw Reylo coming, but that didn't make it elicit any fewer bored groans.

Like what if instead of pairing off the male and female leads, we break from the mold of 'angsty damaged bad boy does a good and wins the female' and instead they have some sort of sibling love arc. That would have been less stupid.

[SleepyKrew]

even after the kiss I think they were 0% romantic

[chamber]

Kylo being obsessed with Rey, and there being some kind of connection between the 2 doesn't mean its a romantic connection, or that Rey was obsessed with Kylo. They had literally 0 romantic chemistry.


Kylo's arc was shit. You can say it was shit because the 2nd movie didn't do enough setup for how the third movie wanted him to turn. But I'll say the third movie wanted to be derivative of the original trilogy so needed their bad guy to redeem and a new big bad. The 2nd movie did an excellent job of setting him up as someone that was completely unredeemable because he already saw himself as the good guy. He was the big bad.

[Pine]

Finally saw the movie, need to digest it and then read this thread. Overall impression highly positive while recognizing pacing flaws and some absurdities.

[Errantparabola]

My friend explained he thought of the kiss as a weird incestuous, bit of a throwback to the luke leia smooch (with rey being a symbolic skywalker & kylo ren being a skywalker by blood + them being force sibling or whatever that was)

[Errantparabola]

Also theres a compilation vid somewhere out there of oscar isaac being exhaustedly disappointed in various interviews that they didnt let him be in a relationship with finn

Edit: this one prob hits a lot of them https://amp.popbuzz.com/tv-film/news/os ... ars-memes/

[Errantparabola]

one thing is i thought anakin was the chosen one so he was the one to bring balance to the universe. So why does it suck again.

[SleepyKrew]

one thing is i thought anakin was the chosen one so he was the one to bring balance to the universe. So why does it suck again.

he balanced it and then it got unbalanced again
balancing doesn't last forever I guess
I think he even said "balance the force like I did" when they were all giving rey a pep talk
in summation: there isn't actually a good answer lol
also, I never got how the good guys beating the bad guys was "balance"

[chamber]

I thought anakin brought balance when he killed all the jedi.