Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Pre-release)
- Thread starter Bryancd
- Start date
I just like Star Wars. I’ll see the movie. I hope it’s good. I liked TFA. TLJ wasn’t my favorite, but I still want to know where the story goes.
I ended up liking Solo. The stuff about the actor didn’t take away from my enjoyment.
No idea what I’m in for. If there was no internet, I’m sure I’d show up 2-3 years later pumped that there was a new movie. I just hate the bickering.
I ended up liking Solo. The stuff about the actor didn’t take away from my enjoyment.
No idea what I’m in for. If there was no internet, I’m sure I’d show up 2-3 years later pumped that there was a new movie. I just hate the bickering.
Joek3rr
Master Member
First look at some concept art and reference images from Episode IX via a Reddit leak.
Some cool aliens, Lando (sporting a familiar outfit), Rey, Poe, and Kylo Ren (with repaired helmet!).
Leaked Episode IX Concept Art and Reference Photos : StarWarsLeaks
I'm so happy to see Kylo's helmet back, and the image seems to confirm he's repaired it with some sort of red adhesive/weld. It has a very kintsugi vibe to it, which I dig. I also love the cloak w/ hood look. Very regal. I don't like Rey's costume as much as I did in TLJ, but the all white color way is pretty cool. Poe looks exactly like Nathan Drake from Uncharted 3 haha.
Leaked Episode IX Concept Art and Reference Photos : StarWarsLeaks
I'm so happy to see Kylo's helmet back, and the image seems to confirm he's repaired it with some sort of red adhesive/weld. It has a very kintsugi vibe to it, which I dig. I also love the cloak w/ hood look. Very regal. I don't like Rey's costume as much as I did in TLJ, but the all white color way is pretty cool. Poe looks exactly like Nathan Drake from Uncharted 3 haha.
I should have been more sarcastic when posting that. I totally agree having to buy a book to understand a movie/show is terrible
Solos blaster
Sr Member
You’re good. I know you weren’t condoning it from the rest of your post. I should have included “if they do.” To the end of my first sentence.
It doesn’t matter if Disney does it, ANY content creator that wants to utilize that tactic is terrible.
Zuiun
Sr Member
Right, but the point is that these unanswered threads weren't becoming the focus of the story. After ANH, no one knew if there was ever going to be another film. Lucas didn't even know, so he structured it as a one-off just in case (which is why, narratively, it has a number of elements out of place with the rest of the films). But we really had nothing major unanswered by the end of the film, except Vader escaping. We just had a lot of little world-building facts.
When ESB ended, the fan focus wasn't "who is this Emperor guy and where did he come from?" or "I need to know Yoda's backstory." The conversation following that film was "HOLY **** VADER IS LUKE'S FATHER"-- exactly where it needed to be to move the story along.
The problem with Force Awakens is that the questions people SHOULD have been asking all along were "what is awakening in the Force," and about Luke and just what was going on with him. Those are literally the primary story points from the title and opening crawl. Instead, JJ glossed over this "awakening" in the Force (making people mad about why Rey was able to get powerful) and didn't make the mystery of Luke seem all that important (because he knew it was already getting solved -- JJ isn't interested in solved mysteries), so the narrative instead makes too big of a deal of these side threads.
So after the film, everyone is wanting to know Snoke's backstory, or endlessly speculating about who Rey's parents must be. And this is a problem, because this is not where the story was ever meant to go. Those were meant to be side details. Interesting, but ultimately unimportant to the primary narratives of: Why did Luke vanish and what's going on with the Force?
It was so messy, in fact, that Rian Johnson had to spend so much time trying to clean up that nonsense that not enough emphasis was given to Luke's story and people are still confused about what was going on with him. Hint: it wasn't a character assassination, it was about Luke making a mistake. He never "ran away." He initially went to Ahch-To looking for answers. While there, he came to the mistaken conclusion that the only way to break the cycle was to remove himself from the equation and not train any more Jedi. In a very Luke move, he was attempting to sacrifice himself, and just like his decision to leave Dagobah early, he didn't consider all of the implications of his plan.
All of that is there in the film, but it's competing against the noise of having to deal with the Snoke and Rey problems, and the need to either snip those threads or try to tie them back into the story.
I'm not a Last Jedi hater, but I do concede that the film is a mess in a lot of ways. It's a mess that was inherited by the fractured storytelling from Force Awakens.
One thing I will give George Lucas credit for is that he had the ability to just wave his hands and Jedi mind trick us into just not caring about continuity issues from previous films. He was bold enough to throw the "well, Vader did kill your father.... from a certain point of view" nonsense in our faces and we could either just deal with it or GTFO. I feel like that's what Johnson was trying to do with Snoke's backstory and Rey's parents, but it backfired on him because fans had already been obsessing too hard on those issues to be willing to accept anything less than detailed continuations of those threads.
To bring this back to my original concerns about the next film, I worry that JJ won't be able to stop himself from doing his mystery box thing. What I feel needs to happen is for the next film to just accept where things are and focus on telling a tight story to conclude the trilogy. The only two things it should be worrying about are how the Resistance is going to rebuild and take on the First Order, and what this awakening in the Force means for the galaxy. Anything else would be an unnecessary distraction at this point in the game.
CT1138
Sr Member
"A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense. Never for attack."
They're meant to use their lightsaber as a defensive weapon only. Not go galavanting into battle as they did during the Clone Wars.
I agree. But the fact that they carry a weapon that they themselves designed suggests that they would come across enough conflicts to necessitate being armed.
Ideally yes they would use it for defense and never for attack, but there is nothing to suggest that they can't kick ass defending themselves or other innocent by standers.
Ideally yes they would use it for defense and never for attack, but there is nothing to suggest that they can't kick ass defending themselves or other innocent by standers.
cboath
Master Member
Snoke paralleled the emperor. People were curious about a backstory more because of 'how did this guy turn Ben', not because they had to know. As I said, we still don't know palpatine's really. People thought there might be more to him, but RJ opted to not have more too him.
Rey's parents maybe had more legs in that they're shown from the waist down, so we know they exist and left. We didn't know Lukes parent's existed, we simply assumed both were dead and frankly, it was never flatly stated the mother was, in fact, dead. Leia says she died, but that's BS because she died when Leia was a whole 30 seconds old. For 20 years, mom being alive or dead was actually an open question, but it didn't deride anything.
Part of Rey's issue's is that she struggles with her identity because shed doesn't know who she is. If you want to believe Ben and RJ, TLJ tells her, she is who she it and she shouldn't care about her parents as they abandoned her. It doesn't detract from anything other than people who wanted them to be something more.
Another bit of storytelling is you leave some things up to the imagination. You answer some, but not all questions that arise. The questions you answer don't always have a satisfactory answer either.
As I said, the problem with laying out the questions is, you dont' control the answer if you're not in control of the whole story, which JJ was not.
Again, i have no problem with Snoke. He served a purpose, but just wasn't fleshed out very well. The emperor in the OT wasn't fleshed out any more either. If you ignore the the one line reference in ANH, the emperor/snoke stuff lines up pretty much.
ESB - hologram to Vader to instruct him to go get luke, TFA - hologram to instruct kylo/Hux
ROTJ - EP visits with vader on the DS/ TLJ Snoke visits with Hux and Kylo
ROTJ - EP tells vader luke will come to him, TLJ - Rey comes to Ben (both thinking they'll turn the other to kill EP/Snoke)
ROTJ - EP teases luke about killing his friends, TLJ Snoke teases Rey
ROTJ - EP tortures Luke, TLJ Snoke tortures Rey
ROTJ - Vader kills EP, TLJ Ben kills snoke (though for different reasons)
We get no more info about one or the other, yet one is a screw up on JJ and the other is completely acceptable.
Now, maybe with a huge internet following in the 70's/early 80's we trash GL for not giving us more about the emperor. Who knows. But apples to apples, there doesn't seem to be a lot of difference.
People speculated about those things because that's what you do when you have 2 years between part 1 and part 2. FFS, go back and check some chat logs on Harry Potter forums between books. The amount of things discussed ad naseum for miniscule clues dwarfs anything in this thread. They just kept looking and didn't trash the prior parts as the reason.
If you answer everything in Part 1, there's no need to have part 2.
Rey's parents maybe had more legs in that they're shown from the waist down, so we know they exist and left. We didn't know Lukes parent's existed, we simply assumed both were dead and frankly, it was never flatly stated the mother was, in fact, dead. Leia says she died, but that's BS because she died when Leia was a whole 30 seconds old. For 20 years, mom being alive or dead was actually an open question, but it didn't deride anything.
Part of Rey's issue's is that she struggles with her identity because shed doesn't know who she is. If you want to believe Ben and RJ, TLJ tells her, she is who she it and she shouldn't care about her parents as they abandoned her. It doesn't detract from anything other than people who wanted them to be something more.
Another bit of storytelling is you leave some things up to the imagination. You answer some, but not all questions that arise. The questions you answer don't always have a satisfactory answer either.
As I said, the problem with laying out the questions is, you dont' control the answer if you're not in control of the whole story, which JJ was not.
Again, i have no problem with Snoke. He served a purpose, but just wasn't fleshed out very well. The emperor in the OT wasn't fleshed out any more either. If you ignore the the one line reference in ANH, the emperor/snoke stuff lines up pretty much.
ESB - hologram to Vader to instruct him to go get luke, TFA - hologram to instruct kylo/Hux
ROTJ - EP visits with vader on the DS/ TLJ Snoke visits with Hux and Kylo
ROTJ - EP tells vader luke will come to him, TLJ - Rey comes to Ben (both thinking they'll turn the other to kill EP/Snoke)
ROTJ - EP teases luke about killing his friends, TLJ Snoke teases Rey
ROTJ - EP tortures Luke, TLJ Snoke tortures Rey
ROTJ - Vader kills EP, TLJ Ben kills snoke (though for different reasons)
We get no more info about one or the other, yet one is a screw up on JJ and the other is completely acceptable.
Now, maybe with a huge internet following in the 70's/early 80's we trash GL for not giving us more about the emperor. Who knows. But apples to apples, there doesn't seem to be a lot of difference.
People speculated about those things because that's what you do when you have 2 years between part 1 and part 2. FFS, go back and check some chat logs on Harry Potter forums between books. The amount of things discussed ad naseum for miniscule clues dwarfs anything in this thread. They just kept looking and didn't trash the prior parts as the reason.
If you answer everything in Part 1, there's no need to have part 2.
Joek3rr
Master Member
Joek3rr
Master Member
I don't believe Rey's parents were ever shown from the waist down.
And I feel I need to remind that Rey is the one that says her parents were nobodies. Ben simply adds that they were filthy junk traders.
Zuiun
Sr Member
I don't think we're too far off from agreement here.
Maybe a better way of getting at what I was trying to say is exactly what you said here: JJ was not in control of the story.
The title of the film and the opening crawl told us the things the story should be about: this "awakening" of the Force, and whatever happened to Luke Skywalker. But the actual film itself doesn't really seem all that concerned with either of these. They are just as vague notions in the film as who Snoke is and where Rey came from. There really aren't any definitive clues to tell us, as the audience, where our focus should be.
So by the end of the film, we've got all of these mysteries and zero answers. And what's worse, not really any significant insight into which questions we should consider to be the important ones.
Among the people who disliked The Last Jedi, a lot of them put blame on Rian Johnson. But the reality is that he came into a story that really had no cohesive focus and he had to try to figure out how to take all of these different story directions and put them on the same path. Some think he failed, some think he succeeded. That's the subjective part. Objectively, though, anyone coming into that project would have had a tough time figuring out how to reign in the focus.
I agree with you that you don't go answering all the questions in part 1 if your plan is to have a part 2. However, the problem with franchise filmmaking is that you then run the risk of creating stories that are *too* open-ended. You have to answer *some* questions so that each individual film can have a beginning, middle, and end, while leaving the main plot to the long form storytelling of a trilogy.
And again, we're back to the question of the day: Can JJ Abrams, a man who usually loses interest in finishing the stories he starts, actually finish this one?
CB2001
Master Member
WTF? WHY?! My collector side is in pain from watching that!
Let the past die, kill it if you have to.
Joek3rr
Master Member
No that's Ben(Anakin) telling Rey(Padme) to let the past go. To come with him so that they can create their own order, and rule the galaxy.
PantheraGem
Sr Member
Hear a woosh above you?
robstyle
Master Member
If you go back many moons ago, before the dark times, before the Rian, when there was a coherent synopsis and story for the new trilogy starting with EP7, youll find out Rey was to be an incarnation of the Balance of the Force being both good and bad in one Yin Yang being, she had no parents. The "junk traders" were just that. Newborns used to be abandoned often back in the day IRL, my own grandfather was one. He was dumped on a farmers porch, cord still attached and covered in mama juices. It was a diffent world in the 1920's. With Rey picking up the Force and mastering a lightsaber faster than a Nintendo cheat code, its clear as day when those force powers reveal themselves in EP7 her demeanour turns to anger and aggression... she ended up just confused in EP8 even while raising a blade to Luke, but if the Balance of the Force Rey is to come back in EP9, she would not only be the Last Jedi but also the Last Sith. If you swap that order you may well end up with another trilogy, say one set back 1000 or so years, where its more a middle/dark ages setting where the Sith had the Yin Yang Balance of the Force leading the way for the bad guys, whom may or may not have been the original Knights of Ren, it becomes more and more apparent things were set in place with even the most basic back story even if it be one unwritten at the time. It wont surprise me, as ive prior said, if EP9 ends on a form of cliffhanger to be revisited in ten years real time with a new trilogy of EP10-12.
Similar threads
