Movies ~*Colin Trevorrow's Star Wars: Episode IX - Duel of the Fates OT*~

[SuperSpreader]

1 minute ago, SaysWho? said:

 

Many people, which is why you're hearing a stink being made.

[SaysWho?]

That thing with Palpatine shooting lightning into the sky was really cool and scary, but it's also confusing:

 

"So basically:

 

Palpatine wants Rey to kill him.

 

Palpatine, after draining the lifeforce from Rey/Kylo says screw it, I'll be the emperor anyway.

 

He lighting storms everyone.

 

He stops the storm to focus on Rey, their whole thing happens where he kills himself.

 

Instead he can continue doing the lightning storm, and put Rey in a checkmate scenario. Every friend she knows is going to die, alongside all of the extra recruits, OR Rey has to do what Palpatine wanted her to do the entire time and strike him down.

 

Palpatine is in the best possible position to not lose with what the movie sets up. He instead stops for no reason, even when there is no real fear of being attacked by Rey because SHE LITERALLY CAN NOT without falling into your original ploy.

 

Oh boy."

 

 

Yo, that would have been an interesting scene. fffuuu-

[johnny]

^ but that’s means JJ would have to actually take a risk 

[SaysWho?]

6 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Fair enough...but I argue that the problems with the film come mainly from the choices that were made LONG before they made it to the edit room. Yes there were some poorly paced moments,  but they were exacerbated by all the stuuf JJ felt he had to shoe-horn into the film in order to appease the trolls and THAT fucked up the flow more than an awkward edit or two.

 

Well, whether the problems mainly or partly come from it, I think the movie should have had more time to cook to tighten things up. 

 

Or just wait for Rian Johnson instead of needing to release a movie in a year where you already had a billion other billion-dollar grossing films.

 

But if they gave JJ more time, I know it wouldn't have saved the film; the story decisions were at best safe and entertaining and at worst creatively bankrupt.

[SaysWho?]

I read this post on Reset and I swear to GOD, this sounds like @Kal-El814 wrote it:

 

Quote

Luke's scene is maybe my least favourite one in the movie right now. The idea of Rey going back to Ahch To to have like a three-minute crisis of conscience is so utterly ludicrous that I wonder if JJ even saw TLJ let alone understood anything about it. It's like he had the movie on in the background and the only things he took in were the parts he'd have to retcon to make his Palpatine story happen and the Reddit complaints he'd have to have Mark Hamill apologise for on screen.

 

Rey spent a couple of nights on Ahch-To, never clicked with Luke, then left. She never forged a master/apprentice bond with Luke, and in fact he learnt more from her than she did from him. The idea that she'd go rushing back there, crash her spaceship and literally tell Luke "I'M GOING TO BE A HERMIT JUST LIKE YOU WERE! TELL ME HOW TO MILK THE TIDDYFISH!". Absurd. The place means nothing to her. She has an actual house on Jakku where she spent her entire life until TFA happened.

 

And then that's Luke's only appearance in the movie until the ghost smile at the end!

 

C'mon: y'all know if Kal said the bold, it would have been a classic Kal-ism.

[Kal-El814]

1 minute ago, SaysWho? said:

I read this post on Reset and I swear to GOD, this sounds like @Kal-El814 wrote it:

 

 

C'mon: y'all know if Kal said the bold, it would have been a classic Kal-ism.

No. I spell titty with t’s because I’m not a savage. 

[johnny]

ROS Luke was weak

[Bacon]

Are we in open spoilers yet? Anyway,

 

There is literally no reason That Kylo Ben Ren has to actually be dead for good. Sure, it seems like he did that dead force vanish thing, but they can really just come up with any BS excuse to keep him actually alive. At least, this movie says that is a valid thing to do. 

 

[skillzdadirecta]

On 12/22/2019 at 12:43 AM, Bacon said:

Are we in open spoilers yet? Anyway,

 

There is literally no reason That Kylo Ben Ren has to actually be dead for good. Sure, it seems like he did that dead force vanish thing, but they can really just come up with any BS excuse to keep him actually alive. At least, this movie says that is a valid thing to do. 

 

 

Only if you're Emperor Palpatine.

 

[Kal-El814]

9 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Fair enough...but I argue that the problems with the film come mainly from the choices that were made LONG before they made it to the edit room. Yes there were some poorly paced moments,  but they were exacerbated by all the stuuf JJ felt he had to shoe-horn into the film in order to appease the trolls and THAT fucked up the flow more than an awkward edit or two.

Yeah.

 

Again let’s stick to just TFA for a second. 
 

Finn lies to the resistance about being able to nerf the shields on Starkiller base. He has no idea how to do that, he just wants to save Rey. So the resistance shows up early, and a lot of pilots die. That’s on Finn. Han ends up confronting Kylo and dies. That’s on Finn. One of our alleged heroes in TFA spends almost the entire movie deceiving everyone else, other people dying for it, and is rewarded with friendship with Poe, BB8, Rey, etc. Even Chewie. 
 

The only reason it works at all is the bombast, the pace, and the casting / actors being great. 
 

Give JJ more time and RoS would absolutely be more competently edited. But those character and narrative issues aren’t going anywhere, that’s JJ at his core. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

On 12/22/2019 at 12:20 AM, SaysWho? said:

That thing with Palpatine shooting lightning into the sky was really cool and scary, but it's also confusing:

 

"So basically:

 

Palpatine wants Rey to kill him.

 

Palpatine, after draining the lifeforce from Rey/Kylo says screw it, I'll be the emperor anyway.

 

He lighting storms everyone.

 

He stops the storm to focus on Rey, their whole thing happens where he kills himself.

 

Instead he can continue doing the lightning storm, and put Rey in a checkmate scenario. Every friend she knows is going to die, alongside all of the extra recruits, OR Rey has to do what Palpatine wanted her to do the entire time and strike him down.

 

Palpatine is in the best possible position to not lose with what the movie sets up. He instead stops for no reason, even when there is no real fear of being attacked by Rey because SHE LITERALLY CAN NOT without falling into your original ploy.

 

Oh boy."

 

Yo, that would have been an interesting scene. fffuuu-

It wasn’t just Palpatine being killed that he wanted. It was the how and why. She had to strike him down out of fear, hatred, or anger. Giving herself to the dark side. She kills him as a Jedi, firmly planted in the light, or worse, balanced within the Force, then it is game over for Palpatine. 

 

being restored was not something he was expecting. Once he was healed, yeah, he didn’t need anyone else to take over the Sith now. At least not for decades. 
 

He stopped to deal with her, to just swat her like a fly. He didn’t think he needed her any more. She was more trouble than she’s worth. 
 
As for killing Palpatine, What I saw looked like much more than just reflecting the lighting back like Mace Windu. To me (and my sister too) it looked like she was force pushing the lighting back in face. As if combining what Yoda did in EpIII with that Mace did.

[Greatoneshere]

57 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

Yeah.

 

Again let’s stick to just TFA for a second. 
 

Finn lies to the resistance about being able to nerf the shields on Starkiller base. He has no idea how to do that, he just wants to save Rey. So the resistance shows up early, and a lot of pilots die. That’s on Finn. Han ends up confronting Kylo and dies. That’s on Finn. One of our alleged heroes in TFA spends almost the entire movie deceiving everyone else, other people dying for it, and is rewarded with friendship with Poe, BB8, Rey, etc. Even Chewie. 
 

The only reason it works at all is the bombast, the pace, and the casting / actors being great. 
 

Give JJ more time and RoS would absolutely be more competently edited. But those character and narrative issues aren’t going anywhere, that’s JJ at his core. 

 

I agree, but to be fair, Finn does get the shields down. But I also kept thinking it was super messed up to risk the Resistance just so you have an opportunity to save Rey, which is all Finn really cares about in that movie. Not only that, but because the attack isn't working even with the shields down, Finn, Han, and company decide to use explosives on the thermal occillator directly, something they didn't have to do (their job was only to bring down the shields) and that's when Han meets Kylo, so that aspect isn't so much on Finn, and they did an extra thing that saved the day that wasn't part of the original mission plan, so that's something. 

 

Also, time crunch or no, JJ Abrams co-wrote and directed both TFA and TROS. He takes primary blame for most of the issues with these movies, not time crunch. Anyone who watched Star Trek Into Darkness will tell you that he can't make good sequels, and despite how fun Star Trek 2009 was, any real Trek fan would tell you restarting a franchise with Star Trek 09 ruined Star Trek since it didn't even have the feel of Star Trek. Similarly, TFA did not have the feel of Star Wars but rather a Pirates of the Caribbean quippy action adventure movie, and Star Wars was always slower paced and more character driven than that. Like Star Trek, this YA adaptation/CW Star Wars is the Star Wars we have now and that's been clear since TFA and that's thanks to JJ Abrams. Star Wars was fucked once TFA came out - I remember coming out of it, long before TLJ, and going: "that movie was super fast, and didn't feel like Star Wars, but I guess that's Star Wars now" and made peace with it. The prequels sucked, so it's not like Star Wars was sacrosanct for me anymore anyway. 

[Greatoneshere]

On 12/21/2019 at 6:01 PM, CitizenVectron said:

I lol'd at this:

 

Ochi is a "Jedi hunter"/Sith loyalist who Sheev, who must have been alive since at least 15 ABY or so, sent out to capture his granddaughter. He found Rey's parents on Jakku but they sold (!!) their daughter to Unkar Plutt to protect her, then he captured them and took off in his ship (even though Rey was standing RIGHT THERE YELLING AT THE SHIP TO COME BACK). When he couldn't get the parents to speak about Rey's whereabouts, he killed them with his ceremonial dagger, which he had specifically carved to visually demonstrate the location of Sheev's Wayfinder within the wreckage of the Death Star if you hold the dagger up at a certain angle and stand on a certain spot of land. For some reason. He also inscribed on the dagger in the Sith runes the coordinates to find the DSII pieces. He then went to Pasaana, for some reason, and Luke and Lando were chasing him presumably because he's a Jedi hunter and he knew the way to Exegol, which they wanted to find for reasons, but he died when he stepped into quicksand outside his parked ship and got eaten by a snake.

 

 

I said this in my original post - none of that aspect of the film made any sense, and it totally derails the second act. 

[skillzdadirecta]

JJ Abrams himself  is also on record saying that he isn't great at endings so take that for what's worth. The more I think about it, the more I believe that THIS particular film was too much for JJ and because of that, all of the things that he may or may not have been given a pass on in the past were exacerbated in this movie. It's even made MORE glaring coming after The Last Jedi which is a FAR more superior piece of filmmaking whether you like the story choices or not. Also given the fact that the cinemascore for The Last Jedi (A) is higher than The Rise of Skywalker (B+), maybe filmmakers would be smart to follow Lindelof's lead and take themselves off of Twitter and concentrate on telling their stories. Ignore the vocal internet minority because CLEARLY they don't represent the majority of the filmgoing public. Trying to please a population that WON'T be pleased no matter what you do is a fool's errand because while they THINK they know what they want, they really don't. It reminds me of this clip from The Simpsons

 

 

You can't create something trying to appease a specific group. The best you can do is tell your story and trust your instincts... you start making story decisions trying to "please the fans" and you're more than likely fucked.

[skillzdadirecta]

On 12/22/2019 at 11:14 AM, Greatoneshere said:

I said this in my original post - none of that aspect of the film made any sense, and it totally derails the second act. 

 

So did I... that whole scavenger hunt is actually worse than the Canto Bite sequence in The Last Jedi. Like I said, it seems to only exist to give the big three some screen time together. The logistics behind the knife make absolutely no sense and are best ignored. No point in trying to make sense of that.

[Kal-El814]

1 hour ago, Greatoneshere said:

I agree, but to be fair, Finn does get the shields down. But I also kept thinking it was super messed up to risk the Resistance just so you have an opportunity to save Rey, which is all Finn really cares about in that movie. Not only that, but because the attack isn't working even with the shields down, Finn, Han, and company decide to use explosives on the thermal occillator directly, something they didn't have to do (their job was only to bring down the shields) and that's when Han meets Kylo, so that aspect isn't so much on Finn, and they did an extra thing that saved the day that wasn't part of the original mission plan, so that's something. 

Finn gets the shields down by complete happenstance. If they find Rey before that other shit, Finn bails. Let's not give him too much credit for derping into what he lied about being there to do. TFA Finn is a fun character, but again, he's so JJ it hurts. Run fast, scream earnestly, and hope people don't notice that one of your main characters is only superficially good.

[CitizenVectron]

lol. Palpatine's Journey (cartoon video):

 

SPOILERS (kind of?):

 

 

[CayceG]

1 minute ago, Kal-El814 said:

Finn gets the shields down by complete happenstance. If they find Rey before that other shit, Finn bails. Let's not give him too much credit for derping into what he lied about being there to do. TFA Finn is a fun character, but again, he's so JJ it hurts. Run fast, scream earnestly, and hope people don't notice that one of your main characters is only superficially good.

 

And I think Rian Johnson picked up on it and developed the character enough in TLJ to overcome those shortcomings. 

 

Later today I will see if this is completely reversed by JJ's lack of storytelling skill. 

[Kal-El814]

4 minutes ago, CayceG said:

And I think Rian Johnson picked up on it and developed the character enough in TLJ to overcome those shortcomings. 

I 100% agree.

[CitizenVectron]

[CitizenVectron]

Oh also:

 

 

lol

 

[CitizenVectron]

Looks like $176 million opening weekend (domestic). TFA was $247, TLJ was $220: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/12/22/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-has-176-million-opening-weekend.html

 

There are people online already making the argument that TLJ made less than TFA because people didn't like TLJ, but TROS made less than TLJ because...people didn't like TLJ. So is it the movie that comes before that matters, or the movie itself? Depends if it's directed by Rian Johnson.

[Greatoneshere]

49 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

Finn gets the shields down by complete happenstance. If they find Rey before that other shit, Finn bails. Let's not give him too much credit for derping into what he lied about being there to do. TFA Finn is a fun character, but again, he's so JJ it hurts. Run fast, scream earnestly, and hope people don't notice that one of your main characters is only superficially good.

 

He doesn't get it by happenstance - he intentionally goes to capture Phasma - but, only after he sees her and thinks of the idea that she can bring down the shields (I believe). But yes, he had no plan going in at all and if Han weren't there, it sure sounded like Finn wasn't even going to bother with the shields at all, much less later using explosives on the thermal oscillator, so I 100% agree with you. Just correcting the plot record. And yes, if they got Rey before that, Finn definitely would have bailed, but Rey wouldn't have, so he would have stuck around, but I agree, he would have tried bailing no doubt.  

 

What's worse is we waste all that time with bringing down the shields only for that not to work anyway and then Han and team have to improvise and use explosives to directly affect the thermal oscillator the fleet is trying to blow up/destroy. JJ should have just skipped the shields nonsense, but he loves him some fetch quest plotting.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

One day we will find out JJ Abram’s favorite game franchise of all time is Resident Evil and we’ll feel lucky he’s used restraint in his fetch quest implementation. 

[skillzdadirecta]

1 hour ago, CayceG said:

 

And I think Rian Johnson picked up on it and developed the character enough in TLJ to overcome those shortcomings. 

 

Later today I will see if this is completely reversed by JJ's lack of storytelling skill. 

It actually isn't. Of the main characters, Rey, Finn and Kylo actually feel like they have complete arcs over the course of the three films. Poe? He takes a step backwards in this film for some reason and seems to unlearn the things he learned at the end of Jedi.

 

 

[sexy_shapiro]

40 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

Looks like $176 million opening weekend (domestic). TFA was $247, TLJ was $220: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/12/22/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-has-176-million-opening-weekend.html

 

There are people online already making the argument that TLJ made less than TFA because people didn't like TLJ, but TROS made less than TLJ because...people didn't like TLJ. So is it the movie that comes before that matters, or the movie itself? Depends if it's directed by Rian Johnson.

I’ve always been consistent with my theory that Disney’s insistence on releasing a Star Wars movie every year was going to hurt enthusiasm overtime and possible even create a sense of fatigue.

 

I even brought this up as a possible reason for Solo bombing, but this board was adamant that there is absolutely no way that the general public could ever feel oversaturated with Star Wars. SBL even made the prediction that episode 9 would perform better than The Last Jedi.

 

The truth is that Star Wars is no longer a special event to the average moviegoer like it used to be. Sure, Star Wars fans still care, but this movie won’t be getting my parents out to the theater in the same way that TFA and RO did.

[CitizenVectron]

People were right about the ending:

 

 

That's a Holdo. So JJ couldn't even maintain his dumb criticism of TLJ from the earlier line. 

 

[johnny]

We kamikaze now 

[skillzdadirecta]

[johnny]

 

[CayceG]

28 minutes ago, johnny said:

We kamikaze now 

 

The resistance is Al Qaeda.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

I think the biggest thing that hurt Solo was of all the movies they could have done, nobody was asking for a movie about Han Solo. Even fans were like “eh”. I mean we saw it. But there was no excitement for the release. Then you have no Harrison Ford. And while RO the trailers the theme was “fighting the Empire”. The theme of the Solo trailers was “stuff happening”. Solo just didn’t look as interesting. 
 

Fans see Star Wars for lots of reasons. General audiences see Star Wars for space lasers and laser swords. 

 

[skillzdadirecta]

7 minutes ago, CayceG said:

 

The resistance is Al Qaeda.

To be honest, the kinda always were... The Taliban or the Viet Cong at the very least 

[skillzdadirecta]

3 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

I think the biggest thing that hurt Solo was of all the movies they could have done, nobody was asking for a movie about Han Solo. Even fans were like “eh”. I mean we saw it. But there was no excitement for the release. Then you have no Harrison Ford. And while RO the trailers the theme was “fighting the Empire”. The theme of the Solo trailers was “stuff happening”. Solo just didn’t look as interesting. 
 

Fans see Star Wars for lots of reasons. General audiences see Star Wars for space lasers and laser swords. 

 

 

Solo had an A cinema score which is higher than ROS so far. I've been wondering recently how Solo would have done if the gave Harrison Ford "The Irishman" treatment and de-aged him to play a younger version of himself.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

Just now, skillzdadirecta said:

 

Solo had an A cinema score which is higher than ROS so far. 

It wasn’t a bad movie. Actually enjoyable. Nice space heist flick. It just didn’t draw people to the theaters.