Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

[Cosmic Janitor]

Didnt Disney just announce another trilogy to be started in 2022, or something to that effect? Could have sworn i saw it.

Even if they didnt i am confident they will keep making more movies eventually, though hopefully not a trilogy, unless Disney finds a director truly dedicated to making the star wars trilogy he always wanted.
Generally though, i think Disney should stick ot making one-off movies. Rogue One was pretty damn good, and while Solo had flwas none of them were major enough to make me regret seeing the movie or never want to see it again. And what both those movies had were directors who felt like they had a single vision, and while they stuck to certain conventions they were willing to bend the tone and look of Star Wars to achieve it.

People like Johnson and Abrams are just wholey unsuitable for franchise movies and sequels. Both of them, especially Johnson excells at one off movies as you can see with Knives Out. Abrams should direct movies but never write them and while we are at it, stop given the cretin that screenwrote justice league work, he couldn't write himself out of a soggy-wet paperbag. Give the franchise and sequels to one team and most important of all force them to plan out all films ahead of time so they have at least a vague narrative arc they want to tell. The desaster of having the middle movie kill off all plot hooks from the first movie and then expect a another new production team to pick up the pieces in about a year's time afterwards is just insanity. Hire someone to do all 3 and make sure they only works on this one project instead of doing 4 things in parallel.

I don't think disney is inherently bad at doing star wars movies. They've proven with the marvel movies that they can keep a franchise steady if they have the right people in the right positions. At least we can leave the OT and all of it's characters behind now and they can try new things, and I sure as hell hope they will abandon the empire vs. rebells concept. Something like a 3 sided conflict would be nice or at least a conflict that plays out under the confines of an overarching opposition that limits the actions of the opposing sides we follow. I don't want a Star Wars X: GT.

[Skroe]

Well.. looking at IX I don't see how that is an issue anymore. The power levels keep doing tripple backflips over sharks with planet destroying lasers. Conjuring a fleet of micro-deathstar ships out of nowhere (including crew) and good ol' Palpie electrocuting an enemy fleet with laser precision is also on the same level as Force Unleashed's Starkiller, so I personally don't see any reason to exclude stuff now - except for gross breaches of continuity.

I mean, frankly, that's been the Sequel Trilogy's mistake. It got two directors - especially in the form of JJ Abrams - who just did not care for any kind of concept of internal consistency in the universe. That is simply what happens when franchises do this sort of thing. JJ Abrams did two Star Trek movies that pretty perfectly telegraphed exactly how his Star Wars movies would be. There was never any version of his storyline for these things that followed any kind of canon rules. Let's be real... he never had a plan for Snoke, or Luke, or Rey or Finn or Kylo Renn beyond their specific use in TFA. Everything else that came in the subsequent two movies were just a retcon of a director / writer who never-ever, ever plans and never feels bound by the rules of a franchise.

Moral of the story, if you want good franchise films (any franchise)... stay way from people like JJ Abrams. We saw this with Transformers. 5 movies of Michael Bay doing whatever the fuck he wanted, with basically zero internal consistency (Who created the transformers? The All Spark? The Fallen? The creators? Quintessa?) and three MacGuffins per movie and impossible to follow plots. And then Bumblebee came along and exposed everything Bay ever said about "faithful G1 on the big screen" as bullshit.

With Mandalorian, we got Star Wars that follows the rules. And unsurprisingly, it had Jon Farveau involved, who has been a leading creative force in the MCU since 2007.

If we want Star Wars to have he pretty tight and consistent internal consistency / canon / plotting of the MCU, then it needs to have an MCU-like approach. Which means no big name directors and writers who think they're above all of that. You go for up and comers and in-house talent (again, like the MCU) who can bring their own creative vision to the film, but are bound by by the constraints laid out by the standing Creative Committee that oversees the franchise.

I think that's another blessing on how the Game of Thrones producers are out of Star Wars. Because they wouldn't have given a shit either. Creative would have told them the constraints of the Star Wars universe - the rules so to speak - and they would have wanted to ignore them to make their own film, their own way, that in the end, wouldn't feel very Star Wars-y.

You know what the irony of all this is? The Big name directors aren't even that good. Marvel struck gold getting the Russo brothers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier. They didn't have much to their name, and they made one of the MCU's best movies and a teriffic thriller. And when Joss Whedon kind of misfired with Avengers: Age of Ultron, they wisely not only took the future of the MCU out of WHedon's hands (who was involved in much of Phase 1 and 2) put Captain America: Civil War (AKA Avengers 2.5) in the Russo's hands, along with Infinity War / Endgame. From Nothing to 4 pretty fucking awesome movies which only got progressively more complicated to direct and juggled ever more sophisticated CG and script challenges. And it came out great.

Could JJ Abrams have made Infinity War / Endgame? Not on his best day. There is no version of the story where he would have wanted to be constrained by everything else that happened in Phases 1-3, much less as in Endgame, go revisit moments from past MCU films as a kind of summation.

The original sin of the sequel trilogy was JJ Abrams, and feeling that they needed to succeed George Lucas by putting it in the hands of someone who thinks everything they touches turn to gold (when really, it's at best average). Next time, put it in the hands of someone capable and promising but with a lot to prove and can be controlled by creative, and we'll get the Star Wars film we deserve.

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People like Johnson and Abrams are just wholey unsuitable for franchise movies and sequels. Both of them, especially Johnson excells at one off movies as you can see with Knives Out. Abrams should direct movies but never write them and while we are at it, stop given the cretin that screenwrote justice league work, he couldn't write himself out of a soggy-wet paperbag. Give the franchise and sequels to one team and most important of all force them to plan out all films ahead of time so they have at least a vague narrative arc they want to tell. The desaster of having the middle movie kill off all plot hooks from the first movie and then expect a another new production team to pick up the pieces in about a year's time afterwards is just insanity. Hire someone to do all 3 and make sure they only works on this one project instead of doing 4 things in parallel.

I don't think disney is inherently bad at doing star wars movies. They've proven with the marvel movies that they can keep a franchise steady if they have the right people in the right positions. At least we can leave the OT and all of it's characters behind now and they can try new things, and I sure as hell hope they will abandon the empire vs. rebells concept. Something like a 3 sided conflict would be nice or at least a conflict that plays out under the confines of an overarching opposition that limits the actions of the opposing sides we follow. I don't want a Star Wars X: GT.

Agree. But with Abrams and people like him, it goes beyond just taking writing control out of their hands. They can't be involved at all.

Case in point again, Michael Bay. Before Transformers 5 (The Last Knight) was written, Paramount/Hasbro spent a year putting together a writers room to plot and write scripts for five Transformers movies in order to fix what went wrong with Age of Extinction and get the franchise on a better storytelling track. And the writers were top notch. They worked on other franchises and big films. They knew this franchise. And they turned in five stories.

And what did Michael Bay do? He threw thew out the scripts. He went through them all and shot the scenes he liked from them all. He combined a Transformers and Authurian-legend script with a script dealing with Unicron and the Quintessons (Creators) with some left over stuff from Age of Extinction. He had scenes written the day he shot them and merged unrelated story pieces into one form to build a movie that makes practically no sense but is built around spectacle. And he assembled it on the cutting room floor. A similar thing happened with JJ Abrams when making Star Trek in 2009, when he combined a pre-written "Young Kirk in Star Fleet Academy Script" with a "Romulan terrorist Script" script. The Leonard Nimoy Spock stuff? Shot almost entirely by the 2nd Unit. He wanted nothing to do with the original "Prime" Universe that was forced on him by Paramount. With Star Trek Into Darkness, he combined two independent scripts a couple months before filming - a "Starfleet Coup" script and a "Wrath of Khan reimagined" script. Do you think he ever cared that Khan suddenly went from being South Asian in the story (albeit Ricard Montblan was Mexican) to a White British guy? Nope. Not for a second. Just like he didn't care that the Kelvin-verse Enterprise suddenly was larger than the Enterprise-D by a huge margin.

Directors like these are cancer to franchise films. It never works. They can never help themselves. It's only when they truly, truly love the character/concept, like Sam Rami and Spider-Man, when you get franchise respect by the director. If you want to see the transformation of this in action, look no further than the Nolanverse. Betman Begins had a tortured pre-production, with "the Scarecrow / Ra's Al Ghul Batman movie" kicking around ever since Batman and Robin flopped. Nolan was largely unproven for big budget films when he took the Batman Begins job, and that movie was made without consideration of a larger film series... just with the intent of maming a more serious Batman movie that was more grounded than the Tim Burton-verse four. And that kind of comes out in the film. It's certainly grounded - there is no Lazarus Pit and Scarecrow doesn't really wear a costume - but Batman's costume is very superhero-y, not much different than the "armor-like" suit in Batman Returns really. It wasn't until The Dark Knight, with Nolan proven, when he strips out any semblance of the "fantasy things" about Batman he thought ridiculous. Batmobile gets blown up quickly and replaced with a motorcycle. Batsuit gets replaced with a tactical suit that has essentially no bat symbol (you could hear the groans that the cowl had to have ears). No more Batcave... instead Batman lives in the city with a hidden base at the docks. The Dark Knight is amazing (the entire trilogy is), but you can really tell where the now proven director decided to crop the stuff he thought was "too fantasy" for the "crime city" story he wanted to tell, now that he had the pull to do so.

In the end, we have to choose. If we want a Star Wars (or any franchise movie) to have a chance of being a legitimate "great film", it requires to some degree, basically what Nolan did with his saga, which is to let the director off the leash. But if we just want really good "Star Wars", "Marvel Universe" or 'Star Trek" movies - basically big budget episodes of a series that is released to theaters first (as the entire MCU has been described - as one Netflix-style series), then those kind of directors can never be let in because they don't place nice with others.

Personally, I think there is room for both. I really hope that we get the trilogy of Disney Star Wars films we deserve. But how cool also would it be to get a self-contained continuity trilogy in this style:



Star Wars Done Different. I think that would be great. Kind of like how this spin on things is pretty cool too:

[Ihavewaffles]

https://bbts1.azureedge.net/images/p/full/2019/04/988d63a0-0486-454b-a1d5-ce383dfe9de5.jpg

Too much on the nose with earth culture that one, would take me out of star wars galaxy..

[Skroe]

Too much on the nose with earth culture that one, would take me out of star wars galaxy..

Well it's just an example of "something completely different". But does it need to keep you within the Star Wars galaxy when if it's own self contained, out of continuity thing?

Basically I'm saying, take a look at the Nolanverse as an example. Having a big name director work within the confines of a shared fictional universe he has to share with others and obey other rules basically never works (and so a DC Cinematic Universe tying into the Nolanverse was never going to be a thing), so instead carve out an out-of-continuity space where directors can and writers can flex and not have to obey the rules.

This is basically exactly what happened with the recent "Joker" movie.


So if a big name director has something to say about Star Wars, let them operate in their own little kingdom and own little universe and let them go nuts without impacting the larger shared universe, rather than as we saw with the sequel trilogy, create something that had retcons upon retcons to be logical, and tie in books / games will spend the next five years cleaning up the resolution of.

I mean I'll make the obvious example. Pryde could have been Thrawn. He was perfectly casted. The role would have been largely the same. And hell, you even could have thrown him into the Last Jedi. But I doubt either Rian Johnson or JJ Abrams know who Thrawn is, or read any tie in material or watched Rebels. And there is a precisely zero percentage change either of them would have given Thrawn three sentence of expository dialog to explain what he's been up to since we last saw him pulled away by space whales. But Pryde being Thrawn instead (let's just say Chiss age slower) would have been something that the creative forces behidn the Mandalorian almost certainly would have done. For fucks sake, we got the Darksaber in live action. And they got the Death Trooper armor from storage showing it wasn't just a Rogue One one off. There is a Lucasfilm that cares about its shared universe and one that doesn't give a fig. With the sequel trilogy, we got the one that doesn't give a fig.

Solution then: don't let people like JJ Abrams in ever again. Let them do Space Samurai Star Wars and go nuts. Maybe it'll be awesome. But if it sucks, eh... big deal.

[cyberglum]

Probably because Palpatine's goal wasn't to kill everyone? I think you misunderstood his goal, he never want to kill everyone. He wanted to inflict fear on them to force them to submit to his rule again.

Actually he intended to use his Death Stardestroyers to do exactly that, he says so in the film. He plans to destroy every Republic inhabited planet. Fucks knows why, I thought he just wanted to rule the Galaxy.

[Ihavewaffles]

Well it's just an example of "something completely different". But does it need to keep you within the Star Wars galaxy when if it's own self contained, out of continuity thing?

Basically I'm saying, take a look at the Nolanverse as an example. Having a big name director work within the confines of a shared fictional universe he has to share with others and obey other rules basically never works (and so a DC Cinematic Universe tying into the Nolanverse was never going to be a thing), so instead carve out an out-of-continuity space where directors can and writers can flex and not have to obey the rules.

This is basically exactly what happened with the recent "Joker" movie.


So if a big name director has something to say about Star Wars, let them operate in their own little kingdom and own little universe and let them go nuts without impacting the larger shared universe, rather than as we saw with the sequel trilogy, create something that had retcons upon retcons to be logical, and tie in books / games will spend the next five years cleaning up the resolution of.

I mean I'll make the obvious example. Pryde could have been Thrawn. He was perfectly casted. The role would have been largely the same. And hell, you even could have thrown him into the Last Jedi. But I doubt either Rian Johnson or JJ Abrams know who Thrawn is, or read any tie in material or watched Rebels. And there is a precisely zero percentage change either of them would have given Thrawn three sentence of expository dialog to explain what he's been up to since we last saw him pulled away by space whales. But Pryde being Thrawn instead (let's just say Chiss age slower) would have been something that the creative forces behidn the Mandalorian almost certainly would have done. For fucks sake, we got the Darksaber in live action. And they got the Death Trooper armor from storage showing it wasn't just a Rogue One one off. There is a Lucasfilm that cares about its shared universe and one that doesn't give a fig. With the sequel trilogy, we got the one that doesn't give a fig.

Solution then: don't let people like JJ Abrams in ever again. Let them do Space Samurai Star Wars and go nuts. Maybe it'll be awesome. But if it sucks, eh... big deal.

I have the limited ed. ralph mcquarrie books, if I dropped them on a gnome, it would become squished
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDLfahA4iaQ
while he borrows heavily from earth culture, he remakes it into his own scifi style enough, ur picture however is not remade enough for me to think star wars style but too much leans into earth culture, too heavily..it hasn't been remade enough.
This picture is different enough from its inspiration to look like its own thing
https://outerrimnews.com/wp-content/...rial-guard.jpg
Tbh ur picture looks more like warhammer than star wars
Ralph's stuff is good, but not perfected, for example this is how darth vader would have ended up looking if he had his way, it's important to have criticism from everywhere
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lYyjCRc_sU

If anyone cares, why the 'sets' looked so good in the original trilogy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQTdOcYK9Ds

Well, I don't think directors, writers etc should get more freedom than they deserve, for example my pet complaint is ridley scott that gave us Alien, Blade Runner, if you watch documentaries on youtube about those films, he spends a lot of time complaining about money, the crew etc.
I think when creative people become big they get more freedom and can explore what they are bad at...it's incredible how hollywood works, how people can waste billions on stupid decisions, make scripts an english teacher would give a F...
One would have thought there would be more oversight... "hey, here's a couple hundreds of millions dollars of my money, ur a great director, I don't know if you can write for shit, I won't bother checking, just go ahead!"
How people can be so careless with their piggy banks..

I don't want jar jar abrams n rian johnson anywhere near Thrawn, if rian johnson gets to direct a mandalorian episode for season 2 as he wants, i'll just die inside completely...

[Xath]

Could you reword that into a way that makes some semblance of sense?

Because it again just seems you are just stating that you don't care for explanations unless it meets your pre-determined qualifications of an explanation.

It's like trying to justify the nightborne being on horde because Tyrande was mean. Things made after a decision has been made are an example of a concept called post justification.

[Relapses]

I don't want jar jar abrams n rian johnson anywhere near Thrawn, if rian johnson gets to direct a mandalorian episode for season 2 as he wants, i'll just die inside completely...

Just throwing it out there, you're the worst kind of Star Wars fan. The entire fandom would be infinitely better if people like you didn't exist.

Infracted.

[Ihavewaffles]

Just throwing it out there, you're the worst kind of Star Wars fan. The entire fandom would be infinitely better if people like you didn't exist.

I'm having post-Christmas depression, don't know why, but ur post made me feel better, I thank you for it.

And I'm a good fan, ur post is just so rude...

[Fabinas]

Strength isn't the only thing that matters, obviously. And the Jedi were insular, and tended to re-teach each other the same basic set of tricks. The Sith clearly had a different set of tricks. The Nightsisters, even more. The basic Jedi teachings are not the sum of what's possible with the Force, and the canon has been very clear about that. Not even all Jedi know the same techniques, because again, ascending into the Force was relatively new and only a handful of Jedi ever learned it.



If this stuff happened in the OT, and you give it a pass there and not here, then the issue is that you don't really like Star Wars, and you're applying a double standard.

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Like, seriously, the Force is pretty much the literal definition of a deus ex machina.

It's a godlike force.

It does shit on its own.

It can create life out of nothing; it did with Anakin.

You're just supposed to accept all that as "it's the Force; it's mysterious and vague and unknowable". That's always been expected of the audience. It's foul play to start calling Star Wars out for this kind of stuff in this trilogy.

Can you stop with the strawmans, please?

It's not a double standard if i accepted some stuff in my 10s or 20s in the previous SW movies, but i demand better scripts, plots than the past in my 40s. I grew up. Read, learned to think and judge on my own, expecting more. So has the movie industry. So should the new producers, directors and scriptwriters of a financial colossus with almost infinite (ok i exaggerate, but you get the point) resources like Disney. Lucas had to make one movie, never knowing if he'd do a sequel. Disney planned to make 3 movies, but omitted to plan a trilogy. Instead of taking SW to the next level of production, they shamelessy copied the OT.

I'm not gonna accept that in my 40s, no. And if you keep calling that a double standard (like you never outgrew stuff yourself?), do so. Guilty in your book (which i don't give a damn). It's still no excuse to feed us with stuff we already saw and accepted younger, but judged and criticised at an older age. They should have strived for better, not feed us again shit made of stuff we ate 20 years ago, because we knew no better. THEY SHOULD have known better.

Also, agreed, the Force is a deus ex machina thing.

The untrained, learned-to-do-stuff-cause-i-saw-it/happened-to-me characters shouldn't exist. Just because we can make the Force do anything, doesn't mean we can make Force users do anything.

[Endus]

Can you stop with the strawmans, please?

It's not a double standard if i accepted some stuff in my 10s or 20s in the previous SW movies, but i demand better scripts, plots than the past in my 40s. I grew up. Read, learned to think and judge on my own, expecting more.

This is the literal definition of a double standard.

It's okay to admit you don't like Star Wars any more, y'know. Nobody's forcing you to like it. I'm just pointing out that it's ridiculous to hold the original trilogy to one standard, and then blame the newer films for failing to live up to a much stricter standard, which even the original trilogy couldn't hold up to. It's all Star Wars, and it should all be assessed by the same standard. If you think the newer films are silly because the Force is a deus ex machina that does whatever the writers need it to do, well, that's true of the OT as well. This is you not liking Star Wars as an IP, wholesale, it is not the newer films somehow not living up to their legacy.

People compare the Star Wars thing with the Transformers films. I was a huge Transformers fan as a kid. And I stopped being able to watch the films. Not because the models were so much more detailed and different, not because Sam Witwicky was so central a character. Because they kept using toilet humour and shit like racist tropes. That was a significant change, pulling away from the older content. You show me a Constructicon with big hanging steel balls clanging, and make a joke about his big balls, and you lose me. I can point to exactly what changed, and why I dislike it.

And it's why I did really enjoy the Bumblebee film, which was a lot more true to that original legacy and cut all that crap out.

With Star Wars, though, it's people like yourself admitting that they hold the new films to standards the older films can't meet, and hating the newer films for things that made the original films iconic. That's nonsense. You just don't like Star Wars. Which is fine. Feel free to find your fandom. Nobody's demanding you like Star Wars, here. Just that shitting on Star Wars films for being Star Wars films and holding true to the same silliness that Star Wars has always held is . . . nonsense.

[Dextroden]

Just throwing it out there, you're the worst kind of Star Wars fan. The entire fandom would be infinitely better if people like you didn't exist.

I don't know. You guys would still be here talking down to everyone who just doesn't get this brilliant trilogy.

I love the "anti-toxic" part of every fandom.

[shimerra]

Na you're a section of the toxic fandom that stokes so much hate towards the fans who like the new films. You do nothing but spout rude, incoherent nonsense and then play the victim card. Hilarious.

Hey more power to you if someone taking a dump on your chest is what gets your rocks off.

[Kokolums]

Thank you for providing a pefect example of what i'm talking about. The worst kinds of "fans" in the world.

9 really is terrible.

[Dextroden]

I don't care about a personal opinion you're allowed to have them, but when you start attacking others who enjoy it, directors, actors, etc you're a terrible "fan".

And attacking people for not liking it is a good thing I take it?

Plus, there are plenty of TLJ fans who are attacking JJ after complaining about people shit talking RJ.

[Dextroden]

Attack people who attack others is par for the course. People attacking JJ Abrams are also wrong. Why is this so difficult for people?

Can we attack you for being just as "toxic" since you're attacking others?

[Endus]

Every post from you in this thread has basically just been five paragraphs of you trying to invalidate the opinions of anyone who didn't like the new trilogy, and it's just getting pretty old.

Maybe people like you admitting that you're not being objective at all about this topic would be nice. I dunno.

"Objective" in what sense?

Whether we like the films or not? That's a subjective question, and objectivity doesn't enter into it.

The particulars of specific complaints? I'm objective on those points, sticking to facts and reason, not personal preference.

I'm not trying to "invalidate" people's feelings. I stated, right out, that it's perfectly fine for people to not like these films.

If, however, the specifics of why they claim to not like these films don't hold up? Yes. I'm gonna invalidate the hell out of that, because it's an invalid argument, that does not align with the facts.

You can say you don't like eating meat because you're vegan and you just don't like it, and I'm not gonna try and change your mind. If you say you don't eat meat because meat makes your testicles shrink and makes you violent and abusive, then I'm going to call bullshit on the bullshit you're making up. Don't confuse the two.

Also, I'm pretty clear in attacking people's arguments. Rather than the person. But here, you're attacking my character, not my arguments. Ad hominem arguments aren't valid, and you really should know better.

[Xath]

I don't care about a personal opinion you're allowed to have them, but when you start attacking others who enjoy it, directors, actors, etc you're a terrible "fan".

When you say Michael Bay makes terrible movies you obviously aren't a fan of transformers /s

Being a fan doesn't mean accepting every pile of dung shoveled onto your plate and wolfing it up and asking for more.

[BloodyAngel12]

Well i did enjoy the film but I didnt have same elation watching them celebrate as i did at the end of RotJ. While it was added in later for the Special edition but it was a banger of a track.

[Fayolynn]

Well i did enjoy the film but I didnt have same elation watching them celebrate as i did at the end of RotJ. While it was added in later for the Special edition but it was a banger of a track.

Even the original version pre special edition was better then what we got in TRoS.