Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Rele...rc=trend_click
Release the fucking cut!!

[PACOX]

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Rele...rc=trend_click
Release the fucking cut!!

Implying they even shot the scenes?

I want Hayden to be in it. Let's not act like the fanbase didn't chase him away.

[Fayolynn]

Seems pretty clear cut to me... If a female being called a "mary sue" isn't sexist than what is the male equivalent? Why is it never used as an insult toward male characters? It doesn't even fit with Rey, because a Mary Sue has no flaws when it is clear Rey as a protagonist has flaws. I have yet to hear anyone call Super-Man a Mary Sue. Just saying.

Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Perfect example of a male character being called a Mary Sue is Wesley Crusher from ST:TNG.

What flaws does Rey actually have?

Its hard to call Superman a Mary-Sue when there are multiple characters who are smarter, stronger, or faster then him. As well as multiple flaws and weaknesses for people to exploit.

[minteK917]

Implying they even shot the scenes?

I want Hayden to be in it. Let's not act like the fanbase didn't chase him away.

If the leaks are to be believed, they did, there is a 3 hours, 30 minutes i think, cut. So more then an extra hour allegedly. Personally id wait for JJ to speak out, hes about to go work for a rival of disney, if hes ever gona come out, its when hes done with disney. Considering all the people(myself included) hate is that its a rushed movie, that doesent explain stuff and drop plot points at the top of its hat, disney slashing 1/3 of his movie sure as hell aint doing JJ any favor if true. 1 Hour is a freaking long extra time to flesh things out. Could it have made the movie better, mabye? At least extra scenes for plot points that went nowhere in the final cut couldnt have hurt.

[Kithelle]

A fanbase that has driven multiple actors to hate it isn't exactly something to boast about.

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That ship sailed when Ep I came out

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Not an original thought but are we supposed to connect Palpatine's opening 'all those voices in your heard were me' with Rey hearing the various Jedi at the end? it would add to the 'Sith become all their predecessors +1' theory.

I'm looking forward to more Sith stuff in the next few years, which they seem to be alluding to.

LOL

The Disney Trilogy makes the Prequel Trilogy look like masterpieces and that is a problem.

[Ragedaug]

can't speak for any thing else as i wouldn't even know where to check but the comic sales have been doing pretty well and are above where starwar's was pre Disney.

for comparison
sales 2011 https://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2011.html

sales 2019 https://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2019.html

I also did a more comprehensive look at the numbers in a different thread though I wasn’t using peak numbers there which would be around a new movie release.

Even in the numbers you showed we can see falling sales from Jun 2018 to Aug 2018. It's no surprise that Disney bringing out a new main story line Star Wars comics would do well initially, but we can see every title falling every year since.

https://bleedingfool.com/comics/star...nt-for-marvel/

Doctor Aphra; units sold

• 2016 80,242 per issue
• 2017 39,692 per issue
• 2018 27,545 per issue

Average Marvel Star Wars first issue units sold:

• 2015: 301,656

• 2016: 122,866
• 2017: 60,034
• 2018: 37,026

The co-published Marvel and IDW Star Wars (kids comics) first issue in 2018 sold 30,436 issues to retailers

• In 2016 the average sales of an issue of Marvel Star Wars sold 96,184 copies
• In 2017 the average sales of an is Marvel Star Wars sold 68,401 copies
• In 2018 the average issue of Marvel Star Wars sold 47,931 copies

• In 2016 Marvel Comics released ten Star Wars titles, which sold 4,331,483 copies
• In 2017 Marvel Comics released fifteen Star Wars related titles, which sold 3,877,101
• In 2018 Marvel and IDW combined released THIRTY ONE titles selling 3,395,152

[Darththeo]

Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Perfect example of a male character being called a Mary Sue is Wesley Crusher from ST:TNG.

What flaws does Rey actually have?

Its hard to call Superman a Mary-Sue when there are multiple characters who are smarter, stronger, or faster then him. As well as multiple flaws and weaknesses for people to exploit.

Superman's only real weakness is Kryptonite. Magic is a weakness, but he is weak directly to magic used on him. If you use magic to drop a rock, it isn't going to do any more harm than physically dropping it. And yes, of course, Red Sun light ... but that just depowers him. And Mary Sue doesn't require you to be best character in all aspects ... that is a misunderstanding.

Also, define what you consider a flaw because Rey has flaws. She is focused on her past (which is a flaw similar to Luke always looking to the horizon). She is quick to trust, she trusted Finn just because she though he was Resistance ... Finn didn't trust her right away (per him lying who he was at the time). RoS added quick to anger, but that was somewhat hinted in TFA with her shooting face.

Does Rey have Mary Sue qualities ... yes, but many of those qualities are also protagonist qualities. It depends on how they are used. Most people who I have personally seen call Rey a "Mary Sue" don't fully understand the terms. Nothing she does is unreasonable in the Star Wars universe ... it is not unreasonable to know how to fly a freighter, it is not unreasonable to get lucky in a lightsaber duel (Obi-wan, who was trained more to defend against BLASTERS surviving against Maul trained to fight against lightsabers being one of them (of course, he had to survive but it makes little sense if you think about it too much.)), etc ...

The measure of a Mary Sue is how unreasonable a person in the universe, not how powerful they are. Superman is a Mary Sue if you apply the usage of Mary Sue that is used on Rey ... but neither are actually Mary Sues. People love Baby Yoda ... but he is about Toddler level for his species, perhaps a bit older ... if there is a Mary Sue in Star Wars, it's baby Yoda because never has someone that young been shown to use the force. But how is it justify? Oh, Yoda's species just must be really good force users!

Don't get me wrong, I love the Mandalorian ... but I just find it funny that some people accept something that is a toddler using the Force, but not a grown adult.

Are there bad aspects to Rey? Absolutely ... she does little to nothing to be different than Luke or Anakin. We have had the child of destiny from the desert world twice already, I wanted something different.

[minteK917]

Aint it public knowledge that sell of toys and all the extra stuff was down. Even the park is doing so so. It still hasent made money, someone was fired over it too.

[Zaktar]

Even in the numbers you showed we can see falling sales from Jun 2018 to Aug 2018. It's no surprise that Disney bringing out a new main story line Star Wars comics would do well initially, but we can see every title falling every year since.

https://bleedingfool.com/comics/star...nt-for-marvel/

Doctor Aphra; units sold

• 2016 80,242 per issue
• 2017 39,692 per issue
• 2018 27,545 per issue

Average Marvel Star Wars first issue units sold:

• 2015: 301,656

• 2016: 122,866
• 2017: 60,034
• 2018: 37,026

The co-published Marvel and IDW Star Wars (kids comics) first issue in 2018 sold 30,436 issues to retailers

• In 2016 the average sales of an issue of Marvel Star Wars sold 96,184 copies
• In 2017 the average sales of an is Marvel Star Wars sold 68,401 copies
• In 2018 the average issue of Marvel Star Wars sold 47,931 copies

• In 2016 Marvel Comics released ten Star Wars titles, which sold 4,331,483 copies
• In 2017 Marvel Comics released fifteen Star Wars related titles, which sold 3,877,101
• In 2018 Marvel and IDW combined released THIRTY ONE titles selling 3,395,152

Someone gave me some of the Star Wars comics for Christmas, and it's not at all hard to see why sales are falling, they are utter trash.

[Voidwielder]

Good analysis.

[Prokne]

‘Rise Of Skywalker’ Tops $800M, But ‘Force Awakens’ Set The Bar Too High For ‘Star Wars’

The Rise of Skywalker certainly looks like a film made either by folks who didn’t like The Last Jedi or believed that the “Rian Johnson ruined Star Wars!” YouTube/Twitter brigade represented the general audience consensus. It also feels made by folks who thought that The Force Awakens was a repeatable target, whereby if they just made a Star Wars movie that felt more like J.J. Abrams’ Force Awakens than Rian Johnson’s Last Jedi than they would get grosses closer to Force Awakens (or at least Jurassic World) as opposed to Last Jedi/Rogue One numbers. This is not unlike believing that a Justice League movie that looked and felt like Diet Avengers could hit Avengers-level box office.

The Rise of Skywalker became, be it due to Disney meddling, Lucasfilm panicking, a returning director who wanted to go back to his own story ideas or all of the above, something intended to please everyone (like The Force Awakens) that ended up pleasing no one (like Justice League). It’s not a flop, and it’ll make money. But the franchise is now on the defensive right when it needs the benefit of the doubt as Disney begins making “non-Skywalker” Star Wars movies. As a movie nerd, it’s problematic that the Star Wars video game (Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order) and the Star Wars TV show (The Mandalorian) were both noticeably better than the Star Wars movie.

The thing that saved Star Wars, The Force Awakens with its crowd-pleasing nostalgia and New Hope meets King Arthur vibes, maybe have doomed it. It grossed so much money that it convinced Disney and friends that such a thing was plausible. It made a (false) case that original trilogy nostalgia and stories aimed not at newer or younger Star Wars fans but at those who never moved past Return of the Jedi, was the key to global domination. They thought they were making Avengers: Endgame, or at least Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II. Instead, we ended up with the Star Wars equivalent of the How I Met Your Mother series finale.

In response to the Forbes article, you can't say that TLJ is a better movie (for making money) than TRoS because people were blindsided by TLJ expecting something more like TFA, while people now know more about how this Disney Star Wars is going to go and decided not to see TRoS. TLJ burned so many fans, they aren't going to see these movies anymore. I'm also pretty sure they planned for the whole trilogy to be a clone of the overall plot of the OT, not just TFA. The problem was that TLJ made itself to look like Empire, but wanted to subvert expectations by deconstructing and criticizing everything that the OT was, so it was unsatisfying for OT fans who were supposed to like the retro plot. OT fans were never going to like a trilogy that undoes everything that happens in the first movies.

They figured people didn't like the plot of the prequel trilogy, so they should just redo the OT (and new things are scary for big studios that only care about making money). The thing is that the plot of the prequel trilogy is what makes it good, Jar Jar, midichlorians, kid Anakin, cringey love story and terrible dialog are what were bad about the prequels. They would have made better movies if they had followed stories George Lucas made for the next 3 episodes and hired someone who could write dialog. Of course people might not have liked those movies either, but at least they would be new and make more sense in the Star Wars universe.

[Master Guns]

1) Been a SW fan since the original trilogy
2) Very much dislike the prequels, except maybe III. I and II were atrocious films made for children. (IMO)
3) I thoroughly enjoyed The Force Awakens, and vehemently despised The Last Jedi

I loved Rise of Skywalker. I thought it was a tremendous film.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Even in the numbers you showed we can see falling sales from Jun 2018 to Aug 2018. It's no surprise that Disney bringing out a new main story line Star Wars comics would do well initially, but we can see every title falling every year since.

https://bleedingfool.com/comics/star...nt-for-marvel/

Doctor Aphra; units sold

• 2016 80,242 per issue
• 2017 39,692 per issue
• 2018 27,545 per issue

Average Marvel Star Wars first issue units sold:

• 2015: 301,656

• 2016: 122,866
• 2017: 60,034
• 2018: 37,026

The co-published Marvel and IDW Star Wars (kids comics) first issue in 2018 sold 30,436 issues to retailers

• In 2016 the average sales of an issue of Marvel Star Wars sold 96,184 copies
• In 2017 the average sales of an is Marvel Star Wars sold 68,401 copies
• In 2018 the average issue of Marvel Star Wars sold 47,931 copies

• In 2016 Marvel Comics released ten Star Wars titles, which sold 4,331,483 copies
• In 2017 Marvel Comics released fifteen Star Wars related titles, which sold 3,877,101
• In 2018 Marvel and IDW combined released THIRTY ONE titles selling 3,395,152

as hype dies down for a new series sales go down until it reach's it's norm this true for every series. the number's were never gonna stay at there release peak and no one would expect them to. the fact that starwar's is staying in the top 10-30 of all comics in a month show there still doing well and that they are way ahead of what they would have expected watching EU sales.

[Aurrora]

They weren't. Kylo has always been described as a Sith fanatic. The movie and visual visual dictionary double down on there being a bunch of Sith cultists but there's still only two proper Sith at any given time and Vader did end the line (at that time). It's little dumb when you have a bunch of people who worship and serve the Sith, but aren't called Sith...becomes a PITA to discuss.

https://www.slashfilm.com/kylo-ren-i...force-awakens/

Kylo's only a Vader fanboy, not a Sith fanboy.

[exochaft]

Are there bad aspects to Rey? Absolutely ... she does little to nothing to be different than Luke or Anakin. We have had the child of destiny from the desert world twice already, I wanted something different.

The huge different between Rey and the others you listed, as it's very important for someone being a Mary Sue, is if the world seems to bend around them and validate them.

You mentioned Superman, which would be the most likely candidate to being a Mary Sue... but being super powerful alone isn't what makes a Mary Sue, and I'll circle around to this at the end, as Luke demonstrates the other half the issue.

When you refer to someone like Luke, his background is heavily focused upon based upon dialogue and interaction with his aunt/uncle and R2D2/C3PO. You find out very quickly who he is, what his personality is like, what skills, what his motivations are, and eventually why would he even want to leave his current lot in life. Considering he's established a necessary worker for a moisture farmer on a hostile planet, you easily infer that he has at least some basic level of self-defense and survival skills taught to him by his veteran uncle, as well as he's likely handy with some tech and droids further amplified by his interaction with the droids. You find out multiple times during this introduction that his one defining skill is that he's a pretty good pilot, his motivation is to train at the Academy to become an official pilot, and he's already wanting to leave but feels stuck on the moisture farm... and he's kind of a whiny little kid, too. There's a bit of foreshadowing about his father, but at the time the inference at least indicates that the traits he demonstrates are inherited or impressioned on him by his father who is not in the picture anymore. Later in the film, he gains a mentor that introduces him to the Force, and while he demonstrates he can use the Force his aptitude is fairly low. As his adventure continues throughout the first movie, he spends most of the time as a burden to those around him as Kenobi/Solo/Leia are much more in charge of the situation... and only at the end of the film does Luke finally have a shining moment where he finally contributes something to the cause, demonstrating his growth. As a slight yet important aside, Luke never directly confronts the big bad, aka Vader, and Vader not only sets a goal for him to rise to but also is inferred to be something that is currently unattainable for Luke.

Now... all that I stated about Luke and shown in the first movie? Almost none of it is conveyed about Rey. For the entire introduction, all we establish with certainty is that Rey is a loner, she salvages stuff, and she's waiting for her parents. Where is the source of her of her skills and what are her motivations? It's never established or inferred, so the audience has to assume things. Without making this post too long, Rey demonstrates skills at way too high of a proficiency from what were ever told, and she's just awesome from the get go. Her motivations are all muddled, because not only do we not establish her motivations but we never stick to any motivation either. Continually through the movie, people with knowledge and skills are suddenly dumber around her and her insight shines (such as her figuring out the Falcon's issues and resolutions more than the man who actually ran/operated the ship decades before her). Similar with her powers, which Kylo (despite his training under Luke and Snoke) just gets outmatched at every turn and loses every time to her, and Rey suffers no backlash or side effects from using power that she shouldn't have nor exceed her expected capacity... Snoke even berates Kylo in TLJ that he got beat by someone who had never picked up a lightsaber before.

Could all of these attributes been explained within the context of the film? Absolutely, but the movie leaves so many gaps in logic and explanations, all while making the world revolve around Rey. Some have mentioned various things the movie could've done that would fix almost all the issues. One of my favorite is that instead of Rey waiting for her parents, have Rey waiting for a lone Jedi, who found Rey as a child and took her under her wing, made her a Padawan, and for various reasons she had to leave Rey alone to go on some mission and hasn't returned yet. It'd explain to some satisfactory level where Rey learned to use the Force to such a satisfactory level, basic survival skills, as well as her combat skills with a staff and a lightsaber (which are two completely different skills if you've ever trained those weapons, the skills don't translate well). If this was the introduction of Rey instead of what we go, we suddenly know way more about her and have information that confirms her motivations, skills, etc.

This all leads to the overarching reason why ultimately Rey is a Mary Sue and Luke/Superman/etc. are not: the overall script writing of the new trilogy is piss-poor. That's it. If they wrote her with more of a standard hero's journey arc in this new trilogy (like Luke had throughout the OT) versus a flat "always better than everyone around her" with almost no room for growth, we'd be having a completely different discussion. Doesn't excuse all the events beyond character establishment and motivation that always seem to work out and have Rey win, but it still points to bad writing being the main cause of Rey being a Mary Sue. Honestly, what frustrates me the most about this new trilogy is that all of this could've been fixed if they tried... but RoS basically doubles down on what makes the writing bad and just makes it irredeemable in that respect. RoS even uses the most common tropes found in fanfics: the protagonist is related to some famous/important person in the story, and the protagonist makes a noble sacrifice at the end to save everyone.

[Prokne]

The measure of a Mary Sue is how unreasonable a person in the universe, not how powerful they are. Superman is a Mary Sue if you apply the usage of Mary Sue that is used on Rey ... but neither are actually Mary Sues. People love Baby Yoda ... but he is about Toddler level for his species, perhaps a bit older ... if there is a Mary Sue in Star Wars, it's baby Yoda because never has someone that young been shown to use the force. But how is it justify? Oh, Yoda's species just must be really good force users!

Don't get me wrong, I love the Mandalorian ... but I just find it funny that some people accept something that is a toddler using the Force, but not a grown adult.

Are there bad aspects to Rey? Absolutely ... she does little to nothing to be different than Luke or Anakin. We have had the child of destiny from the desert world twice already, I wanted something different.

It's difficult to know what capabilities baby Yoda actually has. He has used some force powers and generally acts like a toddler, but he is 50 years old, so his experience is not the same as a human toddler at 3-4. We don't actually know what the cognitive development of that species is like, so it is possible they learn quite a lot while they are young.

Anyway, neither baby Yoda nor Rey have any training in the force, but are able to do things with it. Baby Yoda can lift things, heal and deflect fire. Rey can move things (huge things that were even hard for Yoda), Jedi mind trick, force skype, force transfer, heal and fight better than trained Jedi. She can also fix and fly a ship she's never been in before (better than someone who owned it for years) and sail the worst seas ever even though she was a scavenger on a desert planet. As far as force abilities go, I assume people who are force sensitive figure out how to use some force abilities by chance. Like they see something they want to get a few feet out of their reach and it suddenly flies into their hand. Force sensitivity also gives better reflexes, which is why Anakin and Luke were good pilots before they even knew about the force. Besides healing, I think baby Yoda's abilities make sense for an untrained force user.

What I don't see happening by chance is Jedi mind trick, which seems like a complicated skill that requires training. If you hadn't seen Star Wars, you would never think to try to hypnotize someone just by telling them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do.

I think the Rey character would have been better if JJ had shown her using force abilities she had figured out on her own, basic ones, while she was scavenging on Jakku. It was also unnecessary to have Rey and Finn escape in the Millennium Falcon, and have her defeat Kylo Ren when they first meet the first time she used a light saber. It wouldn't have taken much to make her a more realistic character that had room for development. That and her character needed realistic motivations that reflected in her actions and personality.

[PACOX]

LOL

The Disney Trilogy makes the Prequel Trilogy look like masterpieces and that is a problem.

That's opinion but the TPM and AotC are ass as SW and regular movies

[Darththeo]

The huge different between Rey and the others you listed, as it's very important for someone being a Mary Sue, is if the world seems to bend around them and validate them..

Sorry, I am not bothering to read beyond this. She is not a Mary Sue ... if you don't understand the term, don't use it. I will not have this dumb argument where all you are going to do is just call her a Mary Sue, ignore any explanation and repeat yourself thinking you are making an argument.

If you want to see how I already deal with the rest of your "original" points ... I have addressed them in this topic already as has several other people.

[PACOX]

https://www.slashfilm.com/kylo-ren-i...force-awakens/

Kylo's only a Vader fanboy, not a Sith fanboy.

That's what I said.

[Darththeo]

It's difficult to know what capabilities baby Yoda actually has. He has used some force powers and generally acts like a toddler, but he is 50 years old, so his experience is not the same as a human toddler at 3-4. We don't actually know what the cognitive development of that species is like, so it is possible they learn quite a lot while they are young.

Anyway, neither baby Yoda nor Rey have any training in the force, but are able to do things with it. Baby Yoda can lift things, heal and deflect fire. Rey can move things (huge things that were even hard for Yoda), Jedi mind trick, force skype, force transfer, heal and fight better than trained Jedi. She can also fix and fly a ship she's never been in before (better than someone who owned it for years) and sail the worst seas ever even though she was a scavenger on a desert planet. As far as force abilities go, I assume people who are force sensitive figure out how to use some force abilities by chance. Like they see something they want to get a few feet out of their reach and it suddenly flies into their hand. Force sensitivity also gives better reflexes, which is why Anakin and Luke were good pilots before they even knew about the force. Besides healing, I think baby Yoda's abilities make sense for an untrained force user.

What I don't see happening by chance is Jedi mind trick, which seems like a complicated skill that requires training. If you hadn't seen Star Wars, you would never think to try to hypnotize someone just by telling them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do.

I think the Rey character would have been better if JJ had shown her using force abilities she had figured out on her own, basic ones, while she was scavenging on Jakku. It was also unnecessary to have Rey and Finn escape in the Millennium Falcon, and have her defeat Kylo Ren when they first meet the first time she used a light saber. It wouldn't have taken much to make her a more realistic character that had room for development. That and her character needed realistic motivations that reflected in her actions and personality.

We seen one person do a mind trick in the movies, Obi-wan. That's it. Luke failed, but that is because Jabba being a Hutt is not affected by it. Ahsoka and Ezra attempt in their respective series, iirc. We don't see mind tricks often, we don't actually know how complex they are. However, we do have Obi-wan's description "The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded." ... it seems to imply the power is not of the Jedi, but rather something in the Force itself. A Force User can influence someone weak-minded (I prefer the concept of weak willed more, because it makes a bit more sense).

We actually don't know if it requires much on the user besides being something to convince the other, it could be akin to a pheromone action where the influence starts subtle and can get farther. No mind trick in the series is something beyond what someone could potentially do on their own ... even Rey, though it was more comically shown than either of Obi-wan's (except the end "I want to go home and rethink my life." part). I admit, they could have written Rey's better rather than making it more comical, but it isn't beyond reason.

Also, don't ignore that prior to Rey doing the mind trick, Kylo was attempting to force himself into her mind. She saw first hand what the Force can do. Also, I don't feel she "defeated" Kylo personally, she got one lucky hit at the end and the novelization suggests that Kylo was going to get up after it. And she wasn't the first character in Star Wars Canon to get a lucky hit with a lightsaber, not even the first one in that movie either.