Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

[Darththeo]

I dunno, I guess I would expect someone who just crash landed on a planet that knows enough about the first order to know he has a matter of minutes before they show up considering he just flew out shooting at first order property might be in a bit of a hurry and more focused on questions like "do you have a ship" rather than "Heyyyy, yeah im resistance babys whats up, lets see where this lil thang goes"

I am running from the First Order, let me tell someone that I am First order ... brilliant plan there.
Again, even if that was flirty (it wasn't), it could be that he either suspected Rey was Resistance or a Resistance sympathizer at that point and thus saying he was Resistance was more likely to get assistance than saying "No, I am a Force Order deserter that got this droid's owner killed."

[Volatilis]

I am running from the First Order, let me tell someone that I am First order ... brilliant plan there.
Again, even if that was flirty (it wasn't), it could be that he either suspected Rey was Resistance or a Resistance sympathizer at that point and thus saying he was Resistance was more likely to get assistance than saying "No, I am a Force Order deserter that got this droid's owner killed."

Yeah when you talk to a bounty hunter or whatever you totally have to say "hey im on the run from the first order"

And not "Hey this is all i have on me but can you get me to so and so planet" "I have payment for you waiting on this planet" etc.

[Kaleredar]

I dunno, I kinda liked the left-field-ness of it. Like, foreshadowing for the sake of the viewer is annoying. I want to feel that same "OMG WTF I had no idea this was even a thing!" the characters feel when they get the double whammy of "not only is there a massive Imperial fleet out there but oh yeah, there's a fuckton of Sith too!". Jedi and Sith shit is ALWAYS a part of Star Wars. Even the casual viewer should always keep the idea that "oh yeah, some cool jedi and sith stuff is gonna happen" in the back of their minds when watching Star Wars.

I feel like it all very much echoed the ending to season 2 of Star Wars Rebels. Like, we knew there was Jedi and Sith stuff going on, but we didn't know it was gonna be all "massive sith temple with doomsday weapon". The whole thing really encapsulates the difference between the Jedi and the Sith conceptualizations of themselves and their philosophies in a visual way the viewers can really comprehend. The Jedi go into hiding, it's like retirement. The Sith go into hiding, it's to build a fucking doomsday device.

Palps himself being back was sorta meh, about as much so as when they did it in the original EU books. Yeah Palpsy is a big bad secret puppet master. But man, Ian McDiarmid fucking killed it.

You have to (or at least, SHOULD) treat a trilogy of movies like a prolonged, singular plot. You have your exposition (first part,) your rising action (second part) and then your climax and resolution (third part.) In the Original Star Wars, this was meeting all the important characters in the first film and establishing the world, the second film tossed up the relationship between characters and put them in peril, and the third film brought all of those points that had been established in the previous two films to a close. You can follow Han's Jabba the hutt arc from the first film to the third. You have Luke growing stronger in the force. You establish Darth Vader and who he is, and then you add to that in the second episode whilst filling out the Empire and establishing who the Emperor is and, ultimately, pay off that relationship in the third film. Every character flows from one film into another.

And "foreshadowing" for the sake of the viewer is... like, the whole point of a narrative. If you're establishing a narrative, and not an "adventure of the week" storyline where things just kind of happen and you roll with it, then you want the viewer to be able to follow a logical progression of the narrative that, in essence, rewards them for paying attention. The ONLY mention that Palpatine got in the sequels was Luke mentioning Darth Sidious once. And that was an off-hand remark about how the Jedi had failed.


"Coming out of left field," in my mind, is distinctly different from "surprising the audience." (Which Episode 8 did well for me.) Surprising the audience subverts their expectations, but they had expectations to be subverted beyond "I didn't even know this guy was still a thing, why are we suddenly hearing about him as the big bad?" like with Palpatine. The audience might not have expected Snoke to die in Episode 8, but following Kylo's progression you can understand why it happened. To me, that's good storytelling.

What would NOT be okay is if Episode 5 had ended with all of our heroes hunky dorey, and then at the start of Episode 6 Han has randomly been captured and frozen in carbonite and now we have to go on this 30 minute diversion to save him so we can see Luke be cool and fight a rancor and all we learn of it is from the opening crawl. Wouldn't that have been clunky storytelling?

Like Marvel, Star Wars is more than just "the movies". You're gonna miss stuff if you don't at least try to dip into the other media. The movies just don't have room to cover everything, and at this point the universe is just too big. Even with the Disney takeover trimming things down, stuff is happening outside the scope of the movies. And I mean shit, the series has been out for forty years, ya'll've had time to to get on board.

The EU should only EVER be supplementary. Not required to know what was going on. The MCU has additional material that supports it, but none of those were ever relevant for understanding what was going on in each film. If a film requires an addendum to make it a satisfying narrative, it failed as a film.

[Darththeo]

Yeah when you talk to a bounty hunter or whatever you totally have to say "hey im on the run from the first order"

And not "Hey this is all i have on me but can you get me to so and so planet" "I have payment for you waiting on this planet" etc.

"And who are you and why should I do that?"

Han was given the reason he needed the money because of Jabba so it explains why he was willing to help someone wanting to avoid imperial entanglements.

[Kokolums]

I want to tell you how I feel about this film, but if you want the in depth story, please read the expanded Kokolums universe series to fully understand my opinions. Its all in the KU.

[PACOX]

I want to tell you how I feel about this film, but if you want the in depth story, please read the expanded Kokolums universe series to fully understand my opinions. Its all in the KU.

How much of the KU is canon?

[MatadorMedia]

Rise of Skywalker was an okay film. I think JJ handled the cleanup from The Last Jedi as well as possible. Palpatine really is what made the movie work despite being thrown in at seemingly the last minute of this triology. The ending was a bit disappointing, however, as the ideal finale would be the end of BOTH the Sith and the Jedi. I made a video (really just audio) explaining the ultimate imbalance in The Force at the end of the Skywalker Saga; you all are welcome to listen if you are interested.

[crakerjack]

I wasn't much of a fan of the last one. I still enjoyed it, but I'd rate it barely ahead of the last jedi and behind the force awakens.

[Polyxo]

I liked it. I think it was the weakest of the three, but it was still fun to watch.

[Master Guns]

I wish I saw better lightsaber battles in this one, but meh.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

this movie wasn't okay. it was awful. it was about as bad as the TLJ. there are memorable scenes from TLJ and none from TROS except one: the ending

[ADA203]

A little long in the tooth. Could have easily been two movies. I felt a lot of scenes were left out on the cutting room floor.

[Dextroden]

A little long in the tooth. Could have easily been two movies. I felt a lot of scenes were left out on the cutting room floor.

That's putting it lightly. Between cut plotlines and reshoots, you can feel the stitching on this movie.

[Mormolyce]

I have my full impressions of the "trilogy" such as it is.

The Force Awakens: Surprisingly good film held back a bit by over-reliance on nostalgia
The Last Jedi: A movie that tried to do something, and failed.
The Rise of Skywalker: A movie that tried to do nothing, and succeeded.

At least all the warring factions that splintered over Last Jedi can come together and agree that this film was satisfactory to nobody lol.

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Han Solo didn't love her instantly, and he warmed up to her not because he thought she's hot - but because she demonstrated mechanical skill around the Falcon, which to him might be the equivalent of hot. His first order of business was to dump them at the nearest spaceport, though. Only the mentions of resistance and Luke made him think it over.

Also think there was a strong surrogate dad-daughter thing going on, what with him missing his son and them bonding over common interests, eg the Falcon.

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The 'properly' planned movies were the prequels.

You know they really should've been, but even those felt disjointed. Possibly because of course corrections due to the negative backlash.

But honestly Lucas isn't a great planner.

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I have no doubt Kathleen's contract will not be renewed in her same position. They won't outright fire her though because she is to buddy buddy with all those people and only has a year on the ticket remaining.

I honestly have no idea why everyone keeps bringing up Kathleen Kennedy, she doesn't write these films. Has she ever written or directed anything?

She's not even an equivalent of Kevin Feige. He's really in a unique position. She's just a regular old producer, they have fuck all to do with how good the story of a film is. They just deal with the funding.

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Dang he saw a ton of shit that I didn't even think about on my first viewing, I'm being forced to go see it again this weekend I really want to see if they Say Palp conjured the fleet like Mike from half in the bag thought he heard as well as some of the stuff this guy says.

Yeah the text of the film is that he conjured the fleet with Sith magic. But they're all Imperial I class Star Destroyers. It made no sense. Apparently they're all crewed by "Sith loyalists" - how the fuck many of them were there? Since when are there Sith loyalists in the Empire?

It's all a massive ass pull, let's be real. But you know, if you enjoyed a film it doesn't really matter. This kind of thing annoys me because I'm a huge nerd but ultimately it's not a factor in an audience's enjoyment of something.

[Mormolyce]

They did not decanonize anything. If you bothered to listen to George Lucas interviews not some employee at Lucas arts your thick skull would know one thing.

That the ONLY Canon was the movies. Period. Lucas own words on the matter.

Thrawn was nothing more than a fanfic wet dream until Disney made him canon.

Not exactly, Star Wars canon used to be kind of complex - the films were G-canon, the top tier. The novels etc (including Thrawn) were C-canon, the next level down. There were other levels as well. Basically, everything was canon unless it was contradicted by something of a higher canon tier. This didn't really cause a problem when the prequels came out because most EU fiction was set post-Jedi, or in the distant past thousands of years before the prequels.

After the Disney buyout they made pretty much all of that "Legends canon", ie non-canon, aside from the films and a few other things like the second Clone Wars TV show (IIRC).

[Kallisto]

Not exactly, Star Wars canon used to be kind of complex - the films were G-canon, the top tier. The novels etc (including Thrawn) were C-canon, the next level down. There were other levels as well. Basically, everything was canon unless it was contradicted by something of a higher canon tier. This didn't really cause a problem when the prequels came out because most EU fiction was set post-Jedi, or in the distant past thousands of years before the prequels.

After the Disney buyout they made pretty much all of that "Legends canon", ie non-canon, aside from the films and a few other things like the second Clone Wars TV show (IIRC).

Lucas own words on EU back in 2001

“I don’t read that stuff. I haven’t read any of the novels. I don’t know anything about that world. That’s a different world than my world. But I do try to keep it consistent. The way I do it now is they have a Star Wars Encyclopedia. So if I come up with a name or something else, I look it up and see if it has already been used. When I said [other people] could make their own Star Wars stories, we decided that, like Star Trek, we would have two universes: My universe and then this other one. They try to make their universe as consistent with mine as possible, but obviously they get enthusiastic and want to go off in other directions.”

In other words it's not the same universe, ergo not canon. Different universes are different canons. Which is pretty much how Legends is now

[Ivanstone]

I just saw it. Three problems:
1 - Chewie didn't rip anyone's arm off.
2 - If you're going to put the Ghost into a Star Wars movie (again), it would be nice to see live action versions of the Rebels. I vote that Helen Mirren gets to play Hera.
3 - JJ Abrams is still JJ Abrams.
On the plus side:
1 - Daisy Ridley must be immensely talented because somehow she managed to pull off a good performance with that script and that direction.
2 - John Boyega was actually kind of cool.
3 - Billy Dee Williams is old as fuck and still has swagger.

[Ron Burgundy]

the movie should have been 3 hours at least. it needed more depth. everything felt so rushed. they answered so many questions yet it felt like so many questions weren't answered at all ...

[Polyxo]

I just saw it. Three problems:
1 - Chewie didn't rip anyone's arm off.
2 - If you're going to put the Ghost into a Star Wars movie (again), it would be nice to see live action versions of the Rebels. I vote that Helen Mirren gets to play Hera.
3 - JJ Abrams is still JJ Abrams.
On the plus side:
1 - Daisy Ridley must be immensely talented because somehow she managed to pull off a good performance with that script and that direction.
2 - John Boyega was actually kind of cool.
3 - Billy Dee Williams is old as fuck and still has swagger.

My biggest problem was the Rey is a Palpatine, and the stormtrooper girl might be Lando's kid. Individually, those things on their own aren't a problem. The thing is, there's way too much of that, with the bad guy turned good guy already being Han and Leia's kid. It reminds me of a JRPG, where every single character has some familial or deep interconnection to each other. It makes a big world just kind of seem very small and 'written'.

[exochaft]

I honestly have no idea why everyone keeps bringing up Kathleen Kennedy, she doesn't write these films. Has she ever written or directed anything?

She's not even an equivalent of Kevin Feige. He's really in a unique position. She's just a regular old producer, they have fuck all to do with how good the story of a film is. They just deal with the funding.

Funding is just one small part of a long list of standard duties of a producer. They oversee the entire production of a film, and one of those pivotal roles is actually selecting a script to run with, as well as having a heavy hand in the filming/editing/directing coordination process. Basically, the reason why producers have such meddling powers is because they need the films to be made on time and within budget.

How much did KK influence the films? She's the final decision on the script to run with, as it has to be run by her. While there are a bunch of people doing the legwork underneath her doing the actual work, she has the final say as she's holding the paychecks. She's still responsible for the product that's put out because she has to approve all of it, and whether she approached these films in a hands-off fashion or a micromanager we'll never really know for certain. Power struggles between directors and producers are also not uncommon, either, as those decisions "made by an executive board" that people like to talk about? If those are true, it comes down through the producer in many cases.