Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

[Ragedaug]

Ive seen this word used more in the last week than the entire of last year.

People on the net sure love their buzz words.

You can just point how bad plot points without having to use the new fad term.

Sure...right...but how would internet randos know that we are edgy legit film critics if we don't point out Mary Sues, Deus ex machina, and McGuffins, while pointing out we are Cinephiles?

[tyrlaan]

Ive seen this word used more in the last week than the entire of last year.

People on the net sure love their buzz words.

You can just point how bad plot points without having to use the new fad term.

I mean, MacGuffin is a term that was coined in the 1920s, so unless your definition of "new" is very different from mine, your peeve here is misinformed.

[Sanguinerd]

What else should we call that hilarious dagger with the extendable ruler or whatever it was.

[Eduardo]

You want a real plot hole in TRoS? That's the one.

"You need a Sith Wayfinder to get to this planet, and there are only two. Oh, and the flight logs of this guy's ship, cause he's been there. Oh, and the thousands of other ship logs from the apparently regular traffic ferrying huge amounts of personnel and material to the location, to build and staff that fleet in supposed secrecy."

It's silly, because you can close that plot hole by just stating the path is dangerous, and you need a map. The Sith Wayfinders are one, but any map works. That they don't realize there's been a secret plot and there were other sources is fine, you just need to not pull the bullshit "there's only two Wayfinders, and they're the only way to get there" shit if you're gonna violate that premise yourself a few scenes later.

I can see Kylo not being aware, because a lot of this was likely started under Snoke; there may just not have been further traffic, and the Final Order may have separated its supply lines from the First Order's records and systems, by that point. But it's not that hard to get to Exogol, clearly. Or else you'd never have gotten the thousands or millions of crew necessary to handle that fleet there. Not to mention the construction crews, the materials, the supplies like food to keep them healthy, etc. There had to be regular transport.

Yes there are plot holes due to stupid reasons. Its important to remember the primary audience for_Disney is younger kids. If its too difficult it wont work.

https://advergators2.weebly.com/consumer-analysis.html

[PACOX]

Snoke wasnt deteriorated thats why he looks identical in the clone tanks as he did before. And if Palpatine was using cloning to create a figurehead for the first order which is such an important position you really think he wouldn't have done so for the rank and file? He had to have at least 12 million people on his star destroyers alone and nobody could get to his planet without one of the 2 wayfinders. You really think Kylo wouldn't have questioned where half his fucking fleet suddenly went??

Where are you getting this 12 million number? The ISDs we say in the movie were mostly unmanned at the time. Even then they are mostly autonomous, requiring smaller crews like the First Order SDs. Kylo was also aware of the transition to the to the new fleet.

Snoke wasnt deteriorated thats why he looks identical in the clone tanks as he did before

Snoke definitely goes to various stages of ugly, both on screen and in the comics, unless they just suck at rendering him.

- - - Updated - - -

What else should we call that hilarious dagger with the extendable ruler or whatever it was.

JJs unnecessary plot device #323.

[Darththeo]

Where are you getting this 12 million number? The ISDs we say in the movie were mostly unmanned at the time. Even then they are mostly autonomous, requiring smaller crews like the First Order SDs. Kylo was also aware of the transition to the to the new fleet.

Even if they were fully manned ... there are about 50,000 people per Imperial Star Destroyer (assuming fully staff) (however Wookieepedia has staff at 30,000 for these).

If 12 million on the Star Destroyers means the Final Order had 240 star destroyers. If it is the 30,000, that goes up to 400.

So we have 240 to 400 Star Destroyers if he is correct on the 12 million. Numbers I see are hundreds to thousands, but the hundreds come from a more official source. So, he isn't off ... but he thinks in the Star Wars Galaxy 12 million people is a lot ... it isn't. Coruscant population is 1 Trillion. 12 million is hardly anything in galaxy population, that may not even be an average civilized planet's population. We are talking about the population of Belgium ... moving within the Star Wars Galaxy.

[qwerty123456]

You want a real plot hole in TRoS? That's the one.

"You need a Sith Wayfinder to get to this planet, and there are only two. Oh, and the flight logs of this guy's ship, cause he's been there. Oh, and the thousands of other ship logs from the apparently regular traffic ferrying huge amounts of personnel and material to the location, to build and staff that fleet in supposed secrecy."

It's silly, because you can close that plot hole by just stating the path is dangerous, and you need a map. The Sith Wayfinders are one, but any map works. That they don't realize there's been a secret plot and there were other sources is fine, you just need to not pull the bullshit "there's only two Wayfinders, and they're the only way to get there" shit if you're gonna violate that premise yourself a few scenes later.

I can see Kylo not being aware, because a lot of this was likely started under Snoke; there may just not have been further traffic, and the Final Order may have separated its supply lines from the First Order's records and systems, by that point. But it's not that hard to get to Exogol, clearly. Or else you'd never have gotten the thousands or millions of crew necessary to handle that fleet there. Not to mention the construction crews, the materials, the supplies like food to keep them healthy, etc. There had to be regular transport.

I could be totally wrong but I think I heard somewhere where Palpatine just kept sending shit there before the empire was destroyed and the people there are like the survivors which if thats the case I think the wayfinder stuff is more defensible although still pretty dumb but could maybe explained by saying only someone powerful in the force can navigate it properly without specific coordinates and stuff.

But yeah Idk why they bothered with that because without it the dumb dagger part could have been left out as well. They could have just had them go to the Death Star wreckage to recover map data (and show us how Palpatine possibly survived). I can only assume they thought the wayfinder and dagger would make good merch.


If the above isn't true yeah I guess Kylo might not be aware but since Snoke/Palpatine was grooming him you would think he would atleast learned who is all under his eventual command, like the commanders of the ships and stuff and notice if some stopped showing up.

Where are you getting this 12 million number? The ISDs we say in the movie were mostly unmanned at the time. Even then they are mostly autonomous, requiring smaller crews like the First Order SDs. Kylo was also aware of the transition to the to the new fleet.



Snoke definitely goes to various stages of ugly, both on screen and in the comics, unless they just suck at rendering him.

Where is your source saying they were mostly unmanned?

I got 12 million from someone counting over 250 ships in the trailer before the movie came out and Kylo's star destroyers requiring crews of over 80k. I used less then a full compliment in case they weren't fully manned. :https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Res...Star_Destroyer I was wrong because apparently they have almost 30k people aboard each one : https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Xys...Star_Destroyer . So yeah there were at the very least 7 million people aboard them and I'm sure more because the source I got the 250 from was only from a single scene in the trailer.

Also Its strange you keep saying the first orders were mostly autonomous when they require a ton more people than the originals.

What argument are you even having now? You are totally insane off the rails right now, care to get back on tract?

Says the guy who repeatedly takes tiny sections of my comments and ignores the rest because they cant come up with a proper response. What ever I'm done with you.

[Darththeo]

Says the guy who repeatedly takes tiny sections of my comments and ignores the rest because they cant come up with a proper response. What ever I'm done with you.

Because I only respond to the parts that have anything to actually do with what we are discussing ... you like tangents and nothing you pointed out has any real relevance. You repeating a point a different way doesn't give it any more validity, and FYI, don't whine about behavior you do.

[PACOX]

Where is your source saying they were mostly unmanned?

I got 12 million from someone counting over 250 ships in the trailer before the movie came out and Kylo's star destroyers requiring crews of over 80k. I used less then a full compliment in case they weren't fully manned. :https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Res...Star_Destroyer I was wrong because apparently they have almost 30k people aboard each one : https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Xys...Star_Destroyer . So yeah there were at the very least 7 million people aboard them and I'm sure more because the source I got the 250 from was only from a single scene in the trailer.

Also Its strange you keep saying the first orders were mostly autonomous when they require a ton more people than the originals.

Looks like I was wrong about the Resurgence class SDs being somewhat autonomous (at least I can't find a source right now), still the case for the Sith Star Destroyers though.

[Mormolyce]

Well, by all accounts Abrams had some idea where he was going when he started. Rian unfortunately grabbed the wheel and swerved the trilogy off the road and by the time JJ got control again all he could manage was saving it by getting stuck in a ditch instead of wrapped around a tree.

That's all speculation as far as I can tell.

Honestly my opinion at the time based on the plot threads JJ handed over to Rian was that he was probably creating a bunch of mysteries with the intent that future writers would fill them in. Again, look at Lost :P

[qwerty123456]

Looks like I was wrong about the Resurgence class SDs being somewhat autonomous (at least I can't find a source right now), still the case for the Sith Star Destroyers though.

I'm not seeing any sources that say they are mostly autonomous just that you can blow them up by shooting at the super laser.

[Gallahadd]

It’s just a really bad idea to take something that has a ton of fans and try to sharply move it in a totally different direction.

To be fair, I think there IS room for that, in Star Wars, just NOT in the core trilogy.

I think if Rian had made a standalone film, about a group of rebels fleeing in a ship, while a group of faceless first order types has persued them, through warps and all, then they'd slowly worked out why they were able to do this, snuck onto their ship, deativated the tracker and then legged it, it could have been great.

However, having tha story, as the second of the new star wars trilogy just felt super wrong. Add in the divisive handling of Luke and the largely pointless Canto Bite arc and you're destined for trouble.

[Sondrelk]

Absolutely. The way Marvel did with Ragnarok and Guardians. Campy side journeys are fine. Of course to me, the other difference between those and the last Jedi is they poke fun at superheroes instead of attempting to unravel the whole mythology.

I guess a better example is Daredevil, which is decidedly not funny but does a good job showing how the avengers look to someone living in New York and how it’s not all positive from their perspective.

Either way, the Marvel universe is obviously the gold standard right now, with an acclaimed set of main movies built around the avengers and a bunch of excellent side projects with lots of different tones. We’ll see over the next 15 years if Star Wars can recover and reach something closer to that level.

I would argue that many of the problems with the Sequel Trilogy stems from it being "The acclaimed Disney Star Wars Trilogy". And not simply Star Wars.

Rogue one is pretty darn great, it feels almost entirely disconnected from both the Original Trilogy and the Prequels, but it still feels like it takes place in teh same universe. Because Star Wars is not really about groundbreaking visual effects or corporations making each new movie an event, but about a director or writer making a space movie about something he wants to see.

Solo as well. I certainly didnt think it was a great movie, but i enjoyed it well enough, and could at least respect it for being different and making me feel there was some amount of passion behind it.


The Sequel Trilogy feels almost completely soulless. A middle of the road special effects bonanza whose every bit of nuance or quirk has been sanded off if it didnt align with Disneys wish to make money.

[Gallahadd]

I guess a better example is Daredevil, which is decidedly not funny but does a good job showing how the avengers look to someone living in New York and how it’s not all positive from their perspective.

Exactly, yeah. If they'd made Last Jedi a kind of Daredevil-esque side film, showing how normal resistance fighters deal when they don't have ace pilots and Jedi to assist, it could have been amazing.

[Endus]

Honestly, in comparing Star Wars to the MCU, I think we're missing the integral distinction.

Star Wars was told as three distinct trilogies, and trilogies have a specific pattern to follow; small victory in the first part (potentially working as a standalone, as ANH did), followed by the collapse of that victory into an even worse state than we opened in during the second part, and climbing back up to a grander victory in the final part. If we start at 0 to use arbitrary numbers, the first ends on a +1, the second on a -1, and the third on a +2. But these all need to be telling a coherent, continuous story. They did so, in both the OT and prequels (as much as that's about the only thing the prequels did well). In the modern trilogy, trading it between writers and directors each film with no strong guidance meant we didn't have that coherent story, the middle act doesn't really continue the same themes as the first and third. I maintain it would've been fine if JJ Abrams had done all three, or Rian Johnson; the issue was trading it between them.

The MCU doesn't do trilogies. There may be characters who have three films, but those films are distinct, separate entries. They're serials, not a trilogy, because "trilogy" means more than "there's three entries". And that's why big changes in direction and writing, like going from Thor 1/2 into Thor Ragnarok, are totally fine. Thor Ragnarok doesn't depend on or continue the stories of the first two films, other than sharing some characters. There's an uberstory woven throughout all the films, regarding the Infinity Stones, and that's what pulls everything in for the Avengers, but it's so ephemeral that you don't need to consider it in evaluating any of the separate entries of the individual films. It's not a part of their stories; it occurs incidentally or in the background. A story might revolve around Loki trying to steal the Tesseract, but that the Tesseract is actually the Space Stone doesn't matter, plot-wise, until we get to the Avengers films. "Powerful alien trinket" is all we needed for the earlier films. That it's the Space Stone is the uberstory; that matters to the group films, but not the individual ones.

And that, I think, would be a grand way to go with Star Wars, now that the Skywalker stuff is over. Move to a new era, either back 1000 years into the High Republic (not the Old Republic), or (better) forward a few centuries or more. Tech doesn't have to change; it doesn't between the Old Republic and the modern era of the Skywalker saga. Do smaller-scale character-based stories. A cyber criminal, working against corporate elites in the New Empire (or whatever), write this as something like Bourne Identity in Space. A young Force-user, in an era when the Force is basically considered a myth, seeking out Jedi and Sith temples to learn about their powers, while pursued by government agents who want to harness their abilities (Indiana Jones in Space, with Magic, and overtones of every Government Experiments on Kid With Powers story). A mercenary warlord, working with Resistance groups, with enough honour he won't fight for the New Empire, but still not willing to raise a rifle without a paycheck. He's got a small band of mercs he runs, could use any number of war films as the inspiration. There's three characters, they each have their own story. 1-2 films each, and they start running into each other, and eventually team up, because the New Empire's after each of them, and they each think the New Empire's gotta go.

Give us characters first. Team-up later. Stories like The Mandalorian should be the baseline, and then when Mando shows up in the big come-together film, that's awesome for everyone. One of the biggest issues with the modern trilogy is that we just don't get to know the characters, particularly Finn. He never really gets a chance to be important in some big way. That's not even needed, really, if he's already someone the audience loves from his own films.

[Sondrelk]

Honestly, in comparing Star Wars to the MCU, I think we're missing the integral distinction.

I would argue that the main sticking point, at least for me, on why the sequels are bad coems down to it being all flash and nostalgia pandering, and no substance. It feels like a corporate creation made solely for the purpose of making money and barely at all like there is a person behind the movies with passion wanting to tell a story.

Marvel is also something that was made almost from the beginning as corporate fluff to sell movie tickets, meaning that as it inevitably grew and got into its own the quality of the movies organically grew as the actors got more comfortable in their roles and the directors knew what was expected of them.

Star Wars is at its heart George Lucas telling the story he always wanted to tell. A cheesy kid-friendly space opera harkening back to old movies he watched as a kid.


Though of course, as i mentioned, this is specifically a problem with the sequel trilogy as a whole. The standalone movies are significantly more interesting because they come across like directors who love Star Wars telling the stories they want to tell, playing with tone, look and structure to do so, meaning that regardless of their quality they stand on their own.

[PACOX]

I'm not seeing any sources that say they are mostly autonomous just that you can blow them up by shooting at the super laser.

Its in the visual dictionary.



https://i.redd.it/4grnfa3fqu541.jpg

[Xuvial]

I would argue that the main sticking point, at least for me, on why the sequels are bad coems down to it being all flash and nostalgia pandering, and no substance. It feels like a corporate creation made solely for the purpose of making money and barely at all like there is a person behind the movies with passion wanting to tell a story.

It's because the Star Wars universe is so incredibly limited that producers only have two options:

1) Make it about the most recognizable elements of Star Wars - jedi, the force, lightsabers, space battles, super-lasers, etc. If they go this way, it becomes impossible NOT to turn it into a huge scoop of nostalgia-pandering. But this is also where the money is, because a large subset of the fanbase will gobble up anything featuring those elements (no matter how terrible the movie is) and buy all the merchandise. The prequels proved this.
Arguably the only thing featuring these nostalgia elements that has actually been GOOD (since the OT) is the 2008 Clone Wars animated TV show.

2) Detach it from all the above Star Wars elements and venture into spin-off territory. But the only thing that has been successful in this regard is The Mandalorian, which could quite easily be happening in it's own separate sci-fi universe. It's basically Lone Cowboy/Samurai in space. It doesn't need any prior knowledge of Star Wars to be fully enjoyable.

[Aurrora]

That's all speculation as far as I can tell.

Honestly my opinion at the time based on the plot threads JJ handed over to Rian was that he was probably creating a bunch of mysteries with the intent that future writers would fill them in. Again, look at Lost :P

It's according to Daisy Ridley herself. JJ wrote drafts for 8 and 9 but Rian didn't go along with it.

https://comicbook.com/starwars/2018/...abrams-script/

[qwerty123456]

Its in the visual dictionary.



https://i.redd.it/4grnfa3fqu541.jpg

Thanks. Makes sense considering their much lower crew numbers compared to the First Order ones. Wasn't sure if the low numbers were from skeleton crews or what.