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Star Wars IX The Rise of Skywalker (JJ Abrams 2019)


Jay

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I really hope it's not Luke looking out at the twin suns on the Tatooine homestead; Lucas already did that in ROTS!

 

Maybe it'll be Luke/Han/Leia all reunited somehow? Allowing Williams to do a suite of all the themes in the final cue, before seguing into the now-traditional Binary Sunset closer.

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15 hours ago, Arpy said:

If some rumoured story leaks are to be believed, the ending will be the twin-sun shot on Tatooine. That in and of itself isn't particularly a bad thing, you know, it's like poetry...

 

It's not poetry, for god's sake. After 9 bloody movies, it's a damn running gag.

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10 hours ago, Chen G. said:

I'll give JJ Abrams the benefit of the doubt, but - as it is - I still can't see why the sequel trilogy should have ever been made.

You can't see why a beloved franchise that has the potential to tell more stories wouldn't be considered for more sequels? It was inevitable and part of the reason it happened was because of Lucas! Yeah, he said in 2005 that Revenge of the Sith was the last Star Wars film and there would be no more, but that was 2005, man! 

 

I'm glad they were made, too, if only because we get to hear more Williams Star Wars music. 

 

 

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33 minutes ago, Arpy said:

You can't see why a beloved franchise that has the potential to tell more stories wouldn't be considered for more sequels? It was inevitable and part of the reason it happened was because of Lucas!

 

Return of the Jedi closed the book on Star Wars as a story. It’s as simple as that.

 

4 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Money?

 

Even putting money aside, I think it’s like @Arpy said. “Well, fans want more Star Wars, don’t they? So let’s give them more.”

 

But in my mind, it’s the job of the filmmakers not to give fans what they want, but rather what they need.

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The Star Wars saga was completed in 2005, at least on film, but obviously something happened by the early 2010s that led to Lucas just abandoning it all to the white slavers in a legendary transaction. The guy was so protective of his work, it seems baffling that he would have divorced from it. It just so happened that the dark period between 2005 and 2015 repeated the massive renewed interest in SW similar to the resurgence after the decade following ROTJ. You don't do shit for a decade or so and you're good to go.

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8 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

Return of the Jedi closed the book on Star Wars as a story. It’s as simple as that.

Return of the Jedi still acts as the end, without it having to be the final nail in the proverbial coffin. 

12 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

But in my mind, it’s the job of the filmmakers not to give fans what they want, but rather what they need.

 

I would love that to be true and for filmmakers to have that restraint and control and be willing to say 'enough is enough'. The primary concern of the filmmaker should be to tell a good story and make what they want, not fall to the whims and trends of consensus. 

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15 minutes ago, Gruesome Son of a Bitch said:

The Star Wars saga was completed in 2005, at least on film, but obviously something happened by the early 2010s that led to Lucas just abandoning it all to the white slavers in a legendary transaction. The guy was so protective of his work, it seems baffling that he would have divorced from it. It just so happened that the dark period between 2005 and 2015 repeated the massive renewed interest in SW similar to the resurgence after the decade following ROTJ. You don't do shit for a decade or so and you're good to go.

 

Maybe Disney threatened him. Hand it over or else! $4 billion is chump change to us.

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23 minutes ago, Arpy said:

Return of the Jedi still acts as the end, without it having to be the final nail in the proverbial coffin. 

 

But these films are presented as direct sequels: they’re not spinoffs and not prequels; they are supposedly the continuation of the same story, and yet they can never really be that, because that story had ended.

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17 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

I wouldn't call the end of RotJ a definite ending.

 

It’s not a very good ending, but it is a definitive one.

 

12 minutes ago, Arpy said:

It ended the Skywalker story, in 1983. There's nothing that stops anyone from telling a story that follows from there.

 

And yet the legacy of the Skywalker story looms large over this trilogy: from iconography to call-backs, thematic ideas, narrative elements and even the choice of title.

 

JJ Abrams did say he strives for this film to be a conclusion to a “trilogy of trilogies”, so it is meant to be a continuation from Return of the Jedi, rather than an altogether new story.

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What makes Return of the Jedi a definitive ending? To me, that's only relative to the vision of the filmmakers and the time. Rise of Skywalker could be a definitive ending to Rey's story, but in twenty or thirty years time, perceptions of what 'definitive' means might change*. Someone might want to tell a story that is a continuation and it doesn't necessarily lessen what came before.

 

 

 

 

*they would also have to work in elements and references of the worlds built in the tv series too, which makes things more complicated...

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Story is conflict and conflict is story, and nothing but. By the end of Return of the Jedi, the central conflict of the series had been abated: the Empire has been defeated (implicit in the original film, explicit in the Special Edition), the Sith vanquished and balance restored to the Force.

 

And then...someone basically hit the reset button for Episode VII. But genuine storytelling doesn't have a reset button. The conflict begins; it gradually escalates, twists and turns, reaches a low point and then climaxes and wraps up.

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10 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Search your feelings, @Arpy. You will know it to be true.

 

I did once do a three-act plot diagram of Star Wars: I also did ones for The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. It was an interesting experiment, and made for a nice comparison.

 

Star Wars is perhaps the most wonky of the three series in terms of its overall construction. It takes a long time for the central conflict to present itself, and its followed too closely by the major upheaval in the course of the conflict. But the overall framework is recognisable.

 

As you can see, the sequel trilogy - as it stands - is entirely extraneous.

 

Narrative Structure.jpg

 

I don't get this diagram. Could you overlay it with a classic Hollywood film for comparison, like Braveheart or something?

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