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The Rise of Skywalker SPOILERS ALLOWED discussion thread


Jay

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It definitely didn't help, and judging by the early trailers it was a last minute change (the sequence appeared to be washed with the golden glow of a sunset/sunrise). The VFX guys must have been pulling their hair out. 

 

It's visually indistinguishable from the battle at the end of TFA. Abrams clearly isn't the most inspired filmmaker. 

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To be fair, the Sith troopers were nevery really "hyped up". They were revealed at Celebration and then not talked about officially very much after that. All the hype came from clickbait websites discussing ridiculous rumors.

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Every new movie there is a new class of Troopers, that make people think "Oh yeah, they will be great, difficult adversaries for the heroes, instead of the easily defeated common Troopers!", just for them to appear for a few seconds and then vanish. Remember the Death Troopers from Rogue One?

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Eh? That's one of the aspects of the Star Wars universe I like, that there are different classes and types of troopers and droids and such, especially during the Clone Wars.

 

The Death Troopers are great and their reappearance in Rebels and The Mandalorian weren't wasted.

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All of that stuff was pretty clear to a lot of people back when TLJ first came out (except for Rey Palpatine). The author of that article is talking like he’s the first to have realised what that movie was trying to say. Still, better late than never.

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When you realize Rey and Ben vs Palpatine could've been so much more epic and exciting:

 

 

Sure, it would've been silly to see 75-year-old Ian McDiarmid jumping around and doing kung fu movements (he would probably be a weird CGI doll anyway), but wasn't Matt Smith supposed to be the body of a newly ressurected Palpatine?

 

Still, it's the final movie in the saga, the duel between one of the most powerful (if not THE most powerful) Sith that ever existed and a Force dyad, including Rey, who is "all the Jedi". They could've gone crazy with the final confrontation, with extreme levels of Force powers, criative use of habilities, etc. It could've been so much more apocalyptic, engaging and epic than the poorly written, poorly directed, extremely unengaging, and really tiresome scene we got.

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5 hours ago, Edmilson said:

wasn't Matt Smith supposed to be the body of a newly ressurected Palpatine?


There was never any official word of Matt Smith in this movie, and the leaks that were actually accurate never included him as far as can tell.

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The Son of Mortis plot would've been interesting in exploring the roots of the Dark Side of the force, but just too ambitious to do in the last film of a saga.

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There were a few here and elsewhere I've seen on the Internet that were dubious, but I think this 100% dispels any doubt whatsoever because it's clearly by the same concept artist that worked on TFA, TROS etc. and it fits the described script to a T.

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That's some amazing arts. Trevorrow's movie would've been at least more interesting to watch than this dreck.

 

YsUaHaE.jpg

 

Hux commiting sepukku? That's pretty dark for a Disney PG 13 movie. Maybe if they shot it like Beckett's death on At World's End, with Hux calmly walking while First Order's ships are being destroyed, it wouldn't be so dark?

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The last episode could have presented a filmmaker like Johnson with an opportunity to be truly subversive. It almost certainly would have been better than what we got.

 

But it seems redeeming Kylo Ren was a studio note. On parting ways with Trevorrow, whose script reportedly had Kylo Ren die a villain, Kennedy said it was to do with him not being involved since the first film - and therefore presumably not as attached to the idea of Ben’s redemption.

 

A Rian Johnson or Colin Trevorrow Episode IX, no matter how much more patiently and cleverly plotted it would have been then The Rise of Skywalker, would still suck the big one if the filmmakers hand was forced to feature the redemption of Kylo Ren.

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Disney probably figured though that audiences wanted to see a redemption arc. Leia and Han's son being evil until the end probably wouldn't sit well with a lot of people. 

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For me, the biggest problem of making Kylo the final big boss is simple: he isn't that menacing or intimidating as a villain. 

 

We saw him being defeated by "a girl who has never wielded a lightsaber", as Snoke puts it, and then we see him vulnerable and conflicted during his Skype chats with Rey, and by the end of TLJ Luke makes him look like an idiot in front of his entire army. 

 

We already saw him being so demoralized that he wouldn't be as interesting as a villain. Heck, TROS tried to do this in the marketing, teasing an epic final showdown between Kylo and Rey on the sunken Death Star 2, and even I thought "seriously? Rey will kick his ass as easily as Palpatine destroyed Maul and his brother on Clone Wars".

 

On other franchises, they at least made their final boss look menacing, strong and powerful enough to make the audience fear for the heroes' lives: Thanos, Voldemort, Azog, Sauron, even Vader and the Emperor on the original trilogy. On contrast, Kylo was always portrayed as this vulnerable, conflicted person, who, despite having some habilities, is easily defeated by any enemy slightly smarter than him.

 

I have no problem on him being a bad guy until the end, but at the very least giving him some powerful allied - not Palpatine, but maybe this Tor Valum guy...

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3 hours ago, Demodex said:

Disney probably figured though that audiences wanted to see a redemption arc. Leia and Han's son being evil until the end probably wouldn't sit well with a lot of people. 


But it was the right thing to do, narratively. I think most audience members will have accepted it, especially after The Last Jedi.

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NGL, from the art and descriptions, this could have been the most interesting movie in the trilogy for me.

 

17 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

I think most audience members will have accepted it, especially after The Last Jedi.

 

I agree. Before TLJ, I was very interested in seeing Kylo turn. After, I couldn't care less. Of course, that's because I'd lost interest in all of the ST characters, but I digress.

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Let's not forget that TFA, TLJ and even what we got with TRoS had amazing concept art that didn't portray the final vision for those films. These images seem like early concepts before being developed into their final iterations.

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I think TRoS did follow up TLJ’s idea of everyone having the Force, a bit, via Finn in general, but also through his scene with Jannah, where she talks about her whole battalion throwing down their weapons as one.

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I would've loved to have seen more of Jannah's character - even if the chunkof Death Star on Kef Bir is ridiculous - having her lead a group of rebel Stormtroopers would've been great.

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17 minutes ago, gkgyver said:

The beacon of Coruscant? 

Part of Trevorrow's film would've taken place on Coruscant in the city's underbelly. 

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Its true: Trevorrow's script, the villainy of Kylo Ren - all of it. Its all true.

 

I'm beginning to wonder, with Chris Terrio saying that JJ Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy set Kylo's traejectory towards redemption in The Force Awakens, that this was the cause of removing Trevorrow. Kennedy did say that Trevorrow wasn't "in" on the traejectory set by The Force Awakens - could this be the reason?

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She had just fired Lord and Miller, TLJ had enraged half the fanbase, and she couldn’t agree on a script with Trevorrow. She decided to run to a sure thing before it was too late.

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Why did all Star Wars filmmakers feel they had to fellate there Kylo Ren character constantly?

 

You know how I knew he was anyways going to be redeemed? He was always top billed over Daisy Ridley among the new cast members. He's secretly the main character of the ST and not Rey despite its woke trappings.

 

He's just a fucking fictional fantasy character. Who cares if he's redeemed or not. Just make a good goddamn story. How can Character A should be redeemed be the guiding principle for constructing a story. Go where the story will take you.

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5 minutes ago, Pellaeon said:

She had just fired Lord and Miller, TLJ had enraged half the fanbase, and she couldn’t agree on a script with Trevorrow. She decided to run to a sure thing before it was too late.

 

Actually, Colin was fired on Sep 5, 2017, two months before TLJ came out. Lord and Miller were fired and Howard was hired a few months before, in June 2017.

 

https://variety.com/2017/film/news/colin-trevorrow-exits-star-wars-episode-ix-1202548088/

 

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-han-solo-movie-ron-howard-steps-direct-1015674

 

6 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

But what was the nature of their disagreement? Was it Trevorrow's idea of not having Kylo Ren redeemed? Seems likely to me.

 

Well...

 

Quote

Disney issued a short statement on Tuesday about the departure without naming a successor. 

 

“Lucasfilm and Colin Trevorrow have mutually chosen to part ways on ‘Star Wars: Episode IX,'” the statement said. “Colin has been a wonderful collaborator throughout the development process, but we have all come to the conclusion that our visions for the project differ. We wish Colin the best and will be sharing more information about the film soon.”

 

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4 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

Well...

Quote

“Lucasfilm and Colin Trevorrow have mutually chosen to part ways on ‘Star Wars: Episode IX,'” the statement said. “Colin has been a wonderful collaborator throughout the development process, but we have all come to the conclusion that our visions for the project differ. We wish Colin the best and will be sharing more information about the film soon.”

 

 

I was thinking more of this:

 

Quote
Colin was at a huge disadvantage not having been a part of Force Awakens and in part of those early conversations because we had a general sense of where the story was going. [...] Like any development process, it was only in the development [of Trevorrow's Episode IX] that we’re looking at a first draft [of Trevorrow's] and realising that it was perhaps heading in a direction that many of us didn’t feel was really quite where we wanted it to go.

 

Since Chris Terrio said that JJ Abrams had Kylo's road to redemption in mind from The Force Awakens, this is starting to seem quite plausible.

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1 minute ago, Edmilson said:

Actually, Colin was fired on Sep 5, 2017, two months before TLJ came out.

 

Ah, my bad.

 

As for the nature of the disagreement, I’d guess it had more to do with the idea of setting it on Coruscant and having a big revolutionary vibe, makes it seem super political.

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Curiously, a movie more political and revolutionary, also about impoverished citizens rising up against a rich, opressive elite, will earn more or about the same as TROS on the worldwide box office - Joker. But of course, Disney had no way on knowing that in 2017.

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The tokenism here is mind-boggling. Let's all be honest - Finn is a garbage character. Like literally no development, he does nothing of consequence, is always caught in side subplots, essentially contributes nothing to the films. 

 

The rebellion plot in Treverrow's original script would have finally given the character something meaty to do. 

 

Even Poe - he has just one mode - hotshot pilot and that's it. 

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Wasn't there some rumor saying that part of Trevorrow's issue was that he had intended to use Luke and Snoke for his film, and that TLJ conflicted with that? Though I suppose it would've had to have been really early in the planning stages for that to be true, considering DotF lines up fairly well as a TLJ follow up.

 

Then again, I'm also remembering there being a supposed storyline involving a possible child of Rey's and Kylo's. It's amazing the sort of stuff rumorville can come up with (though it did correctly guess Hux being the spy, at the same time).

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9 hours ago, TheUlyssesian said:

The tokenism here is mind-boggling. Let's all be honest - Finn is a garbage character. Like literally no development, he does nothing of consequence, is always caught in side subplots, essentially contributes nothing to the films. 

 

The rebellion plot in Treverrow's original script would have finally given the character something meaty to do. 

 

Even Poe - he has just one mode - hotshot pilot and that's it. 

Finn's development began and ended in TFA. Unfortunately neither Abrams or Johnson followed up with it, which makes part of Trevorrow's idea seem surprisingly good by comparison. Finn really needed to be developed along with Rey but it seems he drew the short straw and lost out.

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Finn ends TFA with lying to the Resistance who are in great danger and relying on him, just to save Rey and get out, bugger the rest of them.

 

In TLJ he wakes up with that, run away and save Rey, and he ends with going back to the despairing Resistance, motivating them for a final stand and willing to sacrifice himself to possibly save them. The deleted scenes even sowed seeds of a future stormtrooper revolt he'd lead.

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I think of Finn’s best use is being Rey’s closest friend, the one really looking out for her and concerned about her Dark Side issues, the audience’s “Samwise” type character — the POV character, the down-to-earth guy with no bloodline. I thought TRoS did this to some extent, but I would have preferred if he had been by Rey’s side during the last act rather than relegated to a B-plot. (The “revolution” storyline would have just been a B-plot too, if more glamorous.)

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On TFA, I didn't liked how the character's arcs were handled, but then when I watched TLJ, I thought it improved the characters greatly.

 

On the first movie, Finn abandoned the First Order after his first time on a conflict - about 20 minutes later, actually, which is weird, but anyway. But then, on TLJ, by the beginning of the movie, he sees that the Resistance almost being annihilated and he decides to abandon then as well.

 

I thought this was more consistent with how he was introduced. Whether fighting for the First Order or the Resistance, by that point Finn doesn't exactly have a side on that conflict. Basically, he just wants that he and his friends survive. Is it coward? Probably, but also consistent with the character.

 

Then, during TLJ, he sees how the galaxy has been oppressed, how terrible life is for a lot of its citizens, and he decides to take a stand, to fight, to inspire. His arc with Rose helps the character grow and overcome his flaws, to become the best fighter for the Resistance. Unfortunately, TROS didn't continue this arc of growth, but anyway.

 

As for Poe, on the first movie we only know him as hotshot pilot, who is trusted by Leia and commands the Resistance pilots during battles. Cool, but thin as a paper.

 

Then, on TLJ, he learns that he still have a lot to learn on how to best face the enemy, how to be a leader for its soldiers even in face of unfavorable odds - which he does, by the end of the movie ("Why are you looking at me? Follow him!").

 

In some ways, TLJ is about errors, failures, defeat, but also about growth despite the defeats. Our characters, Rey, Poe, Finn, Kylo, Luke, they all fail because of their personal flaws, but they (at least the heroes) learn how to overcome their flaws in order to become better people and better help their cause.

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