Considering that Rian Johnson is still working on his own trilogy of Star Wars films, I think the reason he didn't do Episode 9 was because he didn't want to, and not because he was forced out because of backlash on TLJ.
ME: Alright, time to go see Skywalker! (In 3d. Not really worth it for the effects but it made for a basically empty theatre so, win?)
JJ: So, you know how another director made the previous movie?
ME: Yeah...?
JJ: I didn't really like how that turned out; so I'm gonna tell two movies worth of story in one movie. Sound good?
ME: O-Okay...
/wandering out of the theatre
ME: Why does it feel like I just came out of the spin cycle of a dryer?
But seriously though, overall I liked it. Though I feel like it was the least interesting of the three which is probably not where your want a massive story ending to be.
Honestly, of all the gripes I have, the biggest issue I have is the whole "They won't know which way is up" thing. Most of the other stuff fell in the range of meh to slightly fun to watch. Every ship having a death star cannon on it was kinda meh. The part where Palpatine is all "I am all the Sith" and Rey responds with "And I am all the Jedi" was slightly cringe-worthy, though it sort of fits with the 'noone is really dead' theme of previous movies. The scene where Palpatine does that massive force lightning storm was cool but not really interesting if that makes any sense.
Best parts were where Adam Driver was on the screen with Boyega, Ridley, and Isaac all firmly sharing second place together. Loved the look of the Sith world. Loved the look of the start of the final ship fight. Really liked the clever use of Rey and Kylo/Ben's force connection.
Considering that Rian Johnson is still working on his own trilogy of Star Wars films, I think the reason he didn't do Episode 9 was because he didn't want to, and not because he was forced out because of backlash on TLJ.
I think he had an interesting vision that was hampered by a series of unfortunate events. I wouldn't have wanted to do the next movie either, especially after Carrie Fisher died.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
+3
Options
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Rian Johnson isn't doing a trilogy. He's signed on for one film. I'll be eager to see it.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
+3
Options
ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
Rian Johnson isn't doing a trilogy. He's signed on for one film. I'll be eager to see it.
I hated TLJ, but I'm excited to see what Rian can do in a non-Skywalker Saga movie. I think he'll give us a great story in the Star Wars universe if he doesn't also have to worry too much about what came before or making his story fit in a greater narrative.
Give Rian Johnson a lower budget standalone heist prequel movie with Poe and Bliss. Stakes are low. Something happens to turn him towards the New Republic that causes Bliss to resent him.
Gives Johnson a medium in in the SW universe he'd excel at, Poe an actual backstory, makes Bliss a full character, gives a fun rogues gallery of questionable partners, and most importantly, more Babu Frik.
ME: Alright, time to go see Skywalker! (In 3d. Not really worth it for the effects but it made for a basically empty theatre so, win?)
JJ: So, you know how another director made the previous movie?
ME: Yeah...?
JJ: I didn't really like out that turned out; so I'm gonna tell two movies worth of story in one movie. Sound good?
ME: O-Okay...
/wandering out of the theatre
ME: Why does it feel like I just came out of the spin cycle of a dryer?
It wouldn't have been quite as bad if it didn't feel like he chose to add enough filler to pad out his imaginary second movie to full length, and then cut back on everything to get it back down to half a movie.
The Rise of Skywalker was a movie consisting of a continuing series of bad ideas and bad writing decisions. Just ... goddamn.
Rey's parentage would have been the stupidest thing in the film, if only for how ultimately completely unnecessary it is, except that they .... brought back Palpatine for some god awfully stupid unknown reason so it manages to only take second place.
The whole thing was a disaster competently executed because all actors and director and VFX and what not people involved are actually very good at their jobs. But all in service to the realization of a terrible terrible script.
I think ultimately the most disappointing thing is the film's complete disinterest in any of the arcs set up by either of the first two films in the trilogy. It feels like a cheesy half-backed sequel trilogy to the previous two films jammed into one movie rather then a conclusion to them that ties up the story and character threads.
I expected better of them. Just sad.
+8
Options
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Saw this coming from a mile away. The sad part is, he could very have been telling the truth (especially given the quality of the scenes we did manage to get with Carrie Fisher in them). But you can't just throw people under the bus, especially given the biggest problems with the film had nothing to do with the VFX quality.
Had I bothered to look up Chris Terrio before seeing the movie, my expectations would have been super low. I mean, this is the guy who wrote Batman v Superman and Justice League.
+2
Options
Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
Oscar Isaac seems a little bridge burney over this, huh?
Also, I gotta say, the introduction of a pointless new love interest for Finn while sidelining the already existing one so hard it hurt, to simultaneously remove the idea that Star Wars might involve race-mixing or maybe even in the internet's wet dreams, homosexuality in it's main characters was both dumb and kinda disgusting.
+19
Options
ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
A curious thing I realized, apropos of nothing.
It's well-known among a certain sort of geek that Rogue One laid the foundation for hyperspace tracking to turn up in TLJ--that at the research facility Jyn Erso encounters files related to Imperial research on the topic, so naturally the First Order just dug them up when they took over all the old abandoned Imperial stuff.
However, Rogue One also did something else. In the Legends continuity, hyperspace comms weren't a thing. Like, you could send communications FTL, obviously, but while a ship was in hyperspace it was out of contact with the galaxy. For dorks like me this lead to interesting tactical and strategic considerations, and the introduction of the ability to communicate with a ship in hyperspace torpedoed a few neat story ideas from ever happening in the Disney canon.
But what that also did was further pave the way for hyperspace tracking, both in and out of universe. In-universe, if a comm signal--presumably encrypted or directed, as it was a signal being sent by an illegal paramilitary terrorist group to one of their covert operatives--can find a ship, then why not some sort of tracking signal? And out of universe, setting up that communications work through hyperspace makes the idea of tracking a ship through hyperspace seem like less of an ass pull.
(Going back further I had also previously interpreted the homing beacon on the Falcon in ANH not working through hyperspace, it just sent the signal once the Falcon dropped out of hyperspace at Yavin. But possibly homing beacons could be tracked through hyperspace, and thus hyperspace tracking was a project developed specifically in-universe so you never had to physically smuggle a beacon onto a ship again, and out-of-universe was inspired by the opposite of my interpretation.)
+4
Options
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Also, I gotta say, the introduction of a pointless new love interest for Finn while sidelining the already existing one so hard it hurt, to simultaneously remove the idea that Star Wars might involve race-mixing or maybe even in the internet's wet dreams, homosexuality in it's main characters was both dumb and kinda disgusting.
You mean the other ex-stormtrooper? Because even though she was pretty obviously (painfully so) supposed to be there for that they did so little with her that she didn't even manage to rise to the level of 'new love interest'.
Man, I remember when they said that they'd go into Finn and Poe's backstory. I can't even remember if they did anything with Finn, and Poe got an ex-girlfriend and a couple minutes of the other characters soiling themselves of the fact he used to run spice. If you're going to do backstory then at least actually provide some actual concrete backstory. The movie was already overstuffed so it's not like another five or ten minutes of dialogue was going to ruin the flow. Although Abrams probably thinks that anything that delays the next stuff happening! is ruining the flow.
At least I got to see Ian McDiarmid chew scenery again. I think any future Star Wars movies should move on to new things, but if someone pitched a movie set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope and promised there'd be at least 30 minutes of Palpatine spouting cliched evil sorcerer dialogue I'd be very interested. Someone needs to have him read Trump Tweets.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
I really liked what they ended up doing with Palpatine
I liked how he used the force to reanimate his own corpse, and technology to keep it from rotting away completely. It was an excellent subversion/corruption of the Jedi becoming ghosts and their bodies disappearing into the force
MWO: Adamski
+5
Options
ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
Also, I gotta say, the introduction of a pointless new love interest for Finn while sidelining the already existing one so hard it hurt, to simultaneously remove the idea that Star Wars might involve race-mixing or maybe even in the internet's wet dreams, homosexuality in it's main characters was both dumb and kinda disgusting.
Yeah, every scene with her I was just.. I mean, not perplexed, per se, but I have never been aware of a character's blackness so hard or found it so incredibly distracting in terms of taking me out of the movie.
+3
Options
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
I really liked what they ended up doing with Palpatine
I liked how he used the force to reanimate his own corpse, and technology to keep it from rotting away completely. It was an excellent subversion/corruption of the Jedi becoming ghosts and their bodies disappearing into the force
Was that explicit? Because I'm leaning more towards Palps from RotJ (and possibly even as far back as the ST) being a better put together clone puppet for the actual Palpatine that we see in RoS. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but neither does Palpatine somehow recovering his body after being thrown down a shaft and exploding on a space station that also explodes and then carting himself off to a mystery planet for 40 years.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
+4
Options
SixCaches Tweets in the mainframe cyberhexRegistered Userregular
I really liked what they ended up doing with Palpatine
I liked how he used the force to reanimate his own corpse, and technology to keep it from rotting away completely. It was an excellent subversion/corruption of the Jedi becoming ghosts and their bodies disappearing into the force
Was that explicit? Because I'm leaning more towards Palps from RotJ (and possibly even as far back as the ST) being a better put together clone puppet for the actual Palpatine that we see in RoS. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but neither does Palpatine somehow recovering his body after being thrown down a shaft and exploding on a space station that also explodes and then carting himself off to a mystery planet for 40 years.
This was Mike from RLM’s theory and I don’t buy it at all unless there are massive context clues in this movie that spell that out that I missed.
can you feel the struggle within?
+3
Options
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
I really liked what they ended up doing with Palpatine
I liked how he used the force to reanimate his own corpse, and technology to keep it from rotting away completely. It was an excellent subversion/corruption of the Jedi becoming ghosts and their bodies disappearing into the force
Was that explicit? Because I'm leaning more towards Palps from RotJ (and possibly even as far back as the ST) being a better put together clone puppet for the actual Palpatine that we see in RoS. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but neither does Palpatine somehow recovering his body after being thrown down a shaft and exploding on a space station that also explodes and then carting himself off to a mystery planet for 40 years.
This was Mike from RLM’s theory and I don’t buy it at all unless there are massive context clues in this movie that spell that out that I missed.
Yeah, that's where I got it from. It's not a great theory, but the alternative straight reading of the situation isn't a whole lot better. Fridge logic all over the place.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
I really liked what they ended up doing with Palpatine
I liked how he used the force to reanimate his own corpse, and technology to keep it from rotting away completely. It was an excellent subversion/corruption of the Jedi becoming ghosts and their bodies disappearing into the force
Was that explicit? Because I'm leaning more towards Palps from RotJ (and possibly even as far back as the ST) being a better put together clone puppet for the actual Palpatine that we see in RoS. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but neither does Palpatine somehow recovering his body after being thrown down a shaft and exploding on a space station that also explodes and then carting himself off to a mystery planet for 40 years.
This was Mike from RLM’s theory and I don’t buy it at all unless there are massive context clues in this movie that spell that out that I missed.
Yeah, that's where I got it from. It's not a great theory, but the alternative straight reading of the situation isn't a whole lot better. Fridge logic all over the place.
I’m all for creating believable head canon that irons out some of the nonsense in a Star Wars movie, so if it works for you, go with it. For me, it requires too much belief that this plot point was planned even as far back as three years ago, and I just don’t see it.
Because of how it was created and evolved over time, Star Wars in general has the blessing and curse of later movies (and other content, but I’m sticking to the movies) changing pretty significantly how you view the earlier ones. O I Wan talking about Vader killing Luke’s father in Star Wars reads a lot differently after Empire and it forces you to kind of do a little bit of mental gymnastics for it to work. They had the time and space in Jedi to even address it directly, even if they leave things like Leia kissing Luke in Empire totally untouched because there’s really no graceful way out.
In this case, that theory about Palpatine means you have to view especially the PT through a lens that doesn’t really make sense to me.
But this is also a big part of why I dislike the ST and ROS in particular. So many of the narrative chooses seem to not only say, “what you thought was happening in the past movies wasn’t actually happening the way you thought,” but rather, “what you saw happening actually doesn’t make sense in the new reality we’ve constructed.”
Also, I gotta say, the introduction of a pointless new love interest for Finn while sidelining the already existing one so hard it hurt, to simultaneously remove the idea that Star Wars might involve race-mixing or maybe even in the internet's wet dreams, homosexuality in it's main characters was both dumb and kinda disgusting.
According to Variety, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is set to become the least successful installment of the franchise in China by a large margin. After opening to $2.2 million last week, the film brought in another $2 million over the past weekend. It is now projected to earn just $19.7 million over its theatrical run in the Middle Kingdom.
This is a drastic decline from previous Chinese Star Wars outings. The Force Awakens earned a total of $126 million, while Rogue One and The Last Jedi earned $69.4 million and $42.6 million, respectively.
But it did good on the US, FWIW:
Meanwhile, The Rise of Skywalker is enjoying a successful run in the U.S., earning $72 million domestically this past weekend. The film is expected to cross the $1 billion mark.
0
Options
SixCaches Tweets in the mainframe cyberhexRegistered Userregular
Also, I gotta say, the introduction of a pointless new love interest for Finn while sidelining the already existing one so hard it hurt, to simultaneously remove the idea that Star Wars might involve race-mixing or maybe even in the internet's wet dreams, homosexuality in it's main characters was both dumb and kinda disgusting.
According to Variety, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is set to become the least successful installment of the franchise in China by a large margin. After opening to $2.2 million last week, the film brought in another $2 million over the past weekend. It is now projected to earn just $19.7 million over its theatrical run in the Middle Kingdom.
This is a drastic decline from previous Chinese Star Wars outings. The Force Awakens earned a total of $126 million, while Rogue One and The Last Jedi earned $69.4 million and $42.6 million, respectively.
But it did good on the US, FWIW:
Meanwhile, The Rise of Skywalker is enjoying a successful run in the U.S., earning $72 million domestically this past weekend. The film is expected to cross the $1 billion mark.
They should have had an an action set piece in Shanghai.
I really liked what they ended up doing with Palpatine
I liked how he used the force to reanimate his own corpse, and technology to keep it from rotting away completely. It was an excellent subversion/corruption of the Jedi becoming ghosts and their bodies disappearing into the force
Was that explicit? Because I'm leaning more towards Palps from RotJ (and possibly even as far back as the ST) being a better put together clone puppet for the actual Palpatine that we see in RoS. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but neither does Palpatine somehow recovering his body after being thrown down a shaft and exploding on a space station that also explodes and then carting himself off to a mystery planet for 40 years.
In the OT Vader can absorb blaster bolts when Han shoots him in Cloud city, also in the old EU canon, force users can both absorb and transfer energy (Coran Horn surviving a magma/geo thermal heat vent).
Either way works, and both ways have Palpatine using technology and the force to subvert the natural order.
And Palpatine in RoS is very much a corpse, with cataracts over his eyes and his skin rotting and bones poking through.
The EU old canon even had a bit about the rebels sabotaging Palpatines cloning facilities which could be why Snoke was so badly put together, and could have had Palpatine die in RotJ and then wake up in a half dead clone that we see him in RoS.
MWO: Adamski
0
Options
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
I really liked what they ended up doing with Palpatine
I liked how he used the force to reanimate his own corpse, and technology to keep it from rotting away completely. It was an excellent subversion/corruption of the Jedi becoming ghosts and their bodies disappearing into the force
Was that explicit? Because I'm leaning more towards Palps from RotJ (and possibly even as far back as the ST) being a better put together clone puppet for the actual Palpatine that we see in RoS. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but neither does Palpatine somehow recovering his body after being thrown down a shaft and exploding on a space station that also explodes and then carting himself off to a mystery planet for 40 years.
This was Mike from RLM’s theory and I don’t buy it at all unless there are massive context clues in this movie that spell that out that I missed.
Yeah, that's where I got it from. It's not a great theory, but the alternative straight reading of the situation isn't a whole lot better. Fridge logic all over the place.
I’m all for creating believable head canon that irons out some of the nonsense in a Star Wars movie, so if it works for you, go with it. For me, it requires too much belief that this plot point was planned even as far back as three years ago, and I just don’t see it.
Because of how it was created and evolved over time, Star Wars in general has the blessing and curse of later movies (and other content, but I’m sticking to the movies) changing pretty significantly how you view the earlier ones. O I Wan talking about Vader killing Luke’s father in Star Wars reads a lot differently after Empire and it forces you to kind of do a little bit of mental gymnastics for it to work. They had the time and space in Jedi to even address it directly, even if they leave things like Leia kissing Luke in Empire totally untouched because there’s really no graceful way out.
In this case, that theory about Palpatine means you have to view especially the PT through a lens that doesn’t really make sense to me.
But this is also a big part of why I dislike the ST and ROS in particular. So many of the narrative chooses seem to not only say, “what you thought was happening in the past movies wasn’t actually happening the way you thought,” but rather, “what you saw happening actually doesn’t make sense in the new reality we’ve constructed.”
In summary, China is a land of contrast.
Oh God no. In no way was this planned out. I'm pretty sure that the only planning was how quickly they could start pumping out movies in order to make back the $Texas sized check they gave Lucas. Although it's a bad enough idea that maybe this was Abrams' plan all along.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
The mystery boxes left from tfa were dumb, and deserved to be blown up because they are fucking dumb
The first movie was hella long ago, and several star wars media ago. Which mystery boxes were set up in TFA? "Who are Rey's parents" as one, but I don't think TLJ blew that one up so much as paid out on it.
What is this I don't even.
+8
Options
CaptainPeacockBoard Game HoarderTop o' the LakeRegistered Userregular
Thrawn trilogy could be adapted to fit in the new universe. I'm still ok with that.
Cluck cluck, gibber gibber, my old man's a mushroom, etc.
Something I’ve been thinking about...Kennedy is ultimately responsible for all this. But I’m not necessarily blaming her for what happened with these movies. She was, after all, hand picked by Lucas. And he’s definitely had more bad decisions than good in the last 25 years.
0
Options
SixCaches Tweets in the mainframe cyberhexRegistered Userregular
edited December 2019
On a different note (the Obi Wan series), apparently there’s a rumor that [obvious spoilers based on speculation]
they’re currently casting a young Luke for the Obi Wan series. It makes sense—Luke knows him before A New Hope but I wonder if casting him vs trying to do it with CGI means Luke has a meatier role than just a passing scene for nostalgia’s sake.
Six on
can you feel the struggle within?
0
Options
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
On a different note (the Obi Wan series), apparently there’s a rumor that [obvious spoilers based on speculation]
they’re currently casting a young Luke for the Obi Wan series. It makes sense—Luke knows him before A New Hope but I wonder if casting him vs trying to do it with CGI means Luke has a meatier role than just a passing scene for nostalgia’s sake.
I mean, someone still needs to be doing the things.
The problem there is that they're gonna end up retconning way more of a relationship in than ever existed.
Yes, Luke new of Ben Kenobi. They might have even met a time or two. But it is obvious from their interactions in ANH that they are at best very casual acquaintances. They are not friends. They are not even neighborly. Uncle Owen does his best to keep Luke as sheltered and oblivious to his history and past, and when Ben Kenobi comes up during dinner table conversation, Uncle Owen immediately deflects and steers the subject away.
But if they cast a Young Luke for the show, it's gonna end up that he and Kenobi bump into each other like all the damn time and they're secretly besties, and the whole thing is gonna be an obnoxious retcon.
I'd rather that the Kenobi show be about all the secret covert ops stuff that Kenobi does to keep the empire from sniffing around the Skywalker farmstead and acting as Luke's invisible protector. Never seen, but effective.
+12
Options
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Something I’ve been thinking about...Kennedy is ultimately responsible for all this. But I’m not necessarily blaming her for what happened with these movies. She was, after all, hand picked by Lucas. And he’s definitely had more bad decisions than good in the last 25 years.
Lucas picked her, but Disney kept her on after they bought Lucasfilm. She's got a really good track record with a lot of successful movies, but I'm wondering how much of that was her considering the production issues R1 and Solo had, not to mention signing off on letting the guy who wrote BvS and Justice League do the script for RoS. Abrams was a bad choice to direct, but understandable since TFA made bank and people tended to like it, plus financial success trumps talent in Hollywood. Terrio makes no sense though. Other than Argo his stuff has been strongly disliked and while the DCEU movies made money, they're generally considered failures since they were supposed to make all the money ever to rival the MCU.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Thrawn trilogy could be adapted to fit in the new universe. I'm still ok with that.
If you have not watched Rebels, watch Rebels.
Rebels spoilers:
Thrawn not only shows up but so does the TIE-D and Rukh. Also I think that is all the Thrawn we will see.
Do not forget the Interdictor cruiser...although I am not sure how it still works in the new canon given how loose the rules of hyperspace jumping are now
Black lives matter.
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
0
Options
Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
Posts
I would love to have seen that
Dig up, stupid.
JJ: So, you know how another director made the previous movie?
ME: Yeah...?
JJ: I didn't really like how that turned out; so I'm gonna tell two movies worth of story in one movie. Sound good?
ME: O-Okay...
/wandering out of the theatre
ME: Why does it feel like I just came out of the spin cycle of a dryer?
But seriously though, overall I liked it. Though I feel like it was the least interesting of the three which is probably not where your want a massive story ending to be.
Best parts were where Adam Driver was on the screen with Boyega, Ridley, and Isaac all firmly sharing second place together. Loved the look of the Sith world. Loved the look of the start of the final ship fight. Really liked the clever use of Rey and Kylo/Ben's force connection.
FFXIV - Milliardo Beoulve/Sargatanas
I think he had an interesting vision that was hampered by a series of unfortunate events. I wouldn't have wanted to do the next movie either, especially after Carrie Fisher died.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I hated TLJ, but I'm excited to see what Rian can do in a non-Skywalker Saga movie. I think he'll give us a great story in the Star Wars universe if he doesn't also have to worry too much about what came before or making his story fit in a greater narrative.
Gives Johnson a medium in in the SW universe he'd excel at, Poe an actual backstory, makes Bliss a full character, gives a fun rogues gallery of questionable partners, and most importantly, more Babu Frik.
It wouldn't have been quite as bad if it didn't feel like he chose to add enough filler to pad out his imaginary second movie to full length, and then cut back on everything to get it back down to half a movie.
Rey's parentage would have been the stupidest thing in the film, if only for how ultimately completely unnecessary it is, except that they .... brought back Palpatine for some god awfully stupid unknown reason so it manages to only take second place.
The whole thing was a disaster competently executed because all actors and director and VFX and what not people involved are actually very good at their jobs. But all in service to the realization of a terrible terrible script.
I think ultimately the most disappointing thing is the film's complete disinterest in any of the arcs set up by either of the first two films in the trilogy. It feels like a cheesy half-backed sequel trilogy to the previous two films jammed into one movie rather then a conclusion to them that ties up the story and character threads.
I expected better of them. Just sad.
Saw this coming from a mile away. The sad part is, he could very have been telling the truth (especially given the quality of the scenes we did manage to get with Carrie Fisher in them). But you can't just throw people under the bus, especially given the biggest problems with the film had nothing to do with the VFX quality.
It's well-known among a certain sort of geek that Rogue One laid the foundation for hyperspace tracking to turn up in TLJ--that at the research facility Jyn Erso encounters files related to Imperial research on the topic, so naturally the First Order just dug them up when they took over all the old abandoned Imperial stuff.
However, Rogue One also did something else. In the Legends continuity, hyperspace comms weren't a thing. Like, you could send communications FTL, obviously, but while a ship was in hyperspace it was out of contact with the galaxy. For dorks like me this lead to interesting tactical and strategic considerations, and the introduction of the ability to communicate with a ship in hyperspace torpedoed a few neat story ideas from ever happening in the Disney canon.
But what that also did was further pave the way for hyperspace tracking, both in and out of universe. In-universe, if a comm signal--presumably encrypted or directed, as it was a signal being sent by an illegal paramilitary terrorist group to one of their covert operatives--can find a ship, then why not some sort of tracking signal? And out of universe, setting up that communications work through hyperspace makes the idea of tracking a ship through hyperspace seem like less of an ass pull.
(Going back further I had also previously interpreted the homing beacon on the Falcon in ANH not working through hyperspace, it just sent the signal once the Falcon dropped out of hyperspace at Yavin. But possibly homing beacons could be tracked through hyperspace, and thus hyperspace tracking was a project developed specifically in-universe so you never had to physically smuggle a beacon onto a ship again, and out-of-universe was inspired by the opposite of my interpretation.)
Man, I remember when they said that they'd go into Finn and Poe's backstory. I can't even remember if they did anything with Finn, and Poe got an ex-girlfriend and a couple minutes of the other characters soiling themselves of the fact he used to run spice. If you're going to do backstory then at least actually provide some actual concrete backstory. The movie was already overstuffed so it's not like another five or ten minutes of dialogue was going to ruin the flow. Although Abrams probably thinks that anything that delays the next stuff happening! is ruining the flow.
At least I got to see Ian McDiarmid chew scenery again. I think any future Star Wars movies should move on to new things, but if someone pitched a movie set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope and promised there'd be at least 30 minutes of Palpatine spouting cliched evil sorcerer dialogue I'd be very interested. Someone needs to have him read Trump Tweets.
MWO: Adamski
This was Mike from RLM’s theory and I don’t buy it at all unless there are massive context clues in this movie that spell that out that I missed.
Yeah, that's where I got it from. It's not a great theory, but the alternative straight reading of the situation isn't a whole lot better. Fridge logic all over the place.
Knives Out in space.
I’m all for creating believable head canon that irons out some of the nonsense in a Star Wars movie, so if it works for you, go with it. For me, it requires too much belief that this plot point was planned even as far back as three years ago, and I just don’t see it.
Because of how it was created and evolved over time, Star Wars in general has the blessing and curse of later movies (and other content, but I’m sticking to the movies) changing pretty significantly how you view the earlier ones. O I Wan talking about Vader killing Luke’s father in Star Wars reads a lot differently after Empire and it forces you to kind of do a little bit of mental gymnastics for it to work. They had the time and space in Jedi to even address it directly, even if they leave things like Leia kissing Luke in Empire totally untouched because there’s really no graceful way out.
In this case, that theory about Palpatine means you have to view especially the PT through a lens that doesn’t really make sense to me.
But this is also a big part of why I dislike the ST and ROS in particular. So many of the narrative chooses seem to not only say, “what you thought was happening in the past movies wasn’t actually happening the way you thought,” but rather, “what you saw happening actually doesn’t make sense in the new reality we’ve constructed.”
In summary, China is a land of contrast.
So, perfectly in character for the kind of conditions necessary for a Chinese release. Doesn't seem to be worth it, since Rise is a flop on the Chinese offices: But it did good on the US, FWIW:
They should have had an an action set piece in Shanghai.
In the OT Vader can absorb blaster bolts when Han shoots him in Cloud city, also in the old EU canon, force users can both absorb and transfer energy (Coran Horn surviving a magma/geo thermal heat vent).
Either way works, and both ways have Palpatine using technology and the force to subvert the natural order.
The EU old canon even had a bit about the rebels sabotaging Palpatines cloning facilities which could be why Snoke was so badly put together, and could have had Palpatine die in RotJ and then wake up in a half dead clone that we see him in RoS.
MWO: Adamski
Oh God no. In no way was this planned out. I'm pretty sure that the only planning was how quickly they could start pumping out movies in order to make back the $Texas sized check they gave Lucas. Although it's a bad enough idea that maybe this was Abrams' plan all along.
The first movie was hella long ago, and several star wars media ago. Which mystery boxes were set up in TFA? "Who are Rey's parents" as one, but I don't think TLJ blew that one up so much as paid out on it.
If you have not watched Rebels, watch Rebels.
Rebels spoilers:
But if they cast a Young Luke for the show, it's gonna end up that he and Kenobi bump into each other like all the damn time and they're secretly besties, and the whole thing is gonna be an obnoxious retcon.
I'd rather that the Kenobi show be about all the secret covert ops stuff that Kenobi does to keep the empire from sniffing around the Skywalker farmstead and acting as Luke's invisible protector. Never seen, but effective.
Lucas picked her, but Disney kept her on after they bought Lucasfilm. She's got a really good track record with a lot of successful movies, but I'm wondering how much of that was her considering the production issues R1 and Solo had, not to mention signing off on letting the guy who wrote BvS and Justice League do the script for RoS. Abrams was a bad choice to direct, but understandable since TFA made bank and people tended to like it, plus financial success trumps talent in Hollywood. Terrio makes no sense though. Other than Argo his stuff has been strongly disliked and while the DCEU movies made money, they're generally considered failures since they were supposed to make all the money ever to rival the MCU.
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
This is my thought. I would honestly love a live action recreation of his final encounter with Maul. That would be awesome to see.
For those who have never watched Rebels:
I love that with all of his experience since their last meeting, how out of his league Maul was trying to take on an older and more seasoned Kenobi.
Nintendo Network ID - Brainiac_8
PSN - Brainiac_8
Steam - http://steamcommunity.com/id/BRAINIAC8/
Add me!