George Lucas isn't even credited with writing Empire Strikes Back. "based on a story". Please; i have watched enough movies and read enough books to know what that means.
I have no problem with believing he came up with the bulk of story ideas and content. I am convinced it was the people who actually made the screenplays and could put major checks and balances on him that made them great.
I don't know how someone looks at TLJ sending Finn on the kind of pointless goofy cartoon incompetence romp that C3PO would end up on and say that RJ didn't do him dirty.
Nevermind the absolute weirdness of him needing to learn the lesson of risking himself for things he cares about instead of out of hatred, when he only went to Starkiller Base to make sure Rey was okay, not because he wanted to blow up the Order.
I think I've already said my piece on Poe's arc in the movie in detail a few times so I'll hold off on that one.
The movie does an awful job with the non-Rey arcs, probably because RJ didn't give a shit but couldn't just shelve them both, and the other two leads being men of color makes that end up looking pretty dire.
George Lucas isn't even credited with writing Empire Strikes Back. "based on a story". Please; i have watched enough movies and read enough books to know what that means.
I have no problem with believing he came up with the bulk of story ideas and content. I am convinced it was the people who actually made the screenplays and could put major checks and balances on him that made them great.
In fact all of TFA, TLJ, and RoS were “based on a story by George Lucas so I guess they all had a single writer too
0
Options
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
George Lucas isn't even credited with writing Empire Strikes Back. "based on a story". Please; i have watched enough movies and read enough books to know what that means.
I have no problem with believing he came up with the bulk of story ideas and content. I am convinced it was the people who actually made the screenplays and could put major checks and balances on him that made them great.
In fact all of TFA, TLJ, and RoS were “based on a story by George Lucas so I guess they all had a single writer too
You could have always just looked at your own links:
Following the success of Star Wars, Lucas hired Brackett to write the sequel; after her death in 1978, he outlined the Star Wars saga as a whole and wrote next draft himself, before hiring Kasdan.
I mean, this is well known and it's not controversial that Lucas was involved in the writing of the original trilogy. Yes, he then went and shit all over them and the prequels were godawfully written, but none of this changes any of my core points about why the original trilogy worked. There was still, one creative main voice and it was great we had talented people who put that into the magic that was the original trilogy.
Edit: For the record, his sequel trilogy that he thought Disney should use was about midichlorians. So I am really really REALLY glad they ignored him entirely.
But did the outline have anything to do with what was filmed? Ehhh not really. The end scene was in episode 1. The relationships weren’t defined until 3
People keep beating the "how dare they start the trilogy without a coherent plan for it ahead of time" drum when our beloved OT was not made that way.
The OT was started forty years ago and was basically the start of scifi films being taken seriously at all. That means it came out before a mountain of techniques and quality improvements became the norm for movies in general and scifi movies in particular.
Saying the ST should get a pass on not doing the expected minimum because the original material came out is like saying it's fine if all anything new with comedy elements went back to shitty framerates, no color, no sound, and being almost purely slapstick just because that's where the genre started. Things improve. "The OT didn't have a plan" is absolutely no excuse for the ST not having one, especially since the universe has long since been converted to something that does follow something of a coherent plan, even if that canon ended up replaced with a new canon.
JJ, TFA: "I'm gonna leave all these plot threads dangling and questions unanswered, like I always do, 'cause I loooooove mystery boxes! Anything could be inside them!"
RJ, TLJ: "Okay, let's open a few of those boxes and pick up some of those threads. Some of these ideas are a bit radical, but I think..."
JJ, ROS: "NO, all of those answers were wrong, here's what they were always supposed to be!"
+23
Options
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
It took a while, but I decided to search out my previous opinions on The Last Jedi. The only way I can reconcile the problems I have with Rise of Skywalker is by acknowledging that a lot of the same issues are present in The Last Jedi - I just chose to (for whatever reason) completely ignore the glaring warning signs as to what was happening. For example, Finn being reduced largely to a side character in Rise is equally a problem in The Last Jedi. Poe's weird antagonistic relationship with Rey is just an extension of his sudden problem with his female superiors from The Last Jedi. The horrific and stupid romance of Kylo and Rey begins in TLJ and so on.
I'm oddly really uncomfortable with how I gave it such a pass in the hope that the third movie would just correct the problems, while keeping the parts I actually liked. When the reality is, Rise of Skywalker doubled down on things I hated - like the lineage = destiny - and still went with all the problematic parts too.
It took a while, but I decided to search out my previous opinions on The Last Jedi. The only way I can reconcile the problems I have with Rise of Skywalker is by acknowledging that a lot of the same issues are present in The Last Jedi - I just chose to (for whatever reason) completely ignore the glaring warning signs as to what was happening. For example, Finn being reduced largely to a side character in Rise is equally a problem in The Last Jedi. Poe's weird antagonistic relationship with Rey is just an extension of his sudden problem with his female superiors from The Last Jedi. The horrific and stupid romance of Kylo and Rey begins in TLJ and so on.
I'm oddly really uncomfortable with how I gave it such a pass in the hope that the third movie would just correct the problems, while keeping the parts I actually liked. When the reality is, Rise of Skywalker doubled down on things I hated - like the lineage = destiny - and still went with all the problematic parts too.
TLJ is better put together, has a better cinematography (I mean, say what you will about internal consistency, the Holdo Shot is striking), and in all its technical aspects is a superior movie, which help to neutralize the fact that the script and story and so on have their own problems.
+9
Options
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
Yeah Rise is a mess and that Holdo lightspeed smash is incredible as a scene, while I am already struggling to remember anything meaningful from Rise.
But being better put together doesn’t erase the other problems I am having in retrospect.
ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
Finn's arc in TLJ is great and is crucial to the themes of the movie, and a hero's attempt to fix things making things worse is not so much bad writing as...writing. The pacing of the Canto Bight arc is a bit bloated and sloppy but what actually happens is very good.
Poe's issue isn't exactly "sudden" as much as "never seen because he literally doesn't interact with any female authority figures, even Leia, in TFA." Go watch it again--for her most trusted agent, it's kinda weird how they never really interact in VII; they're only ever present together in the briefing scene and Poe's leading that briefing, they never address each other specifically, and Leia gets like two lines and is just kinda there for moral support I guess. Rise putting it in (if that's why they did it, and not just for banter; I don't even remember them having much in the way of conflict, so much as vitriolic affection) makes little sense because Rey's not part of the chain of command (Poe asks her to stop training and join the Resistance directly because she's their best fighter) and Poe was supposed to have learned his lesson by the end of TLJ anyway.
Lastly, if you think the romantic tension started in TLJ... Look, I don't like the relationship either (TLJ handled it the best, with the explicit "sexy broody bad boy" thing and her getting over it), but the subtext, creepy as it was, was thick in TFA--Ridley and Driver have great chemistry that was comically easy to read into.
It’s a shame too because getting over the supposedly cool bad boy at the end of TLJ is a great arc for kids to see. No, the first person you find attractive, especially when they’re a neo-Nazi is not the last person you’ll find attractive, and far from your only partner choice.
+13
Options
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I mean, I didn't like TLJ all that much, so whether it's good writing or not is subjective.
And the romantic tension between Rey and Kylo is a significant part of why I dislike the ST on a storytelling level.
Lastly, if you think the romantic tension started in TLJ... Look, I don't like the relationship either (TLJ handled it the best, with the explicit "sexy broody bad boy" thing and her getting over it), but the subtext, creepy as it was, was thick in TFA--Ridley and Driver have great chemistry that was comically easy to read into.
It absolutely started with TLJ. In TFA, Kylo wants to own her and her entire reaction to him is fear and anger smothered in disgust. That's not romantic tension, that's a woman dealing with a stalker.
Even in TLJ, it's pretty one sided. When Kylo extends his hand and makes his offer, Rey doesn't consider it for a second. As far as temptations go, it was a dud.
+5
Options
KetarCome on upstairswe're having a partyRegistered Userregular
Lastly, if you think the romantic tension started in TLJ... Look, I don't like the relationship either (TLJ handled it the best, with the explicit "sexy broody bad boy" thing and her getting over it), but the subtext, creepy as it was, was thick in TFA--Ridley and Driver have great chemistry that was comically easy to read into.
It absolutely started with TLJ. In TFA, Kylo wants to own her and her entire reaction to him is fear and anger smothered in disgust. That's not romantic tension, that's a woman dealing with a stalker.
Even in TLJ, it's pretty one sided. When Kylo extends his hand and makes his offer, Rey doesn't consider it for a second. As far as temptations go, it was a dud.
One sided, eh?
You don't think there was any consideration on Rey's part at any point earlier? Like when Luke caught her communicating with Kylo? Or when she was convinced that if she went to him she could turn him?
Yeah, she didn't consider it for a second after he crushed her hopes by asking her to rule the galaxy with him after he killed Snoke and they defeated all of the guards together. If you think there was nothing before that though, I don't know what to tell you.
I don't know how someone looks at TLJ sending Finn on the kind of pointless goofy cartoon incompetence romp that C3PO would end up on and say that RJ didn't do him dirty.
Nevermind the absolute weirdness of him needing to learn the lesson of risking himself for things he cares about instead of out of hatred, when he only went to Starkiller Base to make sure Rey was okay, not because he wanted to blow up the Order.
I think I've already said my piece on Poe's arc in the movie in detail a few times so I'll hold off on that one.
The movie does an awful job with the non-Rey arcs, probably because RJ didn't give a shit but couldn't just shelve them both, and the other two leads being men of color makes that end up looking pretty dire.
Incredible, every word of this post is wrong. Or at the very least, every single sin you accuse Rian Johnson of, JJ Abrams is even more guilty of with TROS.
I mean fucking hell, in TROS all we get is "Poe mad at Rey and also he was a drug dealer" and Finn was... there during the events of the film. We have so little for Finn to do in TROS that he literally isn't even allowed to finish a sentence to another character that might reveal a new aspect about his character.
I don't know how someone looks at TLJ sending Finn on the kind of pointless goofy cartoon incompetence romp that C3PO would end up on and say that RJ didn't do him dirty.
Nevermind the absolute weirdness of him needing to learn the lesson of risking himself for things he cares about instead of out of hatred, when he only went to Starkiller Base to make sure Rey was okay, not because he wanted to blow up the Order.
I think I've already said my piece on Poe's arc in the movie in detail a few times so I'll hold off on that one.
The movie does an awful job with the non-Rey arcs, probably because RJ didn't give a shit but couldn't just shelve them both, and the other two leads being men of color makes that end up looking pretty dire.
Incredible, every word of this post is wrong. Or at the very least, every single sin you accuse Rian Johnson of, JJ Abrams is even more guilty of with TROS.
I mean fucking hell, in TROS all we get is "Poe mad at Rey and also he was a drug dealer" and Finn was... there during the events of the film. We have so little for Finn to do in TROS that he literally isn't even allowed to finish a sentence to another character that might reveal a new aspect about his character.
I'm not defending TROS, seriously what's your problem?
Why are you so hung up on making disliking a poorly written movie into a personal flaw that means I'm taking the wrong side in the culture war?
I don't know how someone looks at TLJ sending Finn on the kind of pointless goofy cartoon incompetence romp that C3PO would end up on and say that RJ didn't do him dirty.
Nevermind the absolute weirdness of him needing to learn the lesson of risking himself for things he cares about instead of out of hatred, when he only went to Starkiller Base to make sure Rey was okay, not because he wanted to blow up the Order.
I think I've already said my piece on Poe's arc in the movie in detail a few times so I'll hold off on that one.
The movie does an awful job with the non-Rey arcs, probably because RJ didn't give a shit but couldn't just shelve them both, and the other two leads being men of color makes that end up looking pretty dire.
Incredible, every word of this post is wrong. Or at the very least, every single sin you accuse Rian Johnson of, JJ Abrams is even more guilty of with TROS.
I mean fucking hell, in TROS all we get is "Poe mad at Rey and also he was a drug dealer" and Finn was... there during the events of the film. We have so little for Finn to do in TROS that he literally isn't even allowed to finish a sentence to another character that might reveal a new aspect about his character.
I'm not defending TROS, seriously what's your problem?
Why are you so hung up on making disliking a poorly written movie into a personal flaw that means I'm taking the wrong side in the culture war?
Where in that post did I say you were defending TROS?
I don't know how someone looks at TLJ sending Finn on the kind of pointless goofy cartoon incompetence romp that C3PO would end up on and say that RJ didn't do him dirty.
Nevermind the absolute weirdness of him needing to learn the lesson of risking himself for things he cares about instead of out of hatred, when he only went to Starkiller Base to make sure Rey was okay, not because he wanted to blow up the Order.
I think I've already said my piece on Poe's arc in the movie in detail a few times so I'll hold off on that one.
The movie does an awful job with the non-Rey arcs, probably because RJ didn't give a shit but couldn't just shelve them both, and the other two leads being men of color makes that end up looking pretty dire.
Incredible, every word of this post is wrong. Or at the very least, every single sin you accuse Rian Johnson of, JJ Abrams is even more guilty of with TROS.
I mean fucking hell, in TROS all we get is "Poe mad at Rey and also he was a drug dealer" and Finn was... there during the events of the film. We have so little for Finn to do in TROS that he literally isn't even allowed to finish a sentence to another character that might reveal a new aspect about his character.
I'm not defending TROS, seriously what's your problem?
Why are you so hung up on making disliking a poorly written movie into a personal flaw that means I'm taking the wrong side in the culture war?
Where in that post did I say you were defending TROS?
The part where you dismiss my criticism of TLJ by explaining that Abrams is bad, as if anything about TROS can in any way contradict my post.
edit: Like, the first time I brought this up at all, it was me talking about these flaws in both movies, because the desperation to get away from any hint of race-mixing in TROS is genuinely disgusting.
In a world where the Marvel films exist (and are owned/developed by the same parent company!), there's no justifiable reason for Disney to not attempt the same thing with the same organizational structure.
I don't know how someone looks at TLJ sending Finn on the kind of pointless goofy cartoon incompetence romp that C3PO would end up on and say that RJ didn't do him dirty.
Nevermind the absolute weirdness of him needing to learn the lesson of risking himself for things he cares about instead of out of hatred, when he only went to Starkiller Base to make sure Rey was okay, not because he wanted to blow up the Order.
I think I've already said my piece on Poe's arc in the movie in detail a few times so I'll hold off on that one.
The movie does an awful job with the non-Rey arcs, probably because RJ didn't give a shit but couldn't just shelve them both, and the other two leads being men of color makes that end up looking pretty dire.
Incredible, every word of this post is wrong. Or at the very least, every single sin you accuse Rian Johnson of, JJ Abrams is even more guilty of with TROS.
I mean fucking hell, in TROS all we get is "Poe mad at Rey and also he was a drug dealer" and Finn was... there during the events of the film. We have so little for Finn to do in TROS that he literally isn't even allowed to finish a sentence to another character that might reveal a new aspect about his character.
I'm not defending TROS, seriously what's your problem?
Why are you so hung up on making disliking a poorly written movie into a personal flaw that means I'm taking the wrong side in the culture war?
Where in that post did I say you were defending TROS?
The part where you dismiss my criticism of TLJ by explaining that Abrams is bad, as if anything about TROS can in any way contradict my post.
edit: Like, the first time I brought this up at all, it was me talking about these flaws in both movies, because the desperation to get away from any hint of race-mixing in TROS is genuinely disgusting.
The way you're phrasing things makes it out as though TLJ is just as bad as TROS in a host of reasons that it simply is not.
Like, you're just wrong about Finn not having anything to do in TLJ.
I feel like the 'sudden same-race love interest who is probably related to the only other black character in the setting' is so dire that it wins the 'most awful' award for TROS by itself, even before we get into Rose being set aside and the actual nuts and bolts of Finn's story in that movie.
But I also felt uncomfortable in the theater with the way Finn's arc played out in TLJ, with him being a joke character driven exclusively by flaws and accomplishing nothing but failure over the course of the movie...the movie which I, and this is on me, kind of assumed would be the place he started to shine.
And yes, everyone fails throughout TLJ, but Rey gets a win at the end and her failures are presented as tragedy rather than personal failings, unlike Poe and especially Finn.
Finn's arc through the first two movies moves more then anyone elses.
He literally goes from team genocide (indoctrination aside) to looking out for himself to learning that it's not just about taking care of the people closest to you but trying to value life and taking care of everyone.
Poe is apparently a figurehead of the Resistance from TFAs opening title crawl but it takes the Resistance being decimated down to nearly nothing for him to pull his head out of his ass.
Given he most likely wasn't supposed to survive past the first act of TFA, but that's the arc he has.
Rey goes from fuck the First Order but my parents will come get me some day to "Finally a reason to leave" to "I, personally can fuck up the First Order, but who am I?" To "I'm me and it doesn't matter who my parents were, I'm gonna do the thing" to doing the thing and failing (turning Kylo Ren).
She's essentially the same person morally she was at the start of the TFA but sheds her attachment to the past that is holding her back from being who she is.
Overall Finn has the most movement out of anyone, even if his impact isn't what the others could make.
Talking about these arcs into TROS is pointless because basically everyone makes a hard left to get to where apparently JJ "I don't know where my characters are going in the next scene but this is where I wanted them to be after three movies" Abrams wanted them to be.
Also the thing I dislike equally about all three movies is that Chewbacca is mostly treated as a prop throughout all three.
The biggest credit I'll give Abrams is that he gives Cheque his biggest emotional beat of all 8 movies he's been in when he blows a hole in Kylo Ren in TFA. And most of that is subtext that I'm not even sure he was aware of when he filmed the scene.
RedTide#1907 on Battle.net
Come Overwatch with meeeee
I feel like the 'sudden same-race love interest who is probably related to the only other black character in the setting' is so dire that it wins the 'most awful' award for TROS by itself, even before we get into Rose being set aside and the actual nuts and bolts of Finn's story in that movie.
But I also felt uncomfortable in the theater with the way Finn's arc played out in TLJ, with him being a joke character driven exclusively by flaws and accomplishing nothing but failure over the course of the movie...the movie which I, and this is on me, kind of assumed would be the place he started to shine.
And yes, everyone fails throughout TLJ, but Rey gets a win at the end and her failures are presented as tragedy rather than personal failings, unlike Poe and especially Finn.
I can't image how you got that from the film. Finn's arc is the most important message in the film. In the face of oppression, you cannot run away, you must choose to stand and fight. And Finn defeats the very symbol of his own life-long oppression in Phasma and reinforces that he has changed and really has chosen to fight ("You were always scum." "Rebel scum.") rather than continue to run.
SiliconStew on
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Picking up two unrelated threads:
- I didn’t see Finn’s arc in TLJ as being “personal failings” but rather learning things about capital-L Life that his career as a child soldier never taught him. To be honest, the character arc I personally feel is the closest match for Finn’s arc in TLJ is Luke’s arc in ESB - and I was very much looking forward to seeing Finn’s rendition of RotJ Luke: at peace with himself, at the top of his game, with a bitchin’ new wardrobe and a vital role to play in ending the First Order. RoS was ...not that, for Finn, for sure.
- I think that the more interesting discussion (and unfortunately the discussion that probably requires the help of a Watcher or something to provide a consistent fly-on-the-wall perspective across forty years of filmmaking) about OT vs. ST is: Both trilogies are the product of many hands, built on the fly with little consistency in creative control, but one “feels” coherent and one does not. Why?
I feel like the 'sudden same-race love interest who is probably related to the only other black character in the setting' is so dire that it wins the 'most awful' award for TROS by itself, even before we get into Rose being set aside and the actual nuts and bolts of Finn's story in that movie.
But I also felt uncomfortable in the theater with the way Finn's arc played out in TLJ, with him being a joke character driven exclusively by flaws and accomplishing nothing but failure over the course of the movie...the movie which I, and this is on me, kind of assumed would be the place he started to shine.
And yes, everyone fails throughout TLJ, but Rey gets a win at the end and her failures are presented as tragedy rather than personal failings, unlike Poe and especially Finn.
I can't image how you got that from the film. Finn's arc is the most important message in the film. In the face of oppression, you cannot run away, you must choose to stand and fight. And Finn defeats the very symbol of his own life-long oppression in Phasma and reinforces that he has changed and really has chosen to fight ("You were always scum." "Rebel scum.") rather than continue to run.
If that were the final word of his arc in TLJ, it'd be a pretty good. It's my favorite Finn scene in the ST, in a vacuum (even if I feel the one-liners are flying a bit too quick, that's a tiny nitpick).
But we're told not much later that he's not grown in the right direction, he's just lashing out at the First Order out of hatred, so his climactic moment is retroactively deflated because actually, that wasn't representative of him overcoming his past metaphorically and literally, it was just an action sequence with Boba Fett 2.0 and he's actually still a mess.
Seriously what the hell why was it written like that. Is this another 'subverting expectations' thing? You thought the character grew and had a moment, but surprise, he's still fucking up!
Picking up two unrelated threads:
- I didn’t see Finn’s arc in TLJ as being “personal failings” but rather learning things about capital-L Life that his career as a child soldier never taught him. To be honest, the character arc I personally feel is the closest match for Finn’s arc in TLJ is Luke’s arc in ESB - and I was very much looking forward to seeing Finn’s rendition of RotJ Luke: at peace with himself, at the top of his game, with a bitchin’ new wardrobe and a vital role to play in ending the First Order. RoS was ...not that, for Finn, for sure.
I actually understand that idea of Finn as ESB Luke, but I think the execution's pretty poor even before TROS botched any follow up.
- I think that the more interesting discussion (and unfortunately the discussion that probably requires the help of a Watcher or something to provide a consistent fly-on-the-wall perspective across forty years of filmmaking) about OT vs. ST is: Both trilogies are the product of many hands, built on the fly with little consistency in creative control, but one “feels” coherent and one does not. Why?
Because Lucas was ultimately behind everything in the OT, even when he wasn't personally writing the script and even if he changed his mind about things, it was still all coming from the same mind. A single person deciding to do something different moving forward is way different from changing authors entirely.
Hell, the PT isn't good, but it's definitely coherent. It's probably the most cohesive of the three series, because Lucas knew going in it was a trilogy and no one was there to derail him at all.
I feel like the 'sudden same-race love interest who is probably related to the only other black character in the setting' is so dire that it wins the 'most awful' award for TROS by itself, even before we get into Rose being set aside and the actual nuts and bolts of Finn's story in that movie.
But I also felt uncomfortable in the theater with the way Finn's arc played out in TLJ, with him being a joke character driven exclusively by flaws and accomplishing nothing but failure over the course of the movie...the movie which I, and this is on me, kind of assumed would be the place he started to shine.
And yes, everyone fails throughout TLJ, but Rey gets a win at the end and her failures are presented as tragedy rather than personal failings, unlike Poe and especially Finn.
I can't image how you got that from the film. Finn's arc is the most important message in the film. In the face of oppression, you cannot run away, you must choose to stand and fight. And Finn defeats the very symbol of his own life-long oppression in Phasma and reinforces that he has changed and really has chosen to fight ("You were always scum." "Rebel scum.") rather than continue to run.
If that were the final word of his arc in TLJ, it'd be a pretty good. It's my favorite Finn scene in the ST, in a vacuum (even if I feel the one-liners are flying a bit too quick, that's a tiny nitpick).
But we're told not much later that he's not grown in the right direction, he's just lashing out at the First Order out of hatred, so his climactic moment is retroactively deflated because actually, that wasn't representative of him overcoming his past metaphorically and literally, it was just an action sequence with Boba Fett 2.0 and he's actually still a mess.
Seriously what the hell why was it written like that. Is this another 'subverting expectations' thing? You thought the character grew and had a moment, but surprise, he's still fucking up!
I wouldn't call it still fucking up, it's a further refinement of the same message. It is the personal side of the wider societal message of choosing to fight. Ok, you've chosen to fight, now make sure you are fighting with the right motivation.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Finn's arc in TLJ is great and is crucial to the themes of the movie, and a hero's attempt to fix things making things worse is not so much bad writing as...writing. The pacing of the Canto Bight arc is a bit bloated and sloppy but what actually happens is very good.
Poe's issue isn't exactly "sudden" as much as "never seen because he literally doesn't interact with any female authority figures, even Leia, in TFA." Go watch it again--for her most trusted agent, it's kinda weird how they never really interact in VII; they're only ever present together in the briefing scene and Poe's leading that briefing, they never address each other specifically, and Leia gets like two lines and is just kinda there for moral support I guess. Rise putting it in (if that's why they did it, and not just for banter; I don't even remember them having much in the way of conflict, so much as vitriolic affection) makes little sense because Rey's not part of the chain of command (Poe asks her to stop training and join the Resistance directly because she's their best fighter) and Poe was supposed to have learned his lesson by the end of TLJ anyway.
Lastly, if you think the romantic tension started in TLJ... Look, I don't like the relationship either (TLJ handled it the best, with the explicit "sexy broody bad boy" thing and her getting over it), but the subtext, creepy as it was, was thick in TFA--Ridley and Driver have great chemistry that was comically easy to read into.
I'm pretty sure the issue was that Poe was supposed to die originally and they never really do more with his character in TFA after the change beyond not killing him. So he's basically got no pre-existing character direction going into Ep 8. So TLJ gives him one by setting him up as Leia's replacement.
Disney knew they were going to be making a trilogy right from the start and it was incredibly stupid they didn't think to have anyone write out even the broad strokes of the story ahead of time. Even Lucas had a plan for the full sequel trilogy, but they threw that out and then I guess told Abrams to wing it. What a smart thing to do with the $4 billion property you just bought.
Lastly, if you think the romantic tension started in TLJ... Look, I don't like the relationship either (TLJ handled it the best, with the explicit "sexy broody bad boy" thing and her getting over it), but the subtext, creepy as it was, was thick in TFA--Ridley and Driver have great chemistry that was comically easy to read into.
It absolutely started with TLJ. In TFA, Kylo wants to own her and her entire reaction to him is fear and anger smothered in disgust. That's not romantic tension, that's a woman dealing with a stalker.
Even in TLJ, it's pretty one sided. When Kylo extends his hand and makes his offer, Rey doesn't consider it for a second. As far as temptations go, it was a dud.
One sided, eh?
You don't think there was any consideration on Rey's part at any point earlier? Like when Luke caught her communicating with Kylo? Or when she was convinced that if she went to him she could turn him?
Yeah, she didn't consider it for a second after he crushed her hopes by asking her to rule the galaxy with him after he killed Snoke and they defeated all of the guards together. If you think there was nothing before that though, I don't know what to tell you.
What is the point of this? I said the concept started in TLJ and it was completely done by the end of the movie. Nothing romantic existed between them in TFA and absolutely nothing romantic should have carried over into TRoS. And if I had my druthers, what is there in TLJ would be fired into the sun. It's fucking disgusting. She knows he's a mass murdering planet destroying psychopath that stabbed the first adult she formed an attachment with, but she warms up to him when she hears WHY HE SHOT UP HIS SCHOOL. It's so goddamn vile and condescending to her character.
Disney knew they were going to be making a trilogy right from the start and it was incredibly stupid they didn't think to have anyone write out even the broad strokes of the story ahead of time. Even Lucas had a plan for the full sequel trilogy, but they threw that out and then I guess told Abrams to wing it. What a smart thing to do with the $4 billion property you just bought.
Like that should have been part of the audition to be the Kevin Feige of Star Wars. Like just a modicum of vision and a super basic sense of story.
RedTide#1907 on Battle.net
Come Overwatch with meeeee
0
Options
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I think it's worth pointing out that Abrams only signed on for one film. Similarly, Johnson only signed on for one film.
They actually did have a Feige-like presence across all of the new Star Wars films - Kathleen Kennedy. I find it really interesting that she seems to completely escape any criticism across multiple iterations of these threads even though the, "They should've had a Kevin Feige!" argument gets leveled seemingly every 10 pages, while Abrams & Johnson each get batted back-and-forth in some kind of blame-game ping pong match.
+7
Options
ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
I think it's worth pointing out that Abrams only signed on for one film. Similarly, Johnson only signed on for one film.
They actually did have a Feige-like presence across all of the new Star Wars films - Kathleen Kennedy. I find it really interesting that she seems to completely escape any criticism across multiple iterations of these threads even though the, "They should've had a Kevin Feige!" argument gets leveled seemingly every 10 pages, while Abrams & Johnson each get batted back-and-forth in some kind of blame-game ping pong match.
I've consistently criticized Kathleen's apparent lack of control and vision for the ST. More blame should be placed on her than it usually is.
However, it's hard to validly criticize her and not get lumped in with a pretty significant section of fans that just seem to hate her because of her gender.
I personally think she should be let go after the ST debacle. Replace her with Filoni and have Fiege heavily guide him for the first year or so.
I think it's worth pointing out that Abrams only signed on for one film. Similarly, Johnson only signed on for one film.
They actually did have a Feige-like presence across all of the new Star Wars films - Kathleen Kennedy. I find it really interesting that she seems to completely escape any criticism across multiple iterations of these threads even though the, "They should've had a Kevin Feige!" argument gets leveled seemingly every 10 pages, while Abrams & Johnson each get batted back-and-forth in some kind of blame-game ping pong match.
I don't know about these threads, but she gets heavily criticized around the web. And she does deserve a lot of the blame - the decision to not have a coherent trilogy arc and instead let each director do whatever the fuck they want is hers, the decision to fire Trevorrow and bring back Abrahms is hers, the decision not to alter TLJ following the death of Fisher and instead have Episode 9 fake her presence is hers.
As far as I know she wasn't micromanaging. Meaning the reason TRoS is shit aren't her fault, they're Abrahms. And since those are what people in this thread talk and argue about, there's little reason to bring Kennedy into the discussion.
+11
Options
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Finn's arc in TLJ is great and is crucial to the themes of the movie, and a hero's attempt to fix things making things worse is not so much bad writing as...writing. The pacing of the Canto Bight arc is a bit bloated and sloppy but what actually happens is very good.
It's also the beginning of his complete erasure as an important and central main character, which Rise of Skywalker completes, he's instantly introduced as a buffoon with a comedy element attached to it and then as the audience surrogate for "Guy who hasn't got a clue how the galaxy works" as he's berated by Rose Tico. I find that Finn, out of most characters who are given a choice or no choice in what they do to help the resistance, is tasered by military police for comedy largely... which makes me deeply uncomfortable right now.
Honestly, I didn't buy into the argument about what was anything outside of Rey really doing in that plot initially, but now with the trilogy complete I feel an analysis of The Last Jedi post Rise of Skywalker shows a lot of the problems of racism, erasure, sexism and worse start in that movie and are simply carried to their natural conclusions in the last.
As an example, I cannot fathom how anyone can argue that TFA sets up any kind of romance with Rey and Kylo Ren. It doesn't. JJ Abrams has even described the way he and the character of Rey sees the interrogation as "mind rape"*. By the end of the movie, Rey is striking at Ren not just to protect Finn and the resistance, but also for herself after what she went through during the torture scene in the movie. There is no possible way to read any scene in TFA as setting up any kind of romance, while this is clearly established in The Last Jedi (along with the ridiculous idea of redeeming Kylo Ren). This is of course because Trevorrow, originally directing Episode IX had written a romance between these characters and asked Johnson to include links to this in VIII for him.
That Abrams, who had control of the narrative and decisions in IX by all accounts still went through with the Romance indicates severe problems to me. If he was going to agree that the scene was "mind rape" and then go ahead in the final movie to allowing that character to develop a full romance with that man... oh jeeze Rick. I don't even know where to fucking go from there - because I had forgot a ton of this stuff in the intervening years that makes Rise of Skywalker even more awful.
I think it's worth pointing out that Abrams only signed on for one film. Similarly, Johnson only signed on for one film.
They actually did have a Feige-like presence across all of the new Star Wars films - Kathleen Kennedy. I find it really interesting that she seems to completely escape any criticism across multiple iterations of these threads even though the, "They should've had a Kevin Feige!" argument gets leveled seemingly every 10 pages, while Abrams & Johnson each get batted back-and-forth in some kind of blame-game ping pong match.
I think there is a massive blind spot regarding this trilogy in the way a lot of progressive criticism skirts around saying anything about Kathleen Kennedy. Firstly, I have to acknowledge the disgusting, misogynistic and frankly terrible attacks that a large group of nitwits have imposed on her solely because of her gender. IMO, while she hasn't been the steward that Star Wars needed to pull something like this trilogy off, she's not the be all and end all of everything bad with Star Wars. Individual movie decisions - however much corporate meddling eventually started coming down on it after The Last Jedi and Solo - were still largely at the behest of the directors (Abrams, Trevorrow and Johnson). The fact we can see Trevorrow and Abrams final movie were night and day away from one another show that.
In it, Terrio possibly credits Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy with wanting to bring back Palpatine. "Kathy Kennedy and [SVP] Michelle Rejwan had a clear plan for where they wanted things to end," Terrio said. "They had clear plans about certain narrative marks they wanted us to hit. They also gave us a lot of freedom within that. We knew that Rey and Ren were utterly key to this trilogy, but we also felt that there was no way that we were going to not find a path to redemption for Kylo Ren, the son of Han and Leia."
"That’s when we really started aggressively pursuing this idea that there is old evil that didn’t die," he continued. "The source of the evil in the galaxy is this dark spirit waiting for its revenge and biding its time. The entity known as Palpatine in this version – his body died in Return of the Jedi – is patient and has been waiting. He dug his fox hole and has been waiting for his chance to re-establish his total domination."
There are a multitude of links and descriptions about Kennedy's expectations for the new trilogy, including the fact Disney bet the farm hard on Kylo Ren and his merchandise at the start of The Force Awakens. When he really wasn't that popular a character and kind of chumped at the end of the film into an irredeemable asshole - which TFA conclusively sets up before TLJ and RoS retcon that relationship into a romance - it seems there was a major effort to recenter the films on Kylo Ren and Rey. You can see this in the Last Jedi. You can see in it Rise of Skywalker. Fin and Poe get sidelined into doing literally nothing of any importance at all in both subsequent movies, with Rose who is a central character for the narrative she has with Finn, basically being reduced to nothing in the third movie.
I feel Disney became very orientated in trying to turn Kylo Ren into as iconic a villain as Darth Vader, which just didn't work and The Last Jedi attempting to turn him into a sympathetic character was detrimental to the whole trilogy. He was much better as a representation of unrelenting anger and unwarranted victimhood from TFA. As opposed to a scared young man pushed into the Dark Side by Luke bizarrely deciding to fucking attempt to murder him. Kylo Ren's character being a disenfranchised dude feeling the universe owed him something and being furious it not giving him it, was saying infinitely more to a certain loud obnoxious group than giving him the sympathetic "I can return him to the light" backstory TLJ did.
It's popular and easy to see the problems with Rise of Skywalker, which by that point are a vast number of splinters destroying the entire thing. It's not easy convincing people to see the huge logs in the eyes of The Last Jedi for some reason. I'm really unhappy with my former defenses of The Last Jedi, especially because a lot of the things I thought weren't going to be continual problems were carried on fully from that movie into the third. I still think there are a lot of merits to The Last Jedi, but they are trampled over by how the worst parts of it became the norm for the trilogy and then how the last movie ended.
*This is according to the wife of a terminally ill man who saw Episode VII early. She accounted that her husband found that scene disturbing and likened it to rape, with JJ on the phone to him agreeing saying that it was akin to "mind rape".
As far as I know she wasn't micromanaging. Meaning the reason TRoS is shit aren't her fault, they're Abrahms. And since those are what people in this thread talk and argue about, there's little reason to bring Kennedy into the discussion.
She may not be micromanaging, but as more information on the production of Rise of Skywalker has come out, it does in fact seem she had some requirements that they were supposed to actually do. For example Terrio (who is the co-writer of Rise of Skywalker) above points out that Kennedy pushed to have Palpatine return and continued her push for Kylo Ren to be more central to the new trilogy (which was already happening since The Force Awakens).
While the day to day decisions may have been given to directors, there was at some point a directive from the top for certain things.
Posts
I have no problem with believing he came up with the bulk of story ideas and content. I am convinced it was the people who actually made the screenplays and could put major checks and balances on him that made them great.
Nevermind the absolute weirdness of him needing to learn the lesson of risking himself for things he cares about instead of out of hatred, when he only went to Starkiller Base to make sure Rey was okay, not because he wanted to blow up the Order.
I think I've already said my piece on Poe's arc in the movie in detail a few times so I'll hold off on that one.
The movie does an awful job with the non-Rey arcs, probably because RJ didn't give a shit but couldn't just shelve them both, and the other two leads being men of color makes that end up looking pretty dire.
You could have always just looked at your own links:
I mean, this is well known and it's not controversial that Lucas was involved in the writing of the original trilogy. Yes, he then went and shit all over them and the prequels were godawfully written, but none of this changes any of my core points about why the original trilogy worked. There was still, one creative main voice and it was great we had talented people who put that into the magic that was the original trilogy.
Edit: For the record, his sequel trilogy that he thought Disney should use was about midichlorians. So I am really really REALLY glad they ignored him entirely.
Yes, but that's because TROS spends a lot of time trying to undo TLJ and then redo a different film.
As a trilogy it's incoherent basically entirely because it's final act spends it's time trying to retcon the trilogy at the last second.
The OT was started forty years ago and was basically the start of scifi films being taken seriously at all. That means it came out before a mountain of techniques and quality improvements became the norm for movies in general and scifi movies in particular.
Saying the ST should get a pass on not doing the expected minimum because the original material came out is like saying it's fine if all anything new with comedy elements went back to shitty framerates, no color, no sound, and being almost purely slapstick just because that's where the genre started. Things improve. "The OT didn't have a plan" is absolutely no excuse for the ST not having one, especially since the universe has long since been converted to something that does follow something of a coherent plan, even if that canon ended up replaced with a new canon.
RJ, TLJ: "Okay, let's open a few of those boxes and pick up some of those threads. Some of these ideas are a bit radical, but I think..."
JJ, ROS: "NO, all of those answers were wrong, here's what they were always supposed to be!"
I'm oddly really uncomfortable with how I gave it such a pass in the hope that the third movie would just correct the problems, while keeping the parts I actually liked. When the reality is, Rise of Skywalker doubled down on things I hated - like the lineage = destiny - and still went with all the problematic parts too.
TLJ is better put together, has a better cinematography (I mean, say what you will about internal consistency, the Holdo Shot is striking), and in all its technical aspects is a superior movie, which help to neutralize the fact that the script and story and so on have their own problems.
But being better put together doesn’t erase the other problems I am having in retrospect.
Poe's issue isn't exactly "sudden" as much as "never seen because he literally doesn't interact with any female authority figures, even Leia, in TFA." Go watch it again--for her most trusted agent, it's kinda weird how they never really interact in VII; they're only ever present together in the briefing scene and Poe's leading that briefing, they never address each other specifically, and Leia gets like two lines and is just kinda there for moral support I guess. Rise putting it in (if that's why they did it, and not just for banter; I don't even remember them having much in the way of conflict, so much as vitriolic affection) makes little sense because Rey's not part of the chain of command (Poe asks her to stop training and join the Resistance directly because she's their best fighter) and Poe was supposed to have learned his lesson by the end of TLJ anyway.
Lastly, if you think the romantic tension started in TLJ... Look, I don't like the relationship either (TLJ handled it the best, with the explicit "sexy broody bad boy" thing and her getting over it), but the subtext, creepy as it was, was thick in TFA--Ridley and Driver have great chemistry that was comically easy to read into.
And the romantic tension between Rey and Kylo is a significant part of why I dislike the ST on a storytelling level.
It absolutely started with TLJ. In TFA, Kylo wants to own her and her entire reaction to him is fear and anger smothered in disgust. That's not romantic tension, that's a woman dealing with a stalker.
Even in TLJ, it's pretty one sided. When Kylo extends his hand and makes his offer, Rey doesn't consider it for a second. As far as temptations go, it was a dud.
One sided, eh?
You don't think there was any consideration on Rey's part at any point earlier? Like when Luke caught her communicating with Kylo? Or when she was convinced that if she went to him she could turn him?
Yeah, she didn't consider it for a second after he crushed her hopes by asking her to rule the galaxy with him after he killed Snoke and they defeated all of the guards together. If you think there was nothing before that though, I don't know what to tell you.
Incredible, every word of this post is wrong. Or at the very least, every single sin you accuse Rian Johnson of, JJ Abrams is even more guilty of with TROS.
I mean fucking hell, in TROS all we get is "Poe mad at Rey and also he was a drug dealer" and Finn was... there during the events of the film. We have so little for Finn to do in TROS that he literally isn't even allowed to finish a sentence to another character that might reveal a new aspect about his character.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I'm not defending TROS, seriously what's your problem?
Why are you so hung up on making disliking a poorly written movie into a personal flaw that means I'm taking the wrong side in the culture war?
Where in that post did I say you were defending TROS?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
The part where you dismiss my criticism of TLJ by explaining that Abrams is bad, as if anything about TROS can in any way contradict my post.
edit: Like, the first time I brought this up at all, it was me talking about these flaws in both movies, because the desperation to get away from any hint of race-mixing in TROS is genuinely disgusting.
The way you're phrasing things makes it out as though TLJ is just as bad as TROS in a host of reasons that it simply is not.
Like, you're just wrong about Finn not having anything to do in TLJ.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
But I also felt uncomfortable in the theater with the way Finn's arc played out in TLJ, with him being a joke character driven exclusively by flaws and accomplishing nothing but failure over the course of the movie...the movie which I, and this is on me, kind of assumed would be the place he started to shine.
And yes, everyone fails throughout TLJ, but Rey gets a win at the end and her failures are presented as tragedy rather than personal failings, unlike Poe and especially Finn.
He literally goes from team genocide (indoctrination aside) to looking out for himself to learning that it's not just about taking care of the people closest to you but trying to value life and taking care of everyone.
Poe is apparently a figurehead of the Resistance from TFAs opening title crawl but it takes the Resistance being decimated down to nearly nothing for him to pull his head out of his ass.
Given he most likely wasn't supposed to survive past the first act of TFA, but that's the arc he has.
Rey goes from fuck the First Order but my parents will come get me some day to "Finally a reason to leave" to "I, personally can fuck up the First Order, but who am I?" To "I'm me and it doesn't matter who my parents were, I'm gonna do the thing" to doing the thing and failing (turning Kylo Ren).
She's essentially the same person morally she was at the start of the TFA but sheds her attachment to the past that is holding her back from being who she is.
Overall Finn has the most movement out of anyone, even if his impact isn't what the others could make.
Talking about these arcs into TROS is pointless because basically everyone makes a hard left to get to where apparently JJ "I don't know where my characters are going in the next scene but this is where I wanted them to be after three movies" Abrams wanted them to be.
Also the thing I dislike equally about all three movies is that Chewbacca is mostly treated as a prop throughout all three.
The biggest credit I'll give Abrams is that he gives Cheque his biggest emotional beat of all 8 movies he's been in when he blows a hole in Kylo Ren in TFA. And most of that is subtext that I'm not even sure he was aware of when he filmed the scene.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
I can't image how you got that from the film. Finn's arc is the most important message in the film. In the face of oppression, you cannot run away, you must choose to stand and fight. And Finn defeats the very symbol of his own life-long oppression in Phasma and reinforces that he has changed and really has chosen to fight ("You were always scum." "Rebel scum.") rather than continue to run.
- I didn’t see Finn’s arc in TLJ as being “personal failings” but rather learning things about capital-L Life that his career as a child soldier never taught him. To be honest, the character arc I personally feel is the closest match for Finn’s arc in TLJ is Luke’s arc in ESB - and I was very much looking forward to seeing Finn’s rendition of RotJ Luke: at peace with himself, at the top of his game, with a bitchin’ new wardrobe and a vital role to play in ending the First Order. RoS was ...not that, for Finn, for sure.
- I think that the more interesting discussion (and unfortunately the discussion that probably requires the help of a Watcher or something to provide a consistent fly-on-the-wall perspective across forty years of filmmaking) about OT vs. ST is: Both trilogies are the product of many hands, built on the fly with little consistency in creative control, but one “feels” coherent and one does not. Why?
Your Ad Here! Reasonable Rates!
If that were the final word of his arc in TLJ, it'd be a pretty good. It's my favorite Finn scene in the ST, in a vacuum (even if I feel the one-liners are flying a bit too quick, that's a tiny nitpick).
But we're told not much later that he's not grown in the right direction, he's just lashing out at the First Order out of hatred, so his climactic moment is retroactively deflated because actually, that wasn't representative of him overcoming his past metaphorically and literally, it was just an action sequence with Boba Fett 2.0 and he's actually still a mess.
Seriously what the hell why was it written like that. Is this another 'subverting expectations' thing? You thought the character grew and had a moment, but surprise, he's still fucking up!
I actually understand that idea of Finn as ESB Luke, but I think the execution's pretty poor even before TROS botched any follow up.
Because Lucas was ultimately behind everything in the OT, even when he wasn't personally writing the script and even if he changed his mind about things, it was still all coming from the same mind. A single person deciding to do something different moving forward is way different from changing authors entirely.
Hell, the PT isn't good, but it's definitely coherent. It's probably the most cohesive of the three series, because Lucas knew going in it was a trilogy and no one was there to derail him at all.
I wouldn't call it still fucking up, it's a further refinement of the same message. It is the personal side of the wider societal message of choosing to fight. Ok, you've chosen to fight, now make sure you are fighting with the right motivation.
I'm pretty sure the issue was that Poe was supposed to die originally and they never really do more with his character in TFA after the change beyond not killing him. So he's basically got no pre-existing character direction going into Ep 8. So TLJ gives him one by setting him up as Leia's replacement.
Better bananas than the moldy white bread.
What is the point of this? I said the concept started in TLJ and it was completely done by the end of the movie. Nothing romantic existed between them in TFA and absolutely nothing romantic should have carried over into TRoS. And if I had my druthers, what is there in TLJ would be fired into the sun. It's fucking disgusting. She knows he's a mass murdering planet destroying psychopath that stabbed the first adult she formed an attachment with, but she warms up to him when she hears WHY HE SHOT UP HIS SCHOOL. It's so goddamn vile and condescending to her character.
Like that should have been part of the audition to be the Kevin Feige of Star Wars. Like just a modicum of vision and a super basic sense of story.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
They actually did have a Feige-like presence across all of the new Star Wars films - Kathleen Kennedy. I find it really interesting that she seems to completely escape any criticism across multiple iterations of these threads even though the, "They should've had a Kevin Feige!" argument gets leveled seemingly every 10 pages, while Abrams & Johnson each get batted back-and-forth in some kind of blame-game ping pong match.
I've consistently criticized Kathleen's apparent lack of control and vision for the ST. More blame should be placed on her than it usually is.
However, it's hard to validly criticize her and not get lumped in with a pretty significant section of fans that just seem to hate her because of her gender.
I personally think she should be let go after the ST debacle. Replace her with Filoni and have Fiege heavily guide him for the first year or so.
I don't know about these threads, but she gets heavily criticized around the web. And she does deserve a lot of the blame - the decision to not have a coherent trilogy arc and instead let each director do whatever the fuck they want is hers, the decision to fire Trevorrow and bring back Abrahms is hers, the decision not to alter TLJ following the death of Fisher and instead have Episode 9 fake her presence is hers.
As far as I know she wasn't micromanaging. Meaning the reason TRoS is shit aren't her fault, they're Abrahms. And since those are what people in this thread talk and argue about, there's little reason to bring Kennedy into the discussion.
It's also the beginning of his complete erasure as an important and central main character, which Rise of Skywalker completes, he's instantly introduced as a buffoon with a comedy element attached to it and then as the audience surrogate for "Guy who hasn't got a clue how the galaxy works" as he's berated by Rose Tico. I find that Finn, out of most characters who are given a choice or no choice in what they do to help the resistance, is tasered by military police for comedy largely... which makes me deeply uncomfortable right now.
Honestly, I didn't buy into the argument about what was anything outside of Rey really doing in that plot initially, but now with the trilogy complete I feel an analysis of The Last Jedi post Rise of Skywalker shows a lot of the problems of racism, erasure, sexism and worse start in that movie and are simply carried to their natural conclusions in the last.
As an example, I cannot fathom how anyone can argue that TFA sets up any kind of romance with Rey and Kylo Ren. It doesn't. JJ Abrams has even described the way he and the character of Rey sees the interrogation as "mind rape"*. By the end of the movie, Rey is striking at Ren not just to protect Finn and the resistance, but also for herself after what she went through during the torture scene in the movie. There is no possible way to read any scene in TFA as setting up any kind of romance, while this is clearly established in The Last Jedi (along with the ridiculous idea of redeeming Kylo Ren). This is of course because Trevorrow, originally directing Episode IX had written a romance between these characters and asked Johnson to include links to this in VIII for him.
That Abrams, who had control of the narrative and decisions in IX by all accounts still went through with the Romance indicates severe problems to me. If he was going to agree that the scene was "mind rape" and then go ahead in the final movie to allowing that character to develop a full romance with that man... oh jeeze Rick. I don't even know where to fucking go from there - because I had forgot a ton of this stuff in the intervening years that makes Rise of Skywalker even more awful.
But I do agree with this post:
I think there is a massive blind spot regarding this trilogy in the way a lot of progressive criticism skirts around saying anything about Kathleen Kennedy. Firstly, I have to acknowledge the disgusting, misogynistic and frankly terrible attacks that a large group of nitwits have imposed on her solely because of her gender. IMO, while she hasn't been the steward that Star Wars needed to pull something like this trilogy off, she's not the be all and end all of everything bad with Star Wars. Individual movie decisions - however much corporate meddling eventually started coming down on it after The Last Jedi and Solo - were still largely at the behest of the directors (Abrams, Trevorrow and Johnson). The fact we can see Trevorrow and Abrams final movie were night and day away from one another show that.
What is clear is that some of the most problematic elements seem to have come from the top. Take some of this information from IGN:
There are a multitude of links and descriptions about Kennedy's expectations for the new trilogy, including the fact Disney bet the farm hard on Kylo Ren and his merchandise at the start of The Force Awakens. When he really wasn't that popular a character and kind of chumped at the end of the film into an irredeemable asshole - which TFA conclusively sets up before TLJ and RoS retcon that relationship into a romance - it seems there was a major effort to recenter the films on Kylo Ren and Rey. You can see this in the Last Jedi. You can see in it Rise of Skywalker. Fin and Poe get sidelined into doing literally nothing of any importance at all in both subsequent movies, with Rose who is a central character for the narrative she has with Finn, basically being reduced to nothing in the third movie.
I feel Disney became very orientated in trying to turn Kylo Ren into as iconic a villain as Darth Vader, which just didn't work and The Last Jedi attempting to turn him into a sympathetic character was detrimental to the whole trilogy. He was much better as a representation of unrelenting anger and unwarranted victimhood from TFA. As opposed to a scared young man pushed into the Dark Side by Luke bizarrely deciding to fucking attempt to murder him. Kylo Ren's character being a disenfranchised dude feeling the universe owed him something and being furious it not giving him it, was saying infinitely more to a certain loud obnoxious group than giving him the sympathetic "I can return him to the light" backstory TLJ did.
It's popular and easy to see the problems with Rise of Skywalker, which by that point are a vast number of splinters destroying the entire thing. It's not easy convincing people to see the huge logs in the eyes of The Last Jedi for some reason. I'm really unhappy with my former defenses of The Last Jedi, especially because a lot of the things I thought weren't going to be continual problems were carried on fully from that movie into the third. I still think there are a lot of merits to The Last Jedi, but they are trampled over by how the worst parts of it became the norm for the trilogy and then how the last movie ended.
*This is according to the wife of a terminally ill man who saw Episode VII early. She accounted that her husband found that scene disturbing and likened it to rape, with JJ on the phone to him agreeing saying that it was akin to "mind rape".
She may not be micromanaging, but as more information on the production of Rise of Skywalker has come out, it does in fact seem she had some requirements that they were supposed to actually do. For example Terrio (who is the co-writer of Rise of Skywalker) above points out that Kennedy pushed to have Palpatine return and continued her push for Kylo Ren to be more central to the new trilogy (which was already happening since The Force Awakens).
While the day to day decisions may have been given to directors, there was at some point a directive from the top for certain things.