Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker SPOILER discussion

Topic

With this on the way in a matter of days, and spoilers starting to leak out into the mainstream, we should probably have a dedicated discussion thread for it.

Looking forward to seeing it.

Replies

SteveUK wrote:

toys

Well that’s gonna be a disappointment… xD
 
Funny though, didn’t they pay a lot more for Lucas than for Marvel? 3 billion was waaaaaaaaaay too little for Marvel… u_u

I believe this is the first thing Johnson has tweeted out in relation to Star Wars recently:

👑 pic.twitter.com/N7yBVR2vDY

— Rian Johnson (@rianjohnson) December 21, 2019

And he put her in the ugliest tan jumpsuit he could find and gave her an awful haircut.

Hey, did we ever find out what Finn was going to say to Rey? It gets brought up a few times but I don’t remember it ever being resolved.

KandorLives wrote:

Hey, did we ever find out what Finn was going to say to Rey? It gets brought up a few times but I don’t remember it ever being resolved.

Nope.

KandorLives wrote:

Hey, did we ever find out what Finn was going to say to Rey? It gets brought up a few times but I don’t remember it ever being resolved.

“Hail Hydra”

I went to see it last night with my son and 5 of his friends for his birthday.

It was fun, but I agree with some of the comments above. It is pretty disjointed, there are several characters that appear and do absolutely nothing worthwhile, the emperor is a bit of a pantomime villain here, though I guess he always was and Rey’s ultimate parentage felt a bit forced.

For me it falls firmly in the middle of the pack of star wars movies. Not great, not terrible.

 

I actually quite liked Ben and Rey’s journey together,a for me that was one of the most satisfactory parts. Leia’s journey got a fitting end, and Poe came into his own finally as , a characterwhich was good to see.

For me this entire trilogy has really been ruined by the last Jedi, or perhaps rather by the lack of a singular vision and aim across the three movies. As a result, what Dave says is true, this feels like a push and pull fight between two directors with totally different ideas of where to take the franchise. If both book end films had also been Johnson, or the middle.film had also been JJs, then I think we could have ended up with a more satisfying series of films overall. Instead they just don’t make sense together.

https://screenrant.com/star-wars-rise-skywalker-jj-abrams-reveals-finn-secret/amp/

Hooray!

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held a screening of The Rise of Skywalker that included a Q&A session with Abrams. While Abrams didn’t officially confirm Finn’s secret during the Q&A, Twitter user kaila ren heard Abrams answer a fan’s questions after the session. He revealed that Finn wanted to tell Rey that he is Force-sensitive. Some may have thought Finn wanted to tell Rey he’s in love with her, but Finn and Rey have remained platonic throughout the trilogy.

Finn being shown a couple of times to be force-sensitive was one of the things I liked about the movie, as it preserved the “open to anyone” aspect of TLJ, which could have risked being lost with the revelation of Rey’s lineage.

Rey being able to use force lightning was a bit weird though.  It seemed to just be shorthand to link her to the Emperor.

KandorLives wrote:

He revealed that Finn wanted to tell Rey that he is Force-sensitive. Some may have thought Finn wanted to tell Rey he’s in love with her, but Finn and Rey have remained platonic throughout the trilogy.

That would’ve been a lame payoff.

Anonymous wrote:

Rey being able to use force lightning was a bit weird though.  It seemed to just be shorthand to link her to the Emperor.

I thought that was OK and it teed up the dark/light conflict inside her too, even if it felt like there wasn’t a genuine risk she could turn.

That whole sequence of Chewbacca’s “death” and reveal that there was another ship was crap though and made everyone involved in that sequence look a bit stupid in retrospect.

Forget the Snyder cut. The perfect version of TROS is out there:

 

Shouldn’t that say “Written and Directed by THE CARRIER” !?

garjones wrote:

Forget the Snyder cut. The perfect version of TROS is out there:

 

The irony there is that Rise of Skywalker feels like it was conceived as a direct response to the online complaints about TLJ.

I went to a 2D screening. It wasn’t too bad, some parts were enjoyable. But the story didn’t make a lot of sense.

 

I can’t believe there was no explanation at all for why Palpy was still alive. Or if there was I must have missed it.

 

 

There was not.

There was talk of dark force magic and cloning in the Rebel camp, and Palpatine early on referred back to his prequel speech about “unnatural” dark side abilities and keeping people from dying. We also saw that he had a loyal army of followers helping him.

That was enough of an explanation for me, short of joining all those dots ultra-explicitly, which I’m not sure would have helped.

I have to say the movie looked beautiful.

And I thought it was cool to show Leia kicking ass with her own lightsaber.

Joining the dots would’ve shown there were joins. It’s a really slapdash film.

Opened $45M below TLJ, $75M below TFA:

It opened closer to Christmas than the last two, which may have hurt it, but still disappointing.

They could have made the effort and come up with a point-by-point explanation, but I’m not sure it would have improved anything.

It’s a bit like when The Master comes back in Doctor Who. They stopped bothering to explain it in the end.

(Maybe they’ll finally address how the Emperor came back after they explain how Maz got hold of Luke’s lightsaber.)

The emperor could become like Freddy Krueger, just coming back every movie after getting killed.

paul f wrote:

It opened closer to Christmas than the last two, which may have hurt it, but still disappointing.

It is but I have been reading on Box Office Mojo that in the US Christmas week attendances are usually very high, including Christmas Day, so it may be a little deferred and get better that normal returns during the week as people aren’t at work/school.

That’s obviously quite different to in Europe where cinemas are often closed for Christmas Day and there’s no real tradition to go out and watch movies but rather whatever they put on TV.

Despite that it looks very much an uphill battle to equal what TLJ did and keep up the usual trend for Star Wars trilogies.

3d is still going? Or are all showings just 2d?

Most showings at my cinema are 3D, there was just one in 2D early this afternoon which I went to. I prefer the 2D if it’s possible.

Ben wrote:

3d is still going? Or are all showings just 2d?

My local cinema has one showing a day in 3D, compared to thirteen in 2D.

Ah, only nearly dead then, pity.

JJ Abrams is a pro when dealing with the media;

Noting that it’s impossible to please everyone, Abrams said “We knew starting this that any decision we made — a design decision, a musical decision, a narrative decision — would please someone and infuriate someone else,” Abrams said. “And they’re all right.”

Abrams also put to rest any notion that there was any discord between him and The Last Jedi filmmaker Rian Johnson. “It would be a much more interesting answer if there were conflict,” Abrams said. “The truth is when I was getting [The Force Awakens] up and running, I was nothing but grateful that a director and writer I admire as much as Rian was coming in to do [the next one.] Not expecting to come back to this, it was just fun to watch what was happening and get to respond to it.

https://deadline.com/2019/12/j-j-abrams-responds-to-the-rise-of-skywalker-critics-theyre-right-1202815997/

I’m on the Gar end of the spectrum, meaning I enjoyed the movie for what it was. Lots of different planets and thus cool settings, lots of Jim Hensonesque aliens, laughed at the 3PO mindwipe and Babu Frik. “He’s one of my oldest friends!” was priceless.

Yes, as Abrams is missing a middle movie for what he’s doing, he’s setting up a lot of things and going through them very, very quickly so there is too much plot and yes, the whole quest-for-an-item plot is pretty daft and yes, it’s all a bit incoherent. But on the other hand, I didn’t find any of it too annoying; Abrams was just getting back to the stuff he had established in the first one, and I was fine with that. Yes, Rose being sidelined just to establish a new companion character for Finn was just a weird decision (and one that feels like it may have been made out of spite against Johnson). Yes, the Leia scenes were scripted awkwardly around the footage they had. Yes, I would like to have a new Star Wars movie in which a small crew doesn’t stupidly sneak into an Empire base/Star Destroyer and escape miraculously against all odds, but even TLJ didn’t manage to give me that, after all.  Sure, the Emperor being back was just because they needed a big villain and bloody Johnson had killed off Snoke, so there wasn’t time to establish a new one. But it worked well enough for me, including the I-am-all-the-Sith vs. I-am-all-the-Jedi thing at the end there. It was the one thing they could still do to have a big finale that topped off all of the movies, and as such it worked.

I liked the idea of Rey’s parents not being special in any way, but I also thought Rey being a Palpatine was alright – it allowed to keep the idea of families and destinies, but in denying her heritage and choosing a different one, it also opens a lot of doors that weren’t there in Star Wars before. And Ben’s redemption kind of worked – barely.

And I did snicker at the barely-hidden fuck yous to Johnson and the Last Jedi – “a Jedi’s weapon should be treated with respect”, Rey’s lineage (“They made themselves nobodies”), “The Holdo maneuver was a one-in-a-million shot”, the final battle hinging on people coming when they call for help and so on. Abrams really didn’t like what TLJ did.

Weirdly, that last moment (heavy-handed and obviously coming as it was both in set-up and execution) connected to the kid inside me who wanted to be Luke all those years ago and really moved me. I’d watch some movies about the adventures of Rey Skywalker, first of the New Jedi, now that the slate has been wiped clean again.

Oh, and on a sidenote: My kid, who is a bigger Star Wars nut than me, informed me that it is apparently canon (and googling it, it’s definitely in Gillen’s Darth Vader book) that Palpatine was the one who caused Annakin to be conceived and is kind of his father and thus the Ben-Rey kiss re-establishes the time-honoured tradition of incestuous kisses in Star Wars.

It was always implied by the movies too, which means the Skywalkers were all Palpatines too. So the whole saga is a big incestuous family orgy.

Hopefully they’ll use that subtitle for the big I-IX Blu-Ray boxset.

Huh. In the Australian Edit they bang

Seemed really inappropriate for a kids movie

Anonymous wrote:

In the Australian Edit they bang

Rey and Palpatine?

Yeah and Kylo watches awkwardly

I mean,  it made as much sense as everything else in the film

Re: Palpatine, Gillen and Anakin

Nope, it’s not Gillen, it’s Soule’s handiwork.  I doubt he could have foreseen the internet plague it has become.

It’s from the final arc of his Vader run but, despite many claims to the contrary, doesn’t confirm anything.

I’ll find out for certain June 2020 when the second and final OHC cones out.  Why Marvel didn’t decide to clean up by releasing that now I’ve no idea.

As a villain monologue of plausible bullshit, it’s great but don’t like it being the actual story – that takes it a couple of steps too far.

Dave wrote:

It was always implied by the movies too, which means the Skywalkers were all Palpatines too. So the whole saga is a big incestuous family orgy.

Speaking of orgies, I was snickering at the end there when Rey, Poe and Finn are embracing for such a long time because I started to imagine them beginning to kiss each other and the scene transitioning to a bedroom.

I am sure there will be a lot of fan-fiction dedicated to that scene.

Christian wrote:

I started to imagine them beginning to kiss each other and the scene transitioning to a bedroom.

Yeah but in fairness Christian you imagine that for every scene of everything.

Christian wrote:

Yes, I would like to have a new Star Wars movie in which a small crew doesn’t stupidly sneak into an Empire base/Star Destroyer and escape miraculously against all odds,

You might want to check out ‘Rogue One’…

Christian wrote:

it is apparently canon …that Palpatine was the one who caused Anakin to be conceived and is kind of his father and thus the Ben-Rey kiss re-establishes the time-honoured tradition of incestuous kisses in Star Wars.

That would make Rey and Ben second-cousins-once-removed; not nearly as scandalous as Luke kissing his sister, or even of Jon Snow bedding his aunt.

Dave wrote:

It was always implied by the movies too, which means the Skywalkers were all Palpatines too. So the whole saga is a big incestuous family orgy.

Hopefully they’ll use that subtitle for the big I-IX Blu-Ray boxset.

Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga – Limited Edition Complete Box Set UHD [Blu-ray] [2019] [Region Free] https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B082WXCSKN/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_-gmaEbRQGVTD1

 

Sadly not. Is it the right time to start the petition?

Star Wars: The Blue Milk Orgy Collection

But not his apprentice.

A random thought about force ghosts: I never really thought about it until this movie but I guess force ghosts only really appear to people who they were already connected to in life, relationship-wise – so Yoda can appear to Luke but not to Rey, and Rey sees Luke and Leia at the end as they were close, but no-one else.

I had half-expected the end of this movie to have lots of the ghosts show up, but it makes sense that the likes of Anakin and Qui-Gon don’t appear due to having no direct personal connection there. Doing it via the voices/spirits was a more elegant way to handle it.

An army of Jedi Force Ghosts taking down Palpatine would be pretty impressive.

I’m not sure how I feel about it. It seems that Abrams was trying to do two things: End the Trilogy, and Make up for TLJ. On the former it failed, almost, but on the later it worked. But that’s the thing: Abrams was relying on TLJ to get back to his vision, that there’s almost a codependency between EP XIII and IX, that intended or not, they’re best viewed as one unit that was released in two parts, rather than two units, and that view sort of makes up for  any flaws this movie had in ending Ben Solo’s and Rey’s story.

SteveUK wrote:

An army of Jedi Force Ghosts taking down Palpatine would be pretty impressive.

I thought that was where they would go with it, but then that would have risked drawing attention off Rey and making her seem almost incidental to the victory. I think the way they did it worked well to involve the old Jedi without them stealing the spotlight.

As a final boss fight I thought it was very unimpressive but it is still preferable to that ObiWan vs Anakin twirlathon contest from ROTS.

‘Mandalorian’ Star Jake Cannavale Just Trashed ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’

“Worse than Phantom Menace AND Last Jedi combined.”

JRCarter wrote:

‘Mandalorian’ Star Jake Cannavale Just Trashed ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’

“Worse than Phantom Menace AND Last Jedi combined.”

Doesn’t that average out to as good as Return of the Jedi though?

I didn’t realise that Kevin Smith had a cameo in this one too.

 

View this post on Instagram

Congrats to @jjabramsofficial on the #1 opening and for closing out the @starwars saga – and thank you for letting me be in the series of flicks that I fell in love with 42 years ago! Back when I had my heart attack, J.J. sent me an email that said “Live through this and I’ll put you in Episode 9!” When they went into production last year on #theriseofskywalker, I wrote J.J. and asked “So… I’m alive. That offer still good?” He confirmed and I flew out to England to visit @pinewoodstudios for a few days, during which time I giddily watched J.J. do his thing until I was called into action! Ducking Stormtroopers on Kijimi, Poe passes a cyborg walking beside a bundled-up local. That local is me! J.J. had me voice a Stormtrooper in #theforceawakens and then put me in Rise – two things a young Emo Kev never could’ve imagined happening while he fanned the flames of his fandom in the 70’s and 80’s! Thank you, my friend in the Force, for even making the offer in the first place, let alone following through on it! You gave me a rare sensation I haven’t had since I was an action figure collecting kid in 1983 when you let me come over to your house to play #starwars with you! #KevinSmith #jjabrams

A post shared by Kevin Smith (@thatkevinsmith) on Dec 23, 2019 at 9:42am PST

 

Jesus frick Kevin Smith got old

Lost a shitload of weight too.

Having a major heart attack will do that.

I think he’s done great to lose so much weight and get healthy.

Yes he has – it’s not easy to do.

Anonymous wrote:

As a final boss fight I thought it was very unimpressive but it is still preferable to that ObiWan vs Anakin twirlathon contest from ROTS.

The sequels are full of so much terrible dialogue that I didn’t remember this bit, but my kid pointed it out to me again recently. It’s quite astonishing how that fight ends.

Saw this yesterday. I have issues with it, but overall I was still entertained enough. I’m sure I could tear it apart if I wanted to, but I don’t really want to. Had zero expectations going in and that probably helped. So yeah, it was fine. The big question for me will be if Disney finds away to do anything interesting with Star Wars in the future. This sequel trilogy was a fine nostalgia fest if that’s what you’re into, but I’d like to see something new done with the franchise. So much potential exists.

Christian wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

As a final boss fight I thought it was very unimpressive but it is still preferable to that ObiWan vs Anakin twirlathon contest from ROTS.

The sequels are full of so much terrible dialogue that I didn’t remember this bit, but my kid pointed it out to me again recently. It’s quite astonishing how that fight ends.

There’s a point in ROTS where Obi-Wan said “I can’t bear to watch any longer”, when he said that I thought I agree.

Terrible movie. I felt the same watching this as when I watched Battle of the Five Armies: numbed by an unending onslaught of almost context-less battle. It’s just a bunch of stuff happening, no rhyme or reason, no cleverness or passion. Rey, Poe, and Finn are good characters but they have no room to breathe, almost all their dialogue communicates (shouts) plot points. They’re ciphers. In his rush to undo TLJ, Abrams severed his creations from their own arcs.

Look, I am an easy Star Wars fan to please. I’ve liked all the other Disney films to one degree or another. I didn’t expect to love this one because it’s Abrams and he’s a bland director but I at least expected to enjoy myself. No such luck.

For all the stupid “fixes” it came up with for TLJ, the worst thing it did to that movie is totally missing why Luke Skywalker sacrificed himself. Why’d he say “see ya around, kid” to Kylo if not as a promise to return to him–to fix the mess he made by giving up on him? Letting himself be consumed by the Force was a tactical move, one that would give him instantaneous access to his nephew at any moment. Now? Who knows why he died. Force-projecting certainly wasn’t his only option at the time as a jaunt around the galaxy takes about 2 minutes in the Disney movies.

Bringing back Palpatine is just as dumb. Remember when Anakin’s voice tells Rey “bring balance to the Force, like I did”? Except you didn’t, did you, Anakin? Because the Emperor never died. TROS just undid the central narrative arc of six movies because it couldn’t think of a way to make its richest character, Kylo Ren, stand on his own as a villain.

Truly a terrible movie. Mind-boggling in its badness. I guess the little hacker dude was cute but that’s about the only positive I can come up with at the moment.

Maybe Disney will sell the franchise again as they have no idea how to handle it. Maybe the Coen brothers can buy it for a cheap price. Or David Lynch.

Anonymous wrote:

Or David Lynch.

It would be a commercial flop but brilliantly insane. Lynch might be the one to bring the Whills to the screen.

Will_C wrote:

I guess the little hacker dude was cute but that’s about the only positive I can come up with at the moment.

See? Even someone who hates the movie has to share the love for Babu Frik.

I haven’t even seen a picture of that Babu Frik thing, but I already know I’m gonna hate it… what is it, another cutesy droid?

Jon wrote:

I haven’t even seen a picture of that Babu Frik thing, but I already know I’m gonna hate it… what is it, another cutesy droid?

ahh it must be funny then, ’cause it’s ugly as fuck… xD

It’s the foul-mouthed sweary tirades that really make the character, which obviously doesn’t really come across in a gif.

Anonymous wrote:

Maybe Disney will sell the franchise again as they have no idea how to handle it. Maybe the Coen brothers can buy it for a cheap price. Or David Lynch.

Todd wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Or David Lynch.

It would be a commercial flop but brilliantly insane. Lynch might be the one to bring the Whills to the screen.

You guys know Lynch was offered Return of the The Jedi back in the day, right?  He turned it down to do Dune instead, because Dino DeLaurentis agreed to fund Blue Velvet in return.

Will_C wrote:

Terrible movie. I felt the same watching this as when I watched Battle of the Five Armies: numbed by an unending onslaught of almost context-less battle. It’s just a bunch of stuff happening, no rhyme or reason, no cleverness or passion. Rey, Poe, and Finn are good characters but they have no room to breathe, almost all their dialogue communicates (shouts) plot points. They’re ciphers. In his rush to undo TLJ, Abrams severed his creations from their own arcs.

Look, I am an easy Star Wars fan to please. I’ve liked all the other Disney films to one degree or another. I didn’t expect to love this one because it’s Abrams and he’s a bland director but I at least expected to enjoy myself. No such luck.

For all the stupid “fixes” it came up with for TLJ, the worst thing it did to that movie is totally missing why Luke Skywalker sacrificed himself. Why’d he say “see ya around, kid” to Kylo if not as a promise to return to him–to fix the mess he made by giving up on him? Letting himself be consumed by the Force was a tactical move, one that would give him instantaneous access to his nephew at any moment. Now? Who knows why he died. Force-projecting certainly wasn’t his only option at the time as a jaunt around the galaxy takes about 2 minutes in the Disney movies.

Bringing back Palpatine is just as dumb. Remember when Anakin’s voice tells Rey “bring balance to the Force, like I did”? Except you didn’t, did you, Anakin? Because the Emperor never died. TROS just undid the central narrative arc of six movies because it couldn’t think of a way to make its richest character, Kylo Ren, stand on his own as a villain.

Truly a terrible movie. Mind-boggling in its badness. I guess the little hacker dude was cute but that’s about the only positive I can come up with at the moment.

I agree with Will. Will is smart. All praise Will!

Luke, Leia, Han, Vader- Classic Film Icons

Anakin, Padme, Obi Wan, Palpatine-  failed attempts at replacements

Rey, Finn, Poe, Kylo Ren – WHO?

Dave wrote:

drawing attention off Rey and making her seem almost incidental to the victory

I have not seen ROS yet and many people keep asking me if I am going to. A friend went and saw it and said he liked the fights and special effects but he did not pay much attention to the story. I don’t know whether I will.

My take is the original trilogy was a masterpiece and Lucas botched the follow up. Waiting so long for new movies to come out ruined the story. I loved Luke, Leia, and Han but by the time Lucas/Disney got back to them they were senior citizens or deceased. The story George Lucas wanted to tell was not greater than the heroes of the story. Series Finales on TV often fail and this seems to be no different. The Star Wars Universe is a strong, viable setting leading to other creations like Rebels and Clone Wars cartoons, Rogue One and Solo movies, and the Mandalorian TV series.

But, IMO, the STAR WARS movies should be about the original leads and their families. That is where I think the Sequel trilogy went wrong. Those 3 leads have never been tied back into the original trilogy leads. The whole thing about Rey and is she or isn’t she was too vague and drawn out. The other 2 clearly have no connection to Skywalker/Solo. The only one that does is Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. but he has the power and imposing nature of Vader mixed with the whiny nature and angsty self doubt of Anakin.  So why should I care? They say ROS is the end of the saga. Nice advertising ploy but, for me, the Saga ended some time between 1983 and 1999 and was buried in 2015 when they picked 3 random(imo) characters to finish off the story.

Star Wars comes with the baggage of a lot of individual expectations. Personally I thought having everyone related to previous characters is a really bad idea and that’s why you get very divided views on the various movies because that’s exactly what you wanted and I didn’t.

That expands across varying aspects.

thats why I kept trying to express that those were all my thoughts and ideas. But I did not say everyone had to be related just connected somehow. like I said before, the OT was the story of Luke, Leia, and Han and of the 3 leads in the ST, Poe was the only one who had any prior contact with them(flying for Leia’s forces)

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Maybe Disney will sell the franchise again as they have no idea how to handle it. Maybe the Coen brothers can buy it for a cheap price. Or David Lynch.

Todd wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Or David Lynch.

It would be a commercial flop but brilliantly insane. Lynch might be the one to bring the Whills to the screen.

You guys know Lynch was offered Return of the The Jedi back in the day, right?  He turned it down to do Dune instead, because Dino DeLaurentis agreed to fund Blue Velvet in return.

I like this story Lynch has about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJQ4vCu-S0U

Rocket wrote:

thats why I kept trying to express that those were all my thoughts and ideas.

Absolutely and I’m not saying they are any less valid than my thoughts and ideas. It’s just you do see with Star Wars, especially this sequel trilogy, how much reactions are down to those expectations.

There’s nothing that absolutely everyone agrees on but a lot of films have a kind of general consensus. With Star Wars you get these wild variations, people who generally like the same things (like me and Tim or Will) coming out with radically different impressions of them.

Star Trek can do it too, with Discovery a lot here like it but some really fucking hate it. John Suintres on Word Balloon get a big Trek fan on his podcast and they rip into every single decision and scene and mostly around the concept of ‘this is not what Star Trek should do or be’.

I often ponder what would happen if you presented essentially the same characters and story, stripped the branding out, would the impression be the same? I don’t know but it would be curious to see. I’m not a big Star Trek fan, I just watched a few episodes of TOS and TNG when young, so I am just looking to be entertained and not concerned about what it ‘should be’ but maybe the reactions would be the same either way, we’ll never know.

 

I don’t think it’s possible to do a single film that satisfies the entire SW fanbase.
Some time back I tried working out the various subsets, I hit double digits easily – when you look at what’s out there, plus the generations, it gets damn complicated.

Ben wrote:

I don’t think it’s possible to do a single film that satisfies the entire SW fanbase.

As long as some SW fans clamor for the return of Jar Jar, there will never be full satisfaction. Which is as it should be.

Do… do they actually do that?

rory wrote:

Do… do they actually do that?

You haven’t read @njerry’s erotic fan fiction, have you?

Have I?

Todd wrote:

You haven’t read @njerry’s erotic fan fiction, have you?

Correction, Todd.

It’s non-fiction.

Jar Jar Binks Fan Club

Ah, but that has happened.
Feel free to start screaming appropriately.

Never thought I’d see a Hellraiser reference in a a Star Wars movie.

lorcan_nagle wrote:

You guys know Lynch was offered Return of the The Jedi back in the day, right? He turned it down to do Dune instead, because Dino DeLaurentis agreed to fund Blue Velvet in return.

Lynch’s ROTJ probably wouldn’t have been very different from Marquand’s ROTJ. Lucas was still the one pulling the strings. Might be interesting to see what Lynch would bring stylistically, but the story would have been more or less the same.

I dream of Lynchian Ewoks

Jason wrote:

lorcan_nagle wrote:

You guys know Lynch was offered Return of the The Jedi back in the day, right? He turned it down to do Dune instead, because Dino DeLaurentis agreed to fund Blue Velvet in return.

Lynch’s ROTJ probably wouldn’t have been very different from Marquand’s ROTJ. Lucas was still the one pulling the strings. Might be interesting to see what Lynch would bring stylistically, but the story would have been more or less the same.

Lynch didn’t take the job and that was probably part of the reason why.

And if he had taken it, I expect he would’ve quit at some point.

I can’t imagine Lynch’s sensibilities meshing well with Lucas’s at that point in their careers.

Anonymous wrote:

I dream of Lynchian Ewoks

Ewok body horror.

If the Mandalorians never take off their helmets how do they eat?

Straws

So I finally got around to watching Rise of the Skywalker between last night and this morning, and it was OK.  The action setpieces were pretty, the connecting tissue was mostly bollocks, but not offensively so.  It really felt like they tried to pander to as many elements of the fandom as possible, and wound up making a vaguely nourishing mush as a result.

The worst element for me was Carrie Fisher. Including her in the movie the way they did was ghoulish and for all the prattling on Star Wars nerds do about damaging the legacy of their space wizard movies, this was actually insulting to the legacy of a real person.

SteveUK wrote:

I can’t imagine Lynch’s sensibilities meshing well with Lucas’s at that point in their careers.

When Lynch was approached, I think Lucas still had a more serious film in mind.

Gary Kurtz outlines original, darker, Ewok-less ending for Return Of The Jedi

We still haven’t gotten the “Lawrence of Arabia” of science fiction adventure – a dramatic and mature epic that is a big hit with audiences – and I think Lucas had something like that in mind at first. As far as business sense, though, he was wise to stop pretending Star Wars was for adults.

lorcan_nagle wrote:

The worst element for me was Carrie Fisher. Including her in the movie the way they did was ghoulish and for all the prattling on Star Wars nerds do about damaging the legacy of their space wizard movies, this was actually insulting to the legacy of a real person.

I didn’t get that at all. I thought it was a bit clumsy but I don’t know what they had to work with, and dumping the character would’ve been stone cold.

Anonymous wrote:

he was wise to stop pretending Star Wars was for adults.

There’s grown up filmmaking and then there’s Lynch. What would he have done? He can be less obtuse at times, but it seems like he’s not happy unless he can colour outside the lines when he wants to?

 

SteveUK wrote:

I didn’t get that at all. I thought it was a bit clumsy but I don’t know what they had to work with, and dumping the character would’ve been stone cold.

All they had was deleted scenes from The Force Awakens. They took her face and neck from those, put them on a body double, and wrote all of her scenes around the lines she had recorded five years ago. It’s not a good way to make a film, and it came across as really creepy and unnatural.

Apparently there was a lot more of it, but they had to cut it because the effects weren’t good enough. They should have cut it all.

Fisher has been dead for three years, and was dead when they started working on the script. They should have just started with her funeral and moved on.

OCHIE: Where’s the girl?

REY’S PARENTS: She’s not on Jakku, that’s for sure.

OCHIE: Damn it. Well, I guess there’s no way to find out. I’ll just kill you and report back to my supervillain god of evil master who can read minds that I failed ᵒʰ ⁿᵒ ᶦˢ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ᵃ ˢⁿᵃᵏᵉ

— Ты не одинок (@postedbygaslite) December 29, 2019

paul f wrote:

Fisher has been dead for three years, and was dead when they started working on the script. They should have just started with her funeral and moved on.

That’s no way to honour her memory! Far better to have Leia’s final scenes be someone who isn’t Carrie Fisher, lying under a white sheet, like the world’s shittest Halloween costume. It’s what she would have wanted.

paul f wrote:

All they had was deleted scenes from The Force Awakens. They took her face and neck from those, put them on a body double, and wrote all of her scenes around the lines she had recorded five years ago. It’s not a good way to make a film, and it came across as really creepy and unnatural. Apparently there was a lot more of it, but they had to cut it because the effects weren’t good enough.

Been saying this for a while that no matter how much SFX tech has developed since RO it isn’t up to the kind of level and scrutiny that a film like this receives.  Those seconds of Leia in RO? Took months.   Maybe if they had more time then what was envisaged might have been possible, but gotta get the film out for Xmas, right?

Ben wrote:

Those seconds of Leia in RO? Took months.

And even then it didn’t look quite right.

Exactly – that was their best shot, it took ages, cost a bomb but still couldn’t quite do it.

paul f wrote:

They should have just started with her funeral and moved on.

That’s a valid choice, but so was trying to keep her character as/at the heart of the resistance.

When people start out on a  project they don’t really know what will work and what wont? They have to take a risk but risks are risky and sometimes they fail.

I really didn’t have a big problem with Leia in the film. I didn’t find it disrespectful and I didn’t find it too distracting.

I had other problems with the movie, but as I said way above; it was fine. Leia’s scenes too.

EDIT:

That’s a great interview by the way.

SteveUK wrote:

That’s a great interview by the way.

Terrio has since completely walked back his comments on the additional Leia scenes, and now says they were never shot:

https://www.vulture.com/2019/12/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-writer-on-kelly-marie-tran.html

Update, December 30: In a statement to Vulture, Terrio clarified that Tran’s cut scenes had nothing to do with the work of The Rise of Skywalker’s visual-effects team. Rather, it was a narrative decision. “I badly misspoke if in an earlier statement I implied that any cut scenes between Rose and Leia were the fault of our VFX team and the wizards at ILM,” Terrio said. “In that earlier interview, I was referring to a specific scene in which Leia’s emotional state in Episode VII did not seem to match the scene we wrote for use in Episode IX, and so it was cut at the script stage before the VFX work was done. If we had chosen to use the scene, ILM would have made it look perfect. They always do. ILM performed actual miracles at every stage of the creative process in Episode IX. I remain in awe of their work.”

It sounds like some people from ILM read Terrio’s interview and were not happy with it .