Star Wars 9: The Sky of Ricewalker: A senseless, incoherent nightmare.

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

If there's any fanbase that caused Finn to be sidetracked, it's not the one you're thinking of. In the Chinese posters, they actually made his depiction smaller than in the non-Chinese ones, because China hates black people apparently. If they were trying to not alienate anyone, it's those billion and a half of people, not the few thousand loud angry online neckbeards who will see the movie anyway because it's SW lol.

Right. It's China's fault that you can't have blacks and gay couples in Hollywood movies and it's Russia's fault that Trump is president. Because surely it can't be western people who are the problem.

If China can make Blizzard put a diablo game only on mobile phones, they can affect the direction a supporting cast member's romance plot goes. This is not comparable to whatever minor things Russia tried to do during the elections that we don't even know measurable effects regarding. China is a billion and a half potential audience members. A lot of Hollywood stuff is trying to court them, it's a basic fact everyone knows at this point. They're definitely trying to court them way more than angry online neckbeards in any case lol.

This is not new either, you have Overwatch for example, where Soldier 76 and Tracer are not gay in the Chinese version of its lore.

Any notion that these companies have a moral conviction and aren't just pandering to whatever is popular in whatever locale and any attempt at trying to ascribe to them noble and virtuous motivations while defending their choices simply because you agree with them personally is at best misguided.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

No, he never gave it a second thought. What really pisses me off is that everybody bitches about Chewy not getting a medal for co-piloting a ship that shows up at the last second of a hard fought battle. You know who else didn't get a medal? Wedge motherfuckin' Antilles. And he sure as shit did a lot more to bring down the Death Star than Han or Chewy ever did.

But fuck logic, right? He's not the one everybody moaned about. Nope, Han's co-pilot didn't get one, boo hoo. So of course that's the squeaky wheel Disney pours the oil on.

Aye, I like Chewbacca, he's fun, but he is also an ancillary character. He doesn't make any instrumental decisions or do anything really important.

 

[Kyrian007]

What I'm getting out of this thread, and reaction by people I know who are talking about it... is that this is a movie that will give you exactly what you want out of it. If you go in with low expectations and are expecting to hate it, you will find reasons enough to hate it... just like you wanted to. If you thought ep 8 was good and didn't want to see a return of JJ... its JJ enough for you to hate, promise. If you liked ep 7 and thought Rian Johnson had screwed it up terribly, you'll see retcons of the moments you hate (even though the retcons aren't actually there if you really look at them.) If you are a shipper you'll see your favorite "ship" destroyed and hate it. If you don't care about who "lurvs" whom you will correctly find that all "ships" are just hinted at all along to string along the shippers and that no romantic relationships in the entire series are ever any more than just hinted at.

If you were going in expecting to have a good time and see a fine (if fairly safe, a JJ staple) conclusion to a series you generally liked, you will. The only thing that bugged me was the pacing, they rushed through a lot of things I wanted drawn out a bit more. But when a movie leaves me wanting more of it, usually a good sign.

Oh and "whatta you mean the 'ships' aren't there, but whattabout xxxx?" Isn't there, never was, you can't convince me it was.
Oh and "whatta you mean that 'xxxx' wasn't a retcon, it directly retconned 'yyyy.' No, it doesn't. You didn't interpret it correctly, I did.

There that should about cover it.

 

[BrawlMan]

What I'm getting out of this thread, and reaction by people I know who are talking about it... is that this is a movie that will give you exactly what you want out of it. If you go in with low expectations and are expecting to hate it, you will find reasons enough to hate it... just like you wanted to. If you thought ep 8 was good and didn't want to see a return of JJ... its JJ enough for you to hate, promise. If you liked ep 7 and thought Rian Johnson had screwed it up terribly, you'll see retcons of the moments you hate (even though the retcons aren't actually there if you really look at them.) If you are a shipper you'll see your favorite "ship" destroyed and hate it. If you don't care about who "lurvs" whom you will correctly find that all "ships" are just hinted at all along to string along the shippers and that no romantic relationships in the entire series are ever any more than just hinted at.

If you were going in expecting to have a good time and see a fine (if fairly safe, a JJ staple) conclusion to a series you generally liked, you will. The only thing that bugged me was the pacing, they rushed through a lot of things I wanted drawn out a bit more. But when a movie leaves me wanting more of it, usually a good sign.

Oh and "whatta you mean the 'ships' aren't there, but whattabout xxxx?" Isn't there, never was, you can't convince me it was.
Oh and "whatta you mean that 'xxxx' wasn't a retcon, it directly retconned 'yyyy.' No, it doesn't. You didn't interpret it correctly, I did.

There that should about cover it.

That's about the some of it.


Also, Disney ended doing what some the non-canon/Legends Star Wars comics and novels doing. Making them no different nor better. It really is hypocritical of Disney to do such a thing. I still love the film, but it makes all of their acts of purging anything done be Lucas Arts or other SW properties not made by them pointless.

<spoiler=TV Tropes Rise of Skywalker Page>


The general plotline of Emperor Palpatine being resurrected in a new body, turning a Skywalker to the Dark Side and proceeding to threaten the galaxy with a massive armada and ship-sized planet-killing weapons that he had stashed in a secret location was already done in the Legends comicbook Dark Empire... 28 years before, where it was ironically mentioned as one of many reasons that Legends allegedly had to be discontinued.
Star Destroyers equipped with planet-cracking lasers also appeared in the same aforementioned comic book series. With the Eclipse class Super Star Destroyer.

The idea was more recently used in Star Wars: The Old Republic, with the similarities even more blatant. There, an immortal Emperor is likewise slain, and later returns with an invincible fleet (from a planet in the Unknown Regions with a name which is slightly similar if you have a bit of imagination), stating his old Empire was but a first attempt, much like Palpatine with his First and Last Orders. He likewise has a family, with a parent that tries to flee from him with the children, who are later crucial in his final downfall. Plus, he constantly whispers into the protagonist's mind, offering power, but it naturally turns out the talk is nothing more than a cover to use them for rebirth. Plus the Sith Inquisitor storyline heavily features a Star Destroyer (The Silencer) equipped with a superlaser, not unlike Palpatine (which even showed up again in SWTOR no less than 2 months earlier as part of their Onslaught expansion).

Even the plot point of Palpatine having a grandchild is also something done before. An obscure book series in Legends dealt with Palpatine having descendants (Although those stories were largely retconned later)

The best part of Rise was Luke's FU to Rian Johnson: Jedi's weapon deserves more respect.

For me that just shows how there's no real artistic vision behind these movies. Each one is a coldly workshopped response to the backlash the previous movie received. None of them stand behind anything, none of them are "for" anything. If a character is poorly received, they scrap it. If a moment doesn't sell, they retcon it.

There was no roadmap behind the trilogy. That's why it's so messy. Abrams and Johnson both had their own vision, which were far apart. Abrams wanted to honor previous movies and make fan service, Johnson wanted to break the mold, which angered fans. In the end, it's the fans who made Star Wars what it is today.

Which is why I always been a casual fan of SW. The fandom has good people, but too many of them ***** & moan, or harass actors over decision they had no involvement. The harassment of Jar Jar & Roses' respective actors deemed to always keep a far distance. The same thing happened to Hayden Christian too with the unnecessary harassment.

 

[Hawki]

The daughter of his son, that he had, apparently, and that some poor soul writing Expanded Universe novels has to come up with a backstory for.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who wondered how long it'll be until Palpatine's son gets an EU story. I mean, it's been done before in what's now Legends - anyone remember Triclops?

Last Jedi establishing that Rey was, indeed, not related to anyone important served as an important step for the series away from its rigid focus on exceptional bloodlines to a more grounded and more humanist view of importance not as something inherited but as something acquired.

I might not go that far, but, this. I loved the twist in Last Jedi, how it demonstrated through Rey that one didn't need to have some special linneage to be a hero; a trait that's reflected in the closing scene with the kid. But, nup. We had to make her Palpatine's granddaughter, because God forbid we do something interesting.

In fairness, it isn't the worst twist in the world, in that it allows some parallels, but TFA gave us the mystery of Rey's parents, Last Jedi answered it. There was no need for this film to convolute it even further, because what we're left with are massive questions concerning her parents, and a plot that could have still worked without the connection.

Finn, you see, was built up as love interest for Rey in the first movie. So far so good. The second movie gave him a new love interest in an Asian character called Rose, who this movie mostly ignores. The cynic in me already assumed at that point that this was a studio mandated decision because the suits felt that pairing a black man with a white woman was somehow too risky so they felt the need to hook him up with an appropriately ethnic love interest in the sequel. Rise of Skywalker feels the need to give him yet another love interest, a black character named Jannah played by gorgeous Naomi Ackie.

Da fuq?

Okay, there were complaints about Rose, viscious enough to drive her actress off social media, but I've never seen anyone resent the pairing on racial grounds. And it's tenuous to call Jannah a love interest. Also, interracial couples aren't new. They haven't been new for the better half of a century. I don't doubt there's some fuckwits out there that would have been put off from ReyxFinn on racial grounds, but I've never seen anyone seriously complain about that.

and while I dread to see him force the Marvel Cinematic Universes weird conservative subtext

...such as?

Finn was obviously set up to be romantically involved with Ray but then TLJ throws in an asian lady to protect white purity, and now since that likely pissed of Asian racists Finn is now tossed a black woman to fall in love with. There is an added layer of grossness to it considering how willing they were to retcon the romance twice, its like the only reason these female characters exist is to be love interests. How very feminist of you Disney./s

Oh God, not you too.

How the hell does one come to the assumption that Rose exists to "protect white purity," whatever the fuck that means? Also, FinnxRey was never explicit in TFA. The hints were there, sure, but if Disney was capitulating to anyone in shipping, it was the Reylo shippers.

And no, neither Rose nor Jannah exist to be love interests. Rose exists to provide Finn a window into the galaxy's seedy underbelly, and helps convey TLJ's themes of the need for heroes, even if those heroes don't always live up to the expectations of them. Jannah exists to show the fallout of Finn's actions, that they counted for something in the First Order. There's certainly grounds for JannahxFinn shipping, but it's reductive to assign these characters to the status of love interests.

I thought Rose was put there to appeal to China, and maybe they got mad that a black guy was going to pair with her?

Rose's actress is Vietnamese. Also, Rose was created for...well, just read https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Rose_Tico#Behind_the_scenes.

For God's sake, what the hell is this obsession with race even doing here? People didn't like Rose. I didn't like Rose much. That's the reason why she isn't in Rise much. Frankly, I'd have liked her to be there more to spite the actual racists who tormented Tran, same way that Ahmed Best and Jake Lloyd were tormented for the crime of acting in a story about space wizards, but guys, seriously...

Am I the only one who thought they looked like cosplayers?

Seriously, none of them even get actual lightsabers.

You know, if everybody stopped posting in the 'last movie you watched' thread and just made their own thread for each movie, then we'd ALL have more discussion for each movie.

Except not every movie can generate discussion. Lots of people were going to see Star Wars. If I make a thread about an obscure film that no-one else has seen, then no-one is going to comment on it. Least in the movies thread I'm using less space.

Still way better than the godawful prequels and Rogue One though.

No to the first, yes to the second.

This movie had a short time-frame of only a few days if I'm not mistaken.

16 hours plus however much time passes between Palpatine's death and the ending.

Nothing I saw in the sequel trilogy gave me the indication that Disney was pushing any kind of racial message or agenda, other than maybe skin color doesn't matter.

Not even that.

I think Disney massively, massively overestimated how much people care about Star Wars when they bought the license,

People care. Just look at the box office numbers. Even Rise might cross the $1 billion mark.

A lot of queer people like Disney. Probably because Disney went through a long phase of queer-coding the hell out of villain characters in order to show that they were really bad people, thus unintentionally creating representation.

...such as?

They aren't made for the small group of awful man-children who for whatever reason are still genuinely passionate about Star Wars, because they consistently shit on the kinds of things those people like about Star Wars.

So, in spite of everything, I still like Star Wars. Does that make me a man child?

They aren't made for kids, because kids aren't interested in this visually drab 1970s aesthetic or sad boomer pseudo-mysticism (them toy sales).

Um, I think kids care. Box office sales indicate that. And in the kid's section of the library, there's no shortage of Star Wars stuff.

Palpatine surviving isn't surprising. Darth Maul survived and he was cut in half and fell into a pit. Palpatine is actually well established villain unlike Snoke who we knew nothing about until Johnson stupidly killed him. It was TLJ that completely ruined the trilogy. It only managed to piss of fans. Rise has currently audience score of 86% on RT, which shows that JJ and Disney made the right call to try to forget TLJ.

Palpatine exploded, and the Death Star exploded. That's a bit different.

Also, when Maul was brought back, the cartoons did something interesting with him. Palpatine? Not so much.

Also, I'll agree to disagree with you on TLJ, but:

The best part of Rise was Luke's FU to Rian Johnson: Jedi's weapon deserves more respect.

That bit works with TLJ. It's not a FU, it syncs up with it given Luke's character arc.

On the contrary, I think Rose was a deliberate (and misguided) attempt to appeal to China. To Asia in general.
Here in Argentina we recognize the casting of Diego Luna and Oscar Isaac as obvious attempts to ingratiate the movies with the Latin American demographic. We don't care that the actors are Mexican and Guatemalan. We get what they're trying to do.

If Rose was, then Rian Johnson is outright lying about the casting process.

Also, seriously? How does one get to the point where people go "non-white actor, pandering!"

Anyone else laugh at the end, where everyone came "home" to the resistance, everyone was hugging and Maz Kanata randomly gave Chewie a medal?

I didn't laugh, but I did smile.

It's fan service, but it's fan service I actually liked.

Also I have seen some crazy people interpret the deathly rivalry between the Jedi and Sith as "romanticized domestic violence" simply because you have romance spring forth from that condition which is all sorts of silly of a reason to dislike the movie lol.

Da fuq?

Actually, wait, never mind. Some people are insane. I shouldn't be surprised.

That said, if someone says that Reylo is a morally problematic ship, that Rey falls for a murderer while ignoring the affections of two decent men, then, yeah.

I've never understood the Reylo shippers. I probably never will.

The two biggest failures of this new trilogy are:

1) It failed at creating something new, instead it traced over the original and wallowed in the Greatest Hits.
2) It failed at justifying its very existence by never properly explaining (let alone convincing) how the Empire is still around, whatever you wanna call it; how the Rebels let the 100% victory of RotJ slide; how Palpatine is still alive. Part of my complete disinterest in Star Wars is simply that I've spent the past 4 years unconvinced by the continued fight between good guys and bad guys. I'm not saying it's an impossible scenario but these movies just took for granted that everything staid more or less the same.

This.

I know other people have said it, but I'll say it again - the prequels suffered from execution, but not in ideas. The sequels suffered from a lack of ideas, but are overall better made.

In the end, it's the fans who made Star Wars what it is today.

Really? Odd. I thought directors, producers, writers, and all those sorts made Star Wars, or any other franchise. Who'd have thought that consumers made the product they're consuming?

Yeah, I've never been fond of the whole "the fans made X." No, the creators of X made X. Fans consume X. Consumption isn't creation.

This is not new either, you have Overwatch for example, where Soldier 76 and Tracer are not gay in the Chinese version of its lore.

Really? How so? I mean, the only reason we know they're gay is because of short stories.

you'll see retcons of the moments you hate (even though the retcons aren't actually there if you really look at them.)

Episode 8: "Your parents were nobodies. They sold you for drink money."

Episode 9: "I never lied to you. Your parents chose to become nobodies and left you on Jakku to protect you."

It's either a retcon, or Ben is lying about not lying.

Everything aside, yes, nothing in Rise technically retcons TLJ, but it still reeks of corporate mandate.

It actually makes me wonder if the OT was made today, and people whined about Vader being Luke's father, would Return of the Jedi go back on it and say "Vader was lying, he did kill your dad." If so, IMO, RotJ would be a much poorer film because it would strip away much of the dynamic in the lightsaber duel and everything Luke does after it.

If you are a shipper you'll see your favorite "ship" destroyed and hate it.

Everyone seems to ship Reylo. Right now, going by ff.net, they're very, VERY happy. Or if not, they're only unhappy because they didn't get to be together.

Which is why I always been a casual fan of SW. The fandom has good people, but too many of them ***** & moan, or harass actors over decision they had no involvement. The harassment of Jar Jar & Roses' respective actors deemed to always keep a far distance. The same thing happened to Hayden Christian too with the unnecessary harassment.

And Jake Lloyd.

I don't understand people sometimes. No, seriously. I can understand people disliking kid!Anakin, or Jar Jar, or Rose. I have some negative thoughts on all of those characters. But how the hell does someone go from disliking a character to abusing the person who portrayed them?

 

[Squilookle]

You know, if everybody stopped posting in the 'last movie you watched' thread and just made their own thread for each movie, then we'd ALL have more discussion for each movie.

Except not every movie can generate discussion. Lots of people were going to see Star Wars. If I make a thread about an obscure film that no-one else has seen, then no-one is going to comment on it. Least in the movies thread I'm using less space.

How do you know? It's a lot more likely to be seen in its time on the top pages than being thrown into a thread that's already a thousand pages long. I sure know which option I'd be more willing to read through...

Besides- This is the internet. Space taken up by text is virtually non existent. Go nuts with it.

Not to be too picky, but Han and Chewie did more to destroy the Death Star by being instrumental in rescuing Princess Leia and bringing the Death Star plans to the Rebel Alliance, which allowed them to find the weakness and destroy it.
And from a viewer's perspective (as opposed to an in-universe perspective) Wedge is little more than a glorified extra in the original movie. He was a side character with a few lines of dialogue, he wasn't a main character.

Yeah yeah yeah, and Leia secured the plans in the first place and got the distress call out sucessfully etc and so on. Those are all commendable actions and worthy of recognition in their own right.

But these were military medals- awarded for actions taken in a military operation: The Battle of Yavin. 30ish went out and what... 5 came back? I don't know what the Y-Wing pilot got up to (the fact he even survived in that P.O.S. seems somewhat suspicious) but we see Wedge do his damndest every step of the way, including saving Luke's life. Honestly I think it's a remnant of George watching all those ancient Westerns where the cavalry shows up at the last second and gets glorified for it. The U.S. is all over that trope, even in actual wars. It's not particularly impressive to the ones that were fighting from the start.

So yeah. They should've had medals made for all 5 really, but if they only ever made 3, I would've given the 2nd one to Wedge, and seriously considered whether Han was worthy of the third one at all...

 

[BrawlMan]

The daughter of his son, that he had, apparently, and that some poor soul writing Expanded Universe novels has to come up with a backstory for.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who wondered how long it'll be until Palpatine's son gets an EU story. I mean, it's been done before in what's now Legends - anyone remember Triclops?

Last Jedi establishing that Rey was, indeed, not related to anyone important served as an important step for the series away from its rigid focus on exceptional bloodlines to a more grounded and more humanist view of importance not as something inherited but as something acquired.

I might not go that far, but, this. I loved the twist in Last Jedi, how it demonstrated through Rey that one didn't need to have some special linneage to be a hero; a trait that's reflected in the closing scene with the kid. But, nup. We had to make her Palpatine's granddaughter, because God forbid we do something interesting.

In fairness, it isn't the worst twist in the world, in that it allows some parallels, but TFA gave us the mystery of Rey's parents, Last Jedi answered it. There was no need for this film to convolute it even further, because what we're left with are massive questions concerning her parents, and a plot that could have still worked without the connection.

Finn, you see, was built up as love interest for Rey in the first movie. So far so good. The second movie gave him a new love interest in an Asian character called Rose, who this movie mostly ignores. The cynic in me already assumed at that point that this was a studio mandated decision because the suits felt that pairing a black man with a white woman was somehow too risky so they felt the need to hook him up with an appropriately ethnic love interest in the sequel. Rise of Skywalker feels the need to give him yet another love interest, a black character named Jannah played by gorgeous Naomi Ackie.

Da fuq?

Okay, there were complaints about Rose, viscious enough to drive her actress off social media, but I've never seen anyone resent the pairing on racial grounds. And it's tenuous to call Jannah a love interest. Also, interracial couples aren't new. They haven't been new for the better half of a century. I don't doubt there's some fuckwits out there that would have been put off from ReyxFinn on racial grounds, but I've never seen anyone seriously complain about that.

and while I dread to see him force the Marvel Cinematic Universes weird conservative subtext

...such as?

Finn was obviously set up to be romantically involved with Ray but then TLJ throws in an asian lady to protect white purity, and now since that likely pissed of Asian racists Finn is now tossed a black woman to fall in love with. There is an added layer of grossness to it considering how willing they were to retcon the romance twice, its like the only reason these female characters exist is to be love interests. How very feminist of you Disney./s

Oh God, not you too.

How the hell does one come to the assumption that Rose exists to "protect white purity," whatever the fuck that means? Also, FinnxRey was never explicit in TFA. The hints were there, sure, but if Disney was capitulating to anyone in shipping, it was the Reylo shippers.

And no, neither Rose nor Jannah exist to be love interests. Rose exists to provide Finn a window into the galaxy's seedy underbelly, and helps convey TLJ's themes of the need for heroes, even if those heroes don't always live up to the expectations of them. Jannah exists to show the fallout of Finn's actions, that they counted for something in the First Order. There's certainly grounds for JannahxFinn shipping, but it's reductive to assign these characters to the status of love interests.

I thought Rose was put there to appeal to China, and maybe they got mad that a black guy was going to pair with her?

Rose's actress is Vietnamese. Also, Rose was created for...well, just read https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Rose_Tico#Behind_the_scenes.

For God's sake, what the hell is this obsession with race even doing here? People didn't like Rose. I didn't like Rose much. That's the reason why she isn't in Rise much. Frankly, I'd have liked her to be there more to spite the actual racists who tormented Tran, same way that Ahmed Best and Jake Lloyd were tormented for the crime of acting in a story about space wizards, but guys, seriously...

Am I the only one who thought they looked like cosplayers?

Seriously, none of them even get actual lightsabers.

You know, if everybody stopped posting in the 'last movie you watched' thread and just made their own thread for each movie, then we'd ALL have more discussion for each movie.

Except not every movie can generate discussion. Lots of people were going to see Star Wars. If I make a thread about an obscure film that no-one else has seen, then no-one is going to comment on it. Least in the movies thread I'm using less space.

Still way better than the godawful prequels and Rogue One though.

No to the first, yes to the second.

This movie had a short time-frame of only a few days if I'm not mistaken.

16 hours plus however much time passes between Palpatine's death and the ending.

Nothing I saw in the sequel trilogy gave me the indication that Disney was pushing any kind of racial message or agenda, other than maybe skin color doesn't matter.

Not even that.

I think Disney massively, massively overestimated how much people care about Star Wars when they bought the license,

People care. Just look at the box office numbers. Even Rise might cross the $1 billion mark.

A lot of queer people like Disney. Probably because Disney went through a long phase of queer-coding the hell out of villain characters in order to show that they were really bad people, thus unintentionally creating representation.

...such as?

They aren't made for the small group of awful man-children who for whatever reason are still genuinely passionate about Star Wars, because they consistently shit on the kinds of things those people like about Star Wars.

So, in spite of everything, I still like Star Wars. Does that make me a man child?

They aren't made for kids, because kids aren't interested in this visually drab 1970s aesthetic or sad boomer pseudo-mysticism (them toy sales).

Um, I think kids care. Box office sales indicate that. And in the kid's section of the library, there's no shortage of Star Wars stuff.

Palpatine surviving isn't surprising. Darth Maul survived and he was cut in half and fell into a pit. Palpatine is actually well established villain unlike Snoke who we knew nothing about until Johnson stupidly killed him. It was TLJ that completely ruined the trilogy. It only managed to piss of fans. Rise has currently audience score of 86% on RT, which shows that JJ and Disney made the right call to try to forget TLJ.

Palpatine exploded, and the Death Star exploded. That's a bit different.

Also, when Maul was brought back, the cartoons did something interesting with him. Palpatine? Not so much.

Also, I'll agree to disagree with you on TLJ, but:

The best part of Rise was Luke's FU to Rian Johnson: Jedi's weapon deserves more respect.

That bit works with TLJ. It's not a FU, it syncs up with it given Luke's character arc.

On the contrary, I think Rose was a deliberate (and misguided) attempt to appeal to China. To Asia in general.
Here in Argentina we recognize the casting of Diego Luna and Oscar Isaac as obvious attempts to ingratiate the movies with the Latin American demographic. We don't care that the actors are Mexican and Guatemalan. We get what they're trying to do.

If Rose was, then Rian Johnson is outright lying about the casting process.

Also, seriously? How does one get to the point where people go "non-white actor, pandering!"

Anyone else laugh at the end, where everyone came "home" to the resistance, everyone was hugging and Maz Kanata randomly gave Chewie a medal?

I didn't laugh, but I did smile.

It's fan service, but it's fan service I actually liked.

Also I have seen some crazy people interpret the deathly rivalry between the Jedi and Sith as "romanticized domestic violence" simply because you have romance spring forth from that condition which is all sorts of silly of a reason to dislike the movie lol.

Da fuq?

Actually, wait, never mind. Some people are insane. I shouldn't be surprised.

That said, if someone says that Reylo is a morally problematic ship, that Rey falls for a murderer while ignoring the affections of two decent men, then, yeah.

I've never understood the Reylo shippers. I probably never will.

The two biggest failures of this new trilogy are:

1) It failed at creating something new, instead it traced over the original and wallowed in the Greatest Hits.
2) It failed at justifying its very existence by never properly explaining (let alone convincing) how the Empire is still around, whatever you wanna call it; how the Rebels let the 100% victory of RotJ slide; how Palpatine is still alive. Part of my complete disinterest in Star Wars is simply that I've spent the past 4 years unconvinced by the continued fight between good guys and bad guys. I'm not saying it's an impossible scenario but these movies just took for granted that everything staid more or less the same.

This.

I know other people have said it, but I'll say it again - the prequels suffered from execution, but not in ideas. The sequels suffered from a lack of ideas, but are overall better made.

In the end, it's the fans who made Star Wars what it is today.

Really? Odd. I thought directors, producers, writers, and all those sorts made Star Wars, or any other franchise. Who'd have thought that consumers made the product they're consuming?

Yeah, I've never been fond of the whole "the fans made X." No, the creators of X made X. Fans consume X. Consumption isn't creation.

This is not new either, you have Overwatch for example, where Soldier 76 and Tracer are not gay in the Chinese version of its lore.

Really? How so? I mean, the only reason we know they're gay is because of short stories.

you'll see retcons of the moments you hate (even though the retcons aren't actually there if you really look at them.)

Episode 8: "Your parents were nobodies. They sold you for drink money."

Episode 9: "I never lied to you. Your parents chose to become nobodies and left you on Jakku to protect you."

It's either a retcon, or Ben is lying about not lying.

Everything aside, yes, nothing in Rise technically retcons TLJ, but it still reeks of corporate mandate.

It actually makes me wonder if the OT was made today, and people whined about Vader being Luke's father, would Return of the Jedi go back on it and say "Vader was lying, he did kill your dad." If so, IMO, RotJ would be a much poorer film because it would strip away much of the dynamic in the lightsaber duel and everything Luke does after it.

If you are a shipper you'll see your favorite "ship" destroyed and hate it.

Everyone seems to ship Reylo. Right now, going by ff.net, they're very, VERY happy. Or if not, they're only unhappy because they didn't get to be together.

Which is why I always been a casual fan of SW. The fandom has good people, but too many of them ***** & moan, or harass actors over decision they had no involvement. The harassment of Jar Jar & Roses' respective actors deemed to always keep a far distance. The same thing happened to Hayden Christian too with the unnecessary harassment.

And Jake Lloyd.

I don't understand people sometimes. No, seriously. I can understand people disliking kid!Anakin, or Jar Jar, or Rose. I have some negative thoughts on all of those characters. But how the hell does someone go from disliking a character to abusing the person who portrayed them?

Because they're lonely, miserable assholes with nothing better to do with their lives or have too much time on their hands. And they build their identity around all things Star Wars, meaning they don't have time for much else. When they realize that, then comes the self hatred. They have no one to blame but themselves

 

[twistedmic]

Episode 8: "Your parents were nobodies. They sold you for drink money."

Episode 9: "I never lied to you. Your parents chose to become nobodies and left you on Jakku to protect you."

It's either a retcon, or Ben is lying about not lying.

That could be written off as Kylo being wrong about why her parents left her on Jakku. They were still nobodies in the grand scheme of things. There is absolutely no indication that Palpatine had anything to do with his biological son. He may have had dozens of children that never manifested Force abilities and he didn't care about them at all. He only seemed interested in Rey because she was Force-sensitive and he could hijack her body.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Hell yeah. RIP fucking Knights of Ren, we literally didn't know ye.

Am I the only one who thought they looked like cosplayers?

Seriously, none of them even get actual lightsabers.

Their backstory is probably explained in a comic book, or a novel, or something, cuz that is what Disney seems to love doing with background details and exposition, especially if's important and/or interesting. Kind of like how Palpatine's message to the galaxy isn't actually in TRoS, except for a mention in the opening crawl.

The actual message is out there tho. It was a Fortnite event. [https://www.polygon.com/fortnite/2019/12/20/21031513/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-fortnite-opening-crawl-palpatines-message]

 

[Hawki]

The actual message is out there tho. [url:https://www.polygon.com/fortnite/2019/12/20/21031513/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-fortnite-opening-crawl-palpatines-message]It was a Fortnite event.[/url]

Your link isn't working, but I found it on YouTube.

I mean, what the hell Disney? You couldn't slot that into the movie somehow? Less than a minute, and it could just be Palpatine's voice layered over what's going on screen as Ben searches for him.

 

[Kwak]

The actual message is out there tho. [url:https://www.polygon.com/fortnite/2019/12/20/21031513/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-fortnite-opening-crawl-palpatines-message]It was a Fortnite event.[/url]

Your link isn't working, but I found it on YouTube.

I mean, what the hell Disney? You couldn't slot that into the movie somehow? Less than a minute, and it could just be Palpatine's voice layered over what's going on screen as Ben searches for him.

Because basic plot logic is now considered obscure lore to be parcelled out like dlc as easter eggs.


So, why is it called 'Rise of Skywalker'? Who's Skywalker in this, and how do they rise?

 

[Hawki]

So, why is it called 'Rise of Skywalker'? Who's Skywalker in this, and how do they rise?

Rey takes the Skywalker name at the film's end, so I guess it's her rise by virtue of being the last Force-user standing?

Yeah, I dunno. Of the three "R" films, its title is the most tenuous.

 

[Kyrian007]

you'll see retcons of the moments you hate (even though the retcons aren't actually there if you really look at them.)

Episode 8: "Your parents were nobodies. They sold you for drink money."

Episode 9: "I never lied to you. Your parents chose to become nobodies and left you on Jakku to protect you."

It's either a retcon, or Ben is lying about not lying.

Actually yes, Ben is not lying... and it is not a retcon. You do have to pay attention to what Kylo is saying in The Last Jedi. Because more important than the lines you highlighted... were the ones preceding it.

Kylo Ren : Do you know the truth about your parents? Or have you always known? You've just hidden it away. Say it.
Rey : [in tears] They were nobody.

He didn't know the truth, neither did she. The only knowledge he had was her fears about her parents being nothing stitched together from half remembered childhood memories of parents surviving in a particularly harsh environment. He was never telling her what happened to her parents. He couldn't have, he didn't know. What he was doing was using their connection to look into her mind and, as a dark side user would, reinforcing her worst fears about who her parents were. He was very specifically starting down the direct path to the dark side; fear, then anger, then hate, and so on. It was what she feared the most, they were nobodies, they were dead, she didn't matter, nobody ever loved her, and no one was coming back for her. Her true parentage revealed in RoS, was chosen because it was worse than her fears ever had been. It wasn't a retcon of the moment in Rian Johnson's film... it reinforced and escalates that moment. The Emperor is trying to complete her journey, to heighten her... suffering. To the dark side, that leads. From my point of view... it really works within the framework set up by all the prior films.

Much like Kenobi telling Luke his father was dead, and mind you that was a Kenobi... a Jedi not telling Luke the truth in the most direct way. Do we somehow expect BETTER of Kylo Ren? Why?

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

For some reason even as a kid I could never get into Star Wars. So my expectations have always been pretty steady at zero. Same for Star Trek. I guess what I?m saying is I like sci-fi but not when it?s too quirky. Ironically enough though, I did find Guardians of the Galaxy entertaining, but it was mostly due to the characters.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I thought Rose was put there to appeal to China, and maybe they got mad that a black guy was going to pair with her?

My understanding was basically this. And the black dude couldn't hook up with the white girl for the same reason - China.

Also if I recall for the Chinese movie posters, Disney purposefully moved Fynn to a corner, made him smaller, and lightened his skin tone so it was less obvious a black dude was in it.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

So, why is it called 'Rise of Skywalker'? Who's Skywalker in this, and how do they rise?

Rey takes the Skywalker name at the film's end, so I guess it's her rise by virtue of being the last Force-user standing?

Yeah, I dunno. Of the three "R" films, its title is the most tenuous.

But remember that broom kid in Last Jedi who used the Force?

Also, and this is probably not true but still, John Boyega said in an interview was Fynn was going to tell Rey wasn't he loved her, but that he was a Force user too.

 

[Silvanus]

A lot of queer people like Disney. Probably because Disney went through a long phase of queer-coding the hell out of villain characters in order to show that they were really bad people, thus unintentionally creating representation.

...such as?

Scar and Ursula most prominently. Ursula was even aesthetically based on a famous drag queen.

More broadly, effeminacy and campness has been used to characterise antagonists in Disney from the start.

 

[Trunkage]

Episode 8: "Your parents were nobodies. They sold you for drink money."

Episode 9: "I never lied to you. Your parents chose to become nobodies and left you on Jakku to protect you."

It's either a retcon, or Ben is lying about not lying.

Star Wars is well known for trash retcons. The exact same situation happened for Luke when Kenobi says 'a certain point of view.' It's one thing JJ got right

 

[Asita]

A lot of queer people like Disney. Probably because Disney went through a long phase of queer-coding the hell out of villain characters in order to show that they were really bad people, thus unintentionally creating representation.

...such as?

Scar and Ursula most prominently. Ursula was even aesthetically based on a famous drag queen.

More broadly, effeminacy and campness has been used to characterise antagonists in Disney from the start.

Scar is prominent in that regard? He always struck me as the mousy geek to Mufasa's star quarterback (or the Iago to his Othello). What am I missing that made him stand out as queer-coded?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

A lot of queer people like Disney. Probably because Disney went through a long phase of queer-coding the hell out of villain characters in order to show that they were really bad people, thus unintentionally creating representation.

...such as?

Scar and Ursula most prominently. Ursula was even aesthetically based on a famous drag queen.

More broadly, effeminacy and campness has been used to characterise antagonists in Disney from the start.

Also 99% of anime.