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

[immortalfrieza]

Rian Johnson did not write JJ Abrams into a corner, The Last Jedi had plenty there that JJ Abrams could've built off of, even Palpatine coming back could've fit just fine into everything. JJ Abrams refused to make use of what Rian Johnson put up and RoS is a much worse film than it could've been because of it.

Even Palpatine coming back, while not the worst thing in the world, is iffy for me. I could have bought it if there was even the slightest hint of him surviving in TFA or Last Jedi, but there simply isn't. And it undercuts TFA for me, because one of the most interesting ideas in the film (what few of them there were) was the idea of the Dark Side operating through proxies. First the Sith, then the Empire, now the First Order. With Palpatine coming back, it undercuts this idea, in that everything that's gone wrong for the setting since Episode I can be lain at his feet. This isn't inherently a bad idea, but I've seen it done poorly before, and it's done poorly here.

I was saying that having Palpatine as the main villain of RoS could've worked decently and while still following along with what The Last Jedi set up. Sure, it would've been far better to complete Kylo Ren's arc and have him be the Big Bad or something but Palpatine could've worked just fine as the core villain of RoS without having to compromise anything The Last Jedi did.

All I can really say at this point is that the worst part of all of it is how they went out of their way to ignore or retcon nearly everything that occurred in The Last Jedi in this movie. I don't care whether you like TLJ or didn't, the fact is The Rise of Skywalker would've been a much much better and more coherent movie had they simply followed through with what TLJ set up in it's plot instead of acting like TLJ didn't exist. The Trilogy as a whole is now worse as a direct result of Rise of Skywalker.

Rian Johnson did not write JJ Abrams into a corner, The Last Jedi had plenty there that JJ Abrams could've built off of, even Palpatine coming back could've fit just fine into everything. JJ Abrams refused to make use of what Rian Johnson put up and RoS is a much worse film than it could've been because of it.

What did TLJ set up exactly? Luke's arc finishes when he decides to get involved again and sacrifice himself. The Kylo/Rey team up was teased and slapped down in the same scene it appears. Holdo dies, Snoke dies, Phasma dies, all inconsequentially. Finn Poe and Rose accomplish nothing and may as well not been in the film. TLJ sets up nothing. Rey's supposed lack of lineage is fine but you can't make a film out of that so the Palpatine ass pull was inevitable as soon as Snoke died. The cluster fuck came from TLJ "tearing it all down".

Let's see... there's quite a bit that The Last Jedi set up that Rise of Skywalker squandered.

The Last Jedi reduced The Resistance to a handful and Rise of Skywalker didn't follow up on it. Hell, a whole TV series could've been made on the premise of rebuilding The Resistance back up on it's own. However, Rise of Skywalker just begins with The Resistance pretty much right back where they were at the beginning of The Last Jedi, if not stronger without any explanation.

Rey is now the grandchild of Palpatine instead of a nobody making Star Wars a tale of blue bloods once again. All the potential made for other future characters because Rey was a nobody yet still is so powerful The Last Jedi established is thrown out as a result.

Kylo Ren goes from head of the First Order in The Last Jedi to Palpatine's ***** in place of Snoke and then redeems himself instead of finishing his arc and taking center stage as the Big Bad.

Rise of Skywalker shoves aside Rose Tico in every scene she could've been in and nearly every scene she could have been in is done by some random black woman Finn meets. The worst part about that one is even if it wasn't the intention it looks like they're giving a win to the trolls that were harassing Rose's actress. Not to mention how DJ apparently has gotten away with screwing over the whole galaxy scot free.

No mention is made of Rey building a new Jedi Order especially a more grey one fitting with what Luke said. Maybe it'll happen in future installments but that would be much more interesting than just a repeat of the Old Jedi Order.

And there's more, but that's what immediately comes to mind. Rise of Skywalker is just good enough overall that I don't hate it in spite of this, but if they had gone along with the plot points of The Last Jedi instead of avoiding or removing them the movie would've been a lot better. There was plenty that The Last Jedi set up that could've been and should've been made use of but Rise of Skywalker failed to do that and a LOT of great stuff is thrown away as a result.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Rian Johnson did not write JJ Abrams into a corner, The Last Jedi had plenty there that JJ Abrams could've built off of, even Palpatine coming back could've fit just fine into everything. JJ Abrams refused to make use of what Rian Johnson put up and RoS is a much worse film than it could've been because of it.

Even Palpatine coming back, while not the worst thing in the world, is iffy for me. I could have bought it if there was even the slightest hint of him surviving in TFA or Last Jedi, but there simply isn't. And it undercuts TFA for me, because one of the most interesting ideas in the film (what few of them there were) was the idea of the Dark Side operating through proxies. First the Sith, then the Empire, now the First Order. With Palpatine coming back, it undercuts this idea, in that everything that's gone wrong for the setting since Episode I can be lain at his feet. This isn't inherently a bad idea, but I've seen it done poorly before, and it's done poorly here.

I was saying that having Palpatine as the main villain of RoS could've worked decently and while still following along with what The Last Jedi set up. Sure, it would've been far better to complete Kylo Ren's arc and have him be the Big Bad or something but Palpatine could've worked just fine as the core villain of RoS without having to compromise anything The Last Jedi did.

All I can really say at this point is that the worst part of all of it is how they went out of their way to ignore or retcon nearly everything that occurred in The Last Jedi in this movie. I don't care whether you like TLJ or didn't, the fact is The Rise of Skywalker would've been a much much better and more coherent movie had they simply followed through with what TLJ set up in it's plot instead of acting like TLJ didn't exist. The Trilogy as a whole is now worse as a direct result of Rise of Skywalker.

Rian Johnson did not write JJ Abrams into a corner, The Last Jedi had plenty there that JJ Abrams could've built off of, even Palpatine coming back could've fit just fine into everything. JJ Abrams refused to make use of what Rian Johnson put up and RoS is a much worse film than it could've been because of it.

What did TLJ set up exactly? Luke's arc finishes when he decides to get involved again and sacrifice himself. The Kylo/Rey team up was teased and slapped down in the same scene it appears. Holdo dies, Snoke dies, Phasma dies, all inconsequentially. Finn Poe and Rose accomplish nothing and may as well not been in the film. TLJ sets up nothing. Rey's supposed lack of lineage is fine but you can't make a film out of that so the Palpatine ass pull was inevitable as soon as Snoke died. The cluster fuck came from TLJ "tearing it all down".

Let's see... there's quite a bit that The Last Jedi set up that Rise of Skywalker squandered.

The Last Jedi reduced The Resistance to a handful and Rise of Skywalker didn't follow up on it. Hell, a whole TV series could've been made on the premise of rebuilding The Resistance back up on it's own. However, Rise of Skywalker just begins with The Resistance pretty much right back where they were at the beginning of The Last Jedi, if not stronger without any explanation.

Rey is now the grandchild of Palpatine instead of a nobody making Star Wars a tale of blue bloods once again. All the potential made for other future characters because Rey was a nobody yet still is so powerful The Last Jedi established is thrown out as a result.

Kylo Ren goes from head of the First Order in The Last Jedi to Palpatine's ***** in place of Snoke and then redeems himself instead of finishing his arc and taking center stage as the Big Bad.

Rise of Skywalker shoves aside Rose Tico in every scene she could've been in and nearly every scene she could have been in is done by some random black woman Finn meets. The worst part about that one is even if it wasn't the intention it looks like they're giving a win to the trolls that were harassing Rose's actress. Not to mention how DJ apparently has gotten away with screwing over the whole galaxy scot free.

No mention is made of Rey building a new Jedi Order especially a more grey one fitting with what Luke said. Maybe it'll happen in future installments but that would be much more interesting than just a repeat of the Old Jedi Order.

And there's more, but that's what immediately comes to mind. Rise of Skywalker is just good enough overall that I don't hate it in spite of this, but if they had gone along with the plot points of The Last Jedi instead of avoiding or removing them the movie would've been a lot better. There was plenty that The Last Jedi set up that could've been and should've been made use of but Rise of Skywalker failed to do that and a LOT of great stuff is thrown away as a result.

The only thing you listed that's a set up to a plot is rebuilding the resistance. And you're correct that that would take a whole tv show to adequately explain. The problem is that Johnson destroyed the resistance at the end of movie 2 out of 3 with absolutely nothing stopping the FO from taking the galaxy, so movie 3 would have to be about going into hiding and building up to the new new trilogy. Nothing could realistically stop them now.

The rest of your points are complaining about retconning TLJ and admittedly like I said earlier in this thread (or another thread, it blends together), I despise TLJ and still think just retconning it was the poorest move they could make.

 

[immortalfrieza]

The only thing you listed that's a set up to a plot is rebuilding the resistance.

Nope, everything I mentioned is setup to a plot, rebuilding the Resistance is just one of the few things in The Last Jedi that could've been the basis for a plot on it's lonesome. Plot points in previous works leading only to plot points in future works doesn't mean the plot points in the previous weren't still setups.

And you're correct that that would take a whole tv show to adequately explain. The problem is that Johnson destroyed the resistance at the end of movie 2 out of 3 with absolutely nothing stopping the FO from taking the galaxy, so movie 3 would have to be about going into hiding and building up to the new new trilogy. Nothing could realistically stop them now.

Not really, though they'd have had to extend the movie a bit (RoS was already 2 movies crammed into one) to do it. Just have a scene somewhere along the line of Poe and Co convincing some rich guy or military commander or someone like that to support the Resistance, maybe throw in a space battle to show that they were worth the time to recruit. After that, a throwaway line or two about similar groups they've brought into the fold for the Resistance would've been enough to adequately explain with just a movie's length. Yeah, building back up the Resistance could've been the basis for a TV show, but it didn't have to be to work as a plot setup.

The rest of your points are complaining about retconning TLJ and admittedly like I said earlier in this thread (or another thread, it blends together), I despise TLJ and still think just retconning it was the poorest move they could make.

No they aren't, they're retconning and that's bad in itself and thus cause of complain but all those point were something RoS could've followed up on and didn't. I was mentioning a bunch of plot points Rise of Skywalker could've used in response to the claim that The Last Jedi didn't set up anything and made it clear that wasn't the case.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

The only thing you listed that's a set up to a plot is rebuilding the resistance.

Nope, everything I mentioned is setup to a plot, rebuilding the Resistance is just one of the few things in The Last Jedi that could've been the basis for a plot on it's lonesome. Plot points in previous works leading only to plot points in future works doesn't mean the plot points in the previous weren't still setups.

Rose Trico is not a plot. Rey building the Jedi Order wasn't set up, if anything the movie wanted to shoot such structural institutions down. Which is fine, but it's not a setup to any sort of plot. Rey being a nobody is also not a plot point to build off of.

As a side rant, I have no clue why people are hung up about this. Star Wars is almost nothing but powerful force users who didn't come from any sort of force using family. The Skywalkers are the weird ones in universe, everyone else just had to build up their power through hard work and effort. Actually so did the Skywalkers, they just had good potential. Rey inheriting her force powers actually would buck the normal SW trend. Not necessarily in a good way mind you, but that is what's actually novel in SW. Her being a nobody makes her like everyone else except Anakin and Luke.

And you're correct that that would take a whole tv show to adequately explain. The problem is that Johnson destroyed the resistance at the end of movie 2 out of 3 with absolutely nothing stopping the FO from taking the galaxy, so movie 3 would have to be about going into hiding and building up to the new new trilogy. Nothing could realistically stop them now.

Not really, though they'd have had to extend the movie a bit (RoS was already 2 movies crammed into one) to do it. Just have a scene somewhere along the line of Poe and Co convincing some rich guy or military commander or someone like that to support the Resistance, maybe throw in a space battle to show that they were worth the time to recruit. After that, a throwaway line or two about similar groups they've brought into the fold for the Resistance would've been enough to adequately explain with just a movie's length. Yeah, building back up the Resistance could've been the basis for a TV show, but it didn't have to be to work as a plot setup.

Except TLJ established that the uber rich are helping the FO, with a long spiel about it. Though that is something else that the new movies in general mess up, time skips.

The new trilogy takes place over like a week or two, every movie leads right off the other one. The OT takes place over something like 6 years with multi-year timeskips between them, and something like that would help here since in Empire Strikes Back the resistance is hurt, but they don't make them effectively wiped out and give them a few years to build back up too.

The rest of your points are complaining about retconning TLJ and admittedly like I said earlier in this thread (or another thread, it blends together), I despise TLJ and still think just retconning it was the poorest move they could make.

No they aren't, they're retconning and that's bad in itself and thus cause of complain but all those point were something RoS could've followed up on and didn't. I was mentioning a bunch of plot points Rise of Skywalker could've used in response to the claim that The Last Jedi didn't set up anything and made it clear that wasn't the case.

Not really, and it ignores that while RoS is bad for retconning TLJ, TLJ did it first by retconning Force Awakens, resetting everyone's character progression, killing all the plot points JJ set up (basic as they were), and then spinning wheels for 2 hours or so.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Okay.....he's a narcissistic douche. Basically Johnny Bravo, but even more of an asshole.

What about any of the things I have mentioned would make someone a "douche" or an "asshole?"

Gaston is shown to have a lot of actually negative qualities, qualities which actually demonstrate cruelty or neglect of those around him. The fact that he puts a lot of regard in his own appearance is not one of these qualities, and yet, I don't think your reaction is unreasonable. I think it's the intentional reaction the films wants its audience to have. Why?

And "Real Men" can be dandy.

"Real men" don't exist.

I'm commenting on the film's framing of Gaston's (apparent) masculinity. If you think that translates into my general views on what should and should not be acceptable or appropriate to an actual category of people who are "real men", then you don't know me too well.

So that's one cherry-picked gif.

Trust me, it's not. It's just exceptionally blatant.

According to who, exactly?

Is the film a tragedy because Gaston dies at the end?

Cruella is villainous and/or a figure of fun because she LACKS traditional femininity.

In what ways, exactly, does she "lack traditional femininity"?

Because you're not wrong. Cruella is not appropriately feminine. Anita (and Perdita) are, which is why they are not villains. Incidentally, I'm glad we're not at the point of admitting that villainy is a gendered concept in this era of Disney films.

The problem is that Cruella isn't "traditionally masculine" either, so what is she?

The answer is that Cruella is inappropriately feminine. Which, again, actually makes her very similar to Jafar.

This is coming across more and more like painting the bullseyes around the bullet holes. Where is the homophobia, overt or otherwise, in the crop of modern Disney villains?

I've explained this several times now. I'm not sure what's not clear about it. The problem is that there isn't any "homo" to be "phobic" of. That's kind of the issue.

Disney doesn't do camp villains any more. Okay, maybe Maleficent a bit but that's only because she can be folded easily into liberal feminist "girl-boss" nonsense about "badass" women. Generally though, Disney has clearly attempted to do away with this kind of coding for villains (or "villains").

What Disney does now instead is to consciously try to pander to queer audiences in ways which demonstrate actual contempt. From the cynical JK Rowling dance of promoting characters as queer in marketing and never actually putting it in the film, to just using even lazier gay stereotyping for comic relief side characters, to pointless gestures like having a lesbian kiss in the background of a scene between two characters with no lines.

In terms of messaging, I don't have a problem with telling queer kids to go and be the fucking villains, because surviving as a queer person requires you to understand on some level that the world you live in is not kind or fair and you have to cut a ***** sometimes. I have a much bigger problem with telling queer kids that they need to reconcile themselves to being the supporting cast, or bit parts, or providing comic relief for the incredibly important heterosexuals who matter or who want to pat themselves on the back for being tolerant while watching pretty women awkwardly kiss.

Also, could I press you to respond to the point I and EvilRoy were making earlier - a lot of the traits exhibited by these classic villains could be described as lampooning the American view of traditional European stuffiness, arrogance, pomp and haughtiness?

In the Lion King, James Earl Jones is doing an accent.

Describe that accent to me.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Rose Trico is not a plot. Rey building the Jedi Order wasn't set up, if anything the movie wanted to shoot such structural institutions down. Which is fine, but it's not a setup to any sort of plot. Rey being a nobody is also not a plot point to build off of.

Actually yes, they all are plots. Rose Tico had so many possible directions she could've gone, not the least of which being a romance plot, that's plot. Rey rebuilding the Jedi Order couldn't have been more blatantly established had they tried. The whole Sacred Jedi Texts, the plot to moving on and avoid both previous incarnations of the old Jedi Order's mistakes, and that she's "The Last Jedi", that's plot. Rey being a nobody is an incredible plot hook, revealed how unimportant family lineage was and opened the doors to everybody involved being important in some way, that's plot, tons of it. Rise of Skywalker ignored and retconned all of it.

Just because you can't see the significance of the plot points in The Last Jedi doesn't mean they aren't plot. Otherwise I could say Vader being Luke's father isn't plot, the existence of the Death Star isn't plot, the Emperor isn't plot, etc.

As a side rant, I have no clue why people are hung up about this. Star Wars is almost nothing but powerful force users who didn't come from any sort of force using family. The Skywalkers are the weird ones in universe, everyone else just had to build up their power through hard work and effort. Actually so did the Skywalkers, they just had good potential. Rey inheriting her force powers actually would buck the normal SW trend. Not necessarily in a good way mind you, but that is what's actually novel in SW. Her being a nobody makes her like everyone else except Anakin and Luke.

Star Wars is almost completely about Force Users I grant you that, but there's a clear line between "powerful" Force Users and "decent to mediocre" Force Users. 99% of Force Users in the movies and even Legends/Disney EU are of barely any significance and die in droves, and even most of the powerful Force Users have little to no mention of their origins which makes their power no less inexplicable than Rey. We don't know where Qui-Gon or Obi-Wan or Yoda came from, we don't know if they came from some families somewhere famous for popping out Powerful Force Users or what. However, they're all clearly not nobodies from the word jump.

Legends is a little more murky about this, but even so, going by the movies alone, the only ones of significance are the Chosen One and his progeny, and now Palpatine's bloodline, everybody else is there to help them along at the best and corpses to die in their place at worst. Rey being nobody from a nothing special bloodline and yet being so important and talented would have bucked the Star Wars trend of special people being the only ones of importance to anything. It would've turned things from "Only this guy from this bloodline is allowed to beat the Big Bad" to "Anyone can potentially beat the Big Bad now if they're determined enough!"

Except TLJ established that the uber rich are helping the FO, with a long spiel about it.

You're missing the point. First you're assuming that SOME of the uber rich are helping The First Order means all of them are. Second, the point was that they could've plausibly established why The Resistance is back up and running after being almost completely destroyed in TLJ in the space of a single movie's runtime fairly easily and not even a significant chunk of it. All it would've taken is a scene or two showing at least a portion of how they did it and a couple throwaway lines. The Resistance nearly getting wiped out in TLJ didn't have to be ignored to bring the Resistance back to fighting shape in RoS.

Not really, and it ignores that while RoS is bad for retconning TLJ, TLJ did it first by retconning Force Awakens, resetting everyone's character progression, killing all the plot points JJ set up (basic as they were), and then spinning wheels for 2 hours or so.

The Last Jedi didn't retcon a thing about Force Awakens, it took what it established and followed through with TFA's plot points in ways viewers didn't expect. The Last Jedi continued everybody's character progression, it didn't reset it.

-Finn goes from simply wanting to escape The First Order and then just wanting to help Rey (TFA} to growing out of that attitude and wanting to fight for the cause itself (TLJ).

- Kylo Ren goes from the loyal second to Snoke conflicted about his place in the galaxy and hoping to live up to his Grandfather's legacy (TFA) to successfully offing Snoke and cementing both his rise to power and his commitment to the Dark Side and The First Order. While Luke's deception and the failure to stop the Resistance from getting away takes away much of the respect he could've had(TLJ).

- Rey goes from an idealistic young woman dreaming about the legends she grew up with and hoping she has an important destiny and lineage waiting pointlessly for her parents to come back, to realizing her parents aren't coming back and motivated to fight to save the galaxy (TFA) to realizing the legends aren't all they're cracked up to be, that her parents and origins didn't matter, and things don't always work out the way they did in the stories she heard growing up. (TLJ)

- Poe goes from a hotshot pilot determined to take insane risks to attack The First Order in grand battles(TFA, though really all TFA does is establish rather than develop Poe) to starting that way and learning to drop the hotshot side and become a real leader concerned with the lives of those who follow him (TLJ, though this one got shot in the foot in it's presentation it was still there).

If anything, Rise of Skywalker reverses character development taking place over the whole trilogy. Finn and Poe are left mostly intact but the movie doesn't focus much at all on them. Kylo is back to simpering second in command to Palpatine and conflicted about who he is all over again while Rey's parents have come back into the forefront and a dark nature she's never been hinted at having before comes up in this movie.

 

[Hawki]

The new trilogy takes place over like a week or two, every movie leads right off the other one. The OT takes place over something like 6 years with multi-year timeskips between them, and something like that would help here since in Empire Strikes Back the resistance is hurt, but they don't make them effectively wiped out and give them a few years to build back up too

The ST takes place over a year, as one year passes between Last Jedi and Rise. The OT takes place over 4 years, with 3 between Hope and Empire, and 1 between Empire and Return.

If anything, Rise of Skywalker reverses character development taking place over the whole trilogy. Finn and Poe are left mostly intact but the movie doesn't focus much at all on them. Kylo is back to simpering second in command to Palpatine and conflicted about who he is all over again while Rey's parents have come back into the forefront and a dark nature she's never been hinted at having before comes up in this movie.

I will say that Rey having a dark nature is kind of hinted at in the previous films. In TFA, look at her face when she delivers the crippling blow to Ben. She's looking at him with hate, and the novelization goes a step further, a voice at the back of her head urging her to kill him (i.e. the Dark Side). In TLJ, Luke comments how readily she let herself go to the Dark Side, and when she draws her lightsaber on Luke, she's fighting from a position of anger. You're right in that a lot of Rey's character development in Rise feels forced (we can add in the whole connection between her and Ben, which feels like a regression of their parting of ways in the previous film), but her having a dark side (no pun intended) is something that the film does actually build off.

Also, as for Ben, I don't think he's a simpering XO for Palpatine here, as I got the sense that he was planning to turn on Palpatine as well. However, he still feels like he's in regression, so to speak, and that's symbolic of him reforging the mask. In TFA, the point of it was that he was trying to emulate Vader, and there's some weight when he takes it off for Rey (I think the reveal of his face should have waited for Han, but whatever). In Last Jedi, there's similarly narrative weight when he smashes the thing, showing that he wants to forge his own path, that he's realized that following Snoke has led him to ruin. In Rise, the helmet is reforged, but ends up being discarded again regardless. I can't think of a single reason why his mask is back apart from it being "kewl."

 

[BrawlMan]

"Real men" don't exist.

Tell that to Kazuma Kuwabara. Or almost anyone's subjective opinion on what a "real man" is. Me personally, I don't care that much about "real men", but with that said, I have my own set of standards that I go by. I'm sure you feel the same way.

If you think that translates into my general views on what should and should not be acceptable or appropriate to an actual category of people who are "real men", then you don't know me too well.

I never made that implication, you're just assuming. I was more or less pointing something out. Sorry, for the misunderstanding.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Rose Trico is not a plot. Rey building the Jedi Order wasn't set up, if anything the movie wanted to shoot such structural institutions down. Which is fine, but it's not a setup to any sort of plot. Rey being a nobody is also not a plot point to build off of.

Actually yes, they all are plots. Rose Tico had so many possible directions she could've gone, not the least of which being a romance plot, that's plot. Rey rebuilding the Jedi Order couldn't have been more blatantly established had they tried. The whole Sacred Jedi Texts, the plot to moving on and avoid both previous incarnations of the old Jedi Order's mistakes, and that she's "The Last Jedi", that's plot. Rey being a nobody is an incredible plot hook, revealed how unimportant family lineage was and opened the doors to everybody involved being important in some way, that's plot, tons of it. Rise of Skywalker ignored and retconned all of it.

Just because you can't see the significance of the plot points in The Last Jedi doesn't mean they aren't plot. Otherwise I could say Vader being Luke's father isn't plot, the existence of the Death Star isn't plot, the Emperor isn't plot, etc.

They did have a romance plot with Finn, without Rose Trico. But that's just because they give him a new love interest every movie :V
Should have just made it FinnxPoe V:

Family lineage has never been important except for Anakin and Luke. There's thousands of years of history in SW that was shaped without saying 'son of blah blah son of blah blah'. I'll never accept that that's an interesting idea because it is the bog standard for SW.

As a side rant, I have no clue why people are hung up about this. Star Wars is almost nothing but powerful force users who didn't come from any sort of force using family. The Skywalkers are the weird ones in universe, everyone else just had to build up their power through hard work and effort. Actually so did the Skywalkers, they just had good potential. Rey inheriting her force powers actually would buck the normal SW trend. Not necessarily in a good way mind you, but that is what's actually novel in SW. Her being a nobody makes her like everyone else except Anakin and Luke.

Star Wars is almost completely about Force Users I grant you that, but there's a clear line between "powerful" Force Users and "decent to mediocre" Force Users. 99% of Force Users in the movies and even Legends/Disney EU are of barely any significance and die in droves, and even most of the powerful Force Users have little to no mention of their origins which makes their power no less inexplicable than Rey. We don't know where Qui-Gon or Obi-Wan or Yoda came from, we don't know if they came from some families somewhere famous for popping out Powerful Force Users or what. However, they're all clearly not nobodies from the word jump.

Legends is a little more murky about this, but even so, going by the movies alone, the only ones of significance are the Chosen One and his progeny, and now Palpatine's bloodline, everybody else is there to help them along at the best and corpses to die in their place at worst. Rey being nobody from a nothing special bloodline and yet being so important and talented would have bucked the Star Wars trend of special people being the only ones of importance to anything. It would've turned things from "Only this guy from this bloodline is allowed to beat the Big Bad" to "Anyone can potentially beat the Big Bad now if they're determined enough!"

Yeah, all the other important force users who shaped history. Funnily enough Anakin barely does anything important in the prequels until the end of Revenge of the Sith. Otherwise the big movers and shakers in the galaxy are Obi-wan (no family lineage we know of), Yoda (no family lineage we know of), Mace Windu (no family lineage we know of), Palpatine (family is important, but as politicians and not force users), Dooku (no family lineage we know of), and that's just if you only know the movies (and like me don't remember the names of the other jedi masters who were generals in a major galaxy spanning war). And it's very unlikely any of the jedi come from force using families because Jedi are typically the strongest force users around and aren't allowed to have kids (with one exception).

Except TLJ established that the uber rich are helping the FO, with a long spiel about it.

You're missing the point. First you're assuming that SOME of the uber rich are helping The First Order means all of them are. Second, the point was that they could've plausibly established why The Resistance is back up and running after being almost completely destroyed in TLJ in the space of a single movie's runtime fairly easily and not even a significant chunk of it. All it would've taken is a scene or two showing at least a portion of how they did it and a couple throwaway lines. The Resistance nearly getting wiped out in TLJ didn't have to be ignored to bring the Resistance back to fighting shape in RoS.

Alright, but that's your movie, there's supposed to be more to SW than army building. We did that in the prequels and everyone hated it. Even though that part was actually the better part of the prequels.

Not really, and it ignores that while RoS is bad for retconning TLJ, TLJ did it first by retconning Force Awakens, resetting everyone's character progression, killing all the plot points JJ set up (basic as they were), and then spinning wheels for 2 hours or so.

The Last Jedi didn't retcon a thing about Force Awakens, it took what it established and followed through with TFA's plot points in ways viewers didn't expect. The Last Jedi continued everybody's character progression, it didn't reset it.

-Finn goes from simply wanting to escape The First Order and then just wanting to help Rey (TFA} to growing out of that attitude and wanting to fight for the cause itself (TLJ).

He goes from wanting to escape to wanting to join the good guys to immediately wanting to escape again before he learns by the end to join the good guys. His character arc repeated.

- Kylo Ren goes from the loyal second to Snoke conflicted about his place in the galaxy and hoping to live up to his Grandfather's legacy (TFA) to successfully offing Snoke and cementing both his rise to power and his commitment to the Dark Side and The First Order. While Luke's deception and the failure to stop the Resistance from getting away takes away much of the respect he could've had(TLJ).

He goes from being wishy washy about joining the dark side and wanting to prove himself by killing his dad to fully commit to the bit to being wishy washy about joining the dark side and wanting to prove himself by killing his mom to fully commit to the bit and kills Snoke instead to go one step further. His arc repeated with a slight improvement (since Kylo Ren has been the secret protag all along and he's the only one who grows and changes over time)

- Rey goes from an idealistic young woman dreaming about the legends she grew up with and hoping she has an important destiny and lineage waiting pointlessly for her parents to come back, to realizing her parents aren't coming back and motivated to fight to save the galaxy (TFA) to realizing the legends aren't all they're cracked up to be, that her parents and origins didn't matter, and things don't always work out the way they did in the stories she heard growing up. (TLJ)

She sure as shit doesn't change over either movie. I don't remember her stressing over how important her lineage was in TFA except that she wanted parents full stop. Her wanting super special awesome parents is a fabrication of TLJ wholly. Just to add further confusion on why that was supposed to be a revolutionary plot point.

- Poe goes from a hotshot pilot determined to take insane risks to attack The First Order in grand battles(TFA, though really all TFA does is establish rather than develop Poe) to starting that way and learning to drop the hotshot side and become a real leader concerned with the lives of those who follow him (TLJ, though this one got shot in the foot in it's presentation it was still there).

I'll grant that that's probably what they were going for, but yeah, it comes off more like 'Poe learned that the correct way to resist a fascist regime is to shut up and follow orders blindly without question'. And yes, any character development he got in TLJ is new since he was barely in TFA.

If anything, Rise of Skywalker reverses character development taking place over the whole trilogy. Finn and Poe are left mostly intact but the movie doesn't focus much at all on them. Kylo is back to simpering second in command to Palpatine and conflicted about who he is all over again while Rey's parents have come back into the forefront and a dark nature she's never been hinted at having before comes up in this movie.

I remember in TLJ Luke gave up training Rey because she had a strong dark side, and there was that bit in the really reflective cave where she wasn't supposed to be. So she did have a dark nature hinted at before, though since Johnson wasn't going for the Palpatine reveal, it was just that bit of dark side everyone has and all that.

 

[Batou667]

"Real men" are beasts, not dandies.

"Real men" don't exist.

Please, for the sake of my sanity, pick ONE.

Is the film a tragedy because Gaston dies at the end?

That's verging on being an almost complete non sequitur. No, the film isn't a tragedy because Gaston (the villain) dies at the end. But that was in response to you asserting that "real men are beasts, not dandies", so I'll repeat the question; according to who?

The problem is that Cruella isn't "traditionally masculine" either, so what is she?

The answer is that Cruella is inappropriately feminine. Which, again, actually makes her very similar to Jafar.

Cool. I agree. If somebody is lacking femininity, that doesn't necessarily make them masculine, and vice versa.

I've explained this several times now. I'm not sure what's not clear about it. The problem is that there isn't any "homo" to be "phobic" of. That's kind of the issue.

Disney doesn't do camp villains any more. Okay, maybe Maleficent a bit but that's only because she can be folded easily into liberal feminist "girl-boss" nonsense about "badass" women. Generally though, Disney has clearly attempted to do away with this kind of coding for villains (or "villains").

What Disney does now instead is to consciously try to pander to queer audiences in ways which demonstrate actual contempt. From the cynical JK Rowling dance of promoting characters as queer in marketing and never actually putting it in the film, to just using even lazier gay stereotyping for comic relief side characters, to pointless gestures like having a lesbian kiss in the background of a scene between two characters with no lines.

OK, cool, I see your point and I agree. Most of Disney's "woke" rebranding has been superficial and tokenistic which I imagine is probably fairly frustrating for minority audiences.

In the Lion King, James Earl Jones is doing an accent.

Describe that accent to me.

Without pulling up YouTube, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess British?

You are surely much too intelligent to suggest that a single counter example is enough to disprove the existence of a trend. Sure, going through the Disney back catalogue we can find several non-villainous British-voiced characters. King Richard. Merlin. Mrs Potts. Aladdin's Sultan. Zazu. Mufasa. What do these all have in common? They're either anciliary characters or comic relief. Remarkably similar to the objections you raised earlier of Disney's treatment of camp characters.

 

[Agema]

Eventually the movie reveals to us, and I'm not making this up, that Rey is the grand daughter of Emperor Palpatine

I think you're right here. One might hope for a message that anyone, with luck of the talent genes and hard work, can make it to the top. But Star Wars has instead decided to teach us that if you're not born to greatness because mummy/daddy was the dog's bollocks, then fuck you redshirt (to mix a science fiction metaphor). It's all very medieval aristocratic.

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.

No clear comments about Finn's new love interest, but Rose clearly got the boot because she highly annoyed some vocal segments of the community (particularly the anti-SJW wing), and as a non-central character it's easier to kick her to the kerb. JJ Abrams has, I think, a finely honed sense of safety-first crowd-pleasing, and he'd totally do that sort of thing. I am not a big fan of JJ Abrams precisely because I think he's the ultimate safe pair of hands, and creatively often seems to fall short.

 

[Hawki]

Family lineage has never been important except for Anakin and Luke. There's thousands of years of history in SW that was shaped without saying 'son of blah blah son of blah blah'. I'll never accept that that's an interesting idea because it is the bog standard for SW.

Anakin and Luke are still the 'face' of Star Wars. Or rather, for most people, the films are the entry point to Star Wars, and many don't go beyond those films.

So in Episodes I-III, we have Anakin, who's important because a prophecy declared he's important. Qui-Gon asks Shimi who his father is as well. Family doesn't account for Anakin's powers in of itself, but Anakin still has linneage via providence.

Episodes IV-VI, Luke is very much in his father's shadow. That's self-explanatory.

If Rey didn't have some linneage behind her, it might not be unusual for the wider universe, but it would break the mould for Star Wars. And even that aside, I like the message of "anyone can be a hero" more than the implicit association in Rise that she's only powerful because her granddaddy is powerful.

He goes from wanting to escape to wanting to join the good guys to immediately wanting to escape again before he learns by the end to join the good guys. His character arc repeated.

It's arguable as to how much Finn's actions in TFA are due to wanting to help the good guys vs. helping Rey. Heck, on Starkiller Base, he says "I'm just here for Rey" (or something similar). But even that aside, Finn's arc in TLJ still incorporates him learning to understand the moral grey areas of the galaxy. There's still an arc there.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Eventually the movie reveals to us, and I'm not making this up, that Rey is the grand daughter of Emperor Palpatine

I think you're right here. One might hope for a message that anyone, with luck of the talent genes and hard work, can make it to the top. But Star Wars has instead decided to teach us that if you're not born to greatness because mummy/daddy was the dog's bollocks, then fuck you redshirt (to mix a science fiction metaphor). It's all very medieval aristocratic.

It's so frustrating, though. Between Rogue One and Last Jedi it really felt like they were finally getting over it and starting to evolve the series past all of this King Arthur crap. It's not just that Rise of Skywalker shat all over George Lucas' work, it even shat all over LucasFilm's work under Disney. I like Star Wars but I don't want Star Wars to be this relic that's locked away into a museum where no one is ever allowed to do anything with it because they're afraid of breaking it. "Your parents were no one of consequence, you're your own person, make your own destiny." was a genuinely positive moral and they just destroyed it. "No, actually you're the granddaughter of this evil dictator who was supposed to have died 50 years ago" is just nothing. It's meaningless. I she had actually been raised by Palpatine and the movies were about her learning to reject his morals and become a hero despite being raised as a villain, that might have been a compelling character arc, but as it is that revelation matters little to her and matters little to the audience. It just undermines a perfectly good and pretty universal message. That's the note the new trilogy ends on. "You ain't shit unless you're related to someone important.". Thanks, I hate it. Then, of course, both of Abrams parents were television and film producers so I imagine that's what helps him sleep at night.

No clear comments about Finn's new love interest, but Rose clearly got the boot because she highly annoyed some vocal segments of the community (particularly the anti-SJW wing), and as a non-central character it's easier to kick her to the kerb. JJ Abrams has, I think, a finely honed sense of safety-first crowd-pleasing, and he'd totally do that sort of thing. I am not a big fan of JJ Abrams precisely because I think he's the ultimate safe pair of hands, and creatively often seems to fall short.

What did that get them? The "safe" movie ended up considerably less commercially succesful than the two "risky" movies that were Rogue One and Last Jedi. And let's be honest here for a moment, Force Awakens wasn't the overwhelming success it was because it's especially good, but because people back then had a lot of unwarranted good will towards a new Star Wars movie. The red flags were there, people just chose to overlook them because they were excited for more Star Wars.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Family lineage has never been important except for Anakin and Luke. There's thousands of years of history in SW that was shaped without saying 'son of blah blah son of blah blah'. I'll never accept that that's an interesting idea because it is the bog standard for SW.

Anakin and Luke are still the 'face' of Star Wars. Or rather, for most people, the films are the entry point to Star Wars, and many don't go beyond those films.

So in Episodes I-III, we have Anakin, who's important because a prophecy declared he's important. Qui-Gon asks Shimi who his father is as well. Family doesn't account for Anakin's powers in of itself, but Anakin still has linneage via providence.

Episodes IV-VI, Luke is very much in his father's shadow. That's self-explanatory.

If Rey didn't have some linneage behind her, it might not be unusual for the wider universe, but it would break the mould for Star Wars. And even that aside, I like the message of "anyone can be a hero" more than the implicit association in Rise that she's only powerful because her granddaddy is powerful.

I think I posted it here (but it's been a while, I've slept), Anakin isn't actually that important to the prequels, all things considered. He doesn't do anything really important to the galaxy until the third movie, and that was just killing Dooku and then killing children. The prequels are about deconstructing the chosen hero narrative (so deconstructing the normal SW story happened nearly 20 years ago), Anakin is told he's super special awesome, and it ends up warping him into a villain.

Meanwhile, literal nobodies are the heroes and villains of the force, even if you only know the movies.

Yoda, Mace Windu, Qui-Gon Gin, Obiwan Kenobi, Count Dooku, Darth Maul, even Palpatine himself. And that's if you only know the named characters without reading the credits to know all the other jedi names.

He goes from wanting to escape to wanting to join the good guys to immediately wanting to escape again before he learns by the end to join the good guys. His character arc repeated.

It's arguable as to how much Finn's actions in TFA are due to wanting to help the good guys vs. helping Rey. Heck, on Starkiller Base, he says "I'm just here for Rey" (or something similar). But even that aside, Finn's arc in TLJ still incorporates him learning to understand the moral grey areas of the galaxy. There's still an arc there.

Not really. mostly because there aren't a lot of moral grays presented in TLJ.

 

[SupahEwok]

I think I posted it here (but it's been a while, I've slept), Anakin isn't actually that important to the prequels, all things considered. He doesn't do anything really important to the galaxy until the third movie, and that was just killing Dooku and then killing children. The prequels are about deconstructing the chosen hero narrative (so deconstructing the normal SW story happened nearly 20 years ago), Anakin is told he's super special awesome, and it ends up warping him into a villain.

There's a thing to poke at. Firstly, although I agree with you in general principle for most of your post, Anakin being a flop in the prequels is more due to Lucas mucking it up than actual intent. The Star Was saga, at least as professed by Lucas by the time the prequels were going, was the tale of Anakin. His fall, and his repentance. That would make intent to be that Anakin is the main protagonist that the series revolves around. The fact that he was at best a deuteragonist in the prequels who didn't actually move the plot all that much is more a failure of Lucas' direction.

So far as the wider point about bloodlines go, I sometimes wonder how much people conflate themes from the old EU with the new EU. The old EU did, as a matter of fact, have a lot to do with bloodlines, just by how much of the dang thing revolved around the Skywalker clan. Luke, Leia, Han, and their children are the focus for nearly all the novels (and the galactic events they focused on) that wrote canon for 30ish years in the "Star Wars moving present". The ultimate expression of which was the "Legacy" time period that's actually Star Wars future which revolves around Luke's descendant saving the galaxy from the Sith - twice. Peppered throughout the past, present, and future timelines, you also have some recurring families, although I can't actually think of any where the fact they were descended from somebody had an effect on plot; rather than a theme, they were more of the kind of easter egg wink which is the delight of tortuous continuity contortions (example: "Cassius Fett", a Mandalorian warlord 4000 years before the movies, who goes on to never actually being mentioned as a famous ancestor by the contemporary Jango or Boba Fett).

But the thing is, from my observation, most of the people who think that TLJ is "liberating Star Wars storytelling from bloodlines" don't actually know much or anything about the old EU, and as a matter of fact disdain the very idea of decades of collective pulpy stories of uneven quality which make up the mythos. They regard all that as so much baggage that they were happy to see Disney jettison. So you'd think that they'd only know about the movies, and would be taking those on their own merits. And you're right: taking just the movies, there isn't any theme on dynasties of power. The only thing that comes close is Vader and Luke's father-son relationship, naturally, but that isn't a theme that you have to have a notable parent to be notable. That's a theme of kinship, and Lucas reading too much of Campbell's Hero's Journey and taking it literally.

Step 9/17 of Campbell's interpretation: "Atonement with the Father/Abyss: In this step the hero must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in his life. In many myths and stories this is the father, or a father figure who has life and death power. This is the center point of the journey. All the previous steps have been moving into this place, all that follow will move out from it. Although this step is most frequently symbolized by an encounter with a male entity, it does not have to be a male; just someone or thing with incredible power."

Hell, compare Luke's power to Anakin's. Anakin was the only human in the galaxy who had the reflexes for podracing, and he fought and blew up a capital ship in a space battle, when he was like, 9. Luke was a grown-ass man, and all he did was keep up with his friends in Beggar's Canyon in a recreational flying shuttle thing (in deleted scenes, if you wanna take that pinch of salt), and he needed Obi-Wan's coaching over his shoulder to complete the Death Star trench run. I think these were intentional parallels: what Luke did, his daddy had done better. And if you want to bring in the sequels, Rey kicks Luke's ass in regards to learning and using the Force. Luke is weaker than Anakin, cuz it's Anakin, and only Anakin, who is the "prophesied one"; there is no "prophesied dynasty". And Luke's place in redeeming his father is a simple theme of the healing power of family and belief in each other.

So this whole bloodlines theme? I can only really see it coming from a few directions. One is that the old EU managed to build a monolithic conception on what Star Wars is, and what this really comes down to is cheering for spiting that old, noncanonical conception of that interpretation. So that's just fan war bait, really.

Another direction I see it coming is generational conflict. From the beginning of the millenium on, heat's been growing between the boomer generation and the millennial generation, which is basically insultingly simply spelled out in the sequels: the old generation managed a fairy tale rise to good and plentiful times, only to fuck it up and pass on the mess to a new generation who are shaken out of their mystified conceptions on the legends of yesterday. It's a very, very 2010's theme (when things really started heating up when the zoomers came in to reinforce the millennials), just like how the prequels got a massive chunk of inspiration from 9/11, the War on Terror, and the Patriot Act. So the classic movies are framed as a boomer narrative, a legacy for millennial storytelling to tear down. And that leads folks to conflate boomer "traditional family" values (or class values or however you want to frame it) with a perceived "mythic dynasty" theme, and the "deconstruction" of such values is in vogue with the current generational conflict, no matter how slapdash said deconstruction is.

And a third direction I see it coming from is people conflating the Star Wars movies with Disney themselves. Disney has a long history of movies with chosen ones of prophecies, descendants of heroes taking on the charge, princesses claiming the protagonist role by right of birth, etc. So mixing Star Wars as a mythology within the greater, averaged out Disney set of mythos does make a repudiation of bloodright themes transgressive and revolutionary and whatever, something which I've heard Disney has been doing with its other movies as well. I guess you could draw a connection between this one and the previous point about generational themes.

Tl;dr: Last Jedi is not nearly as smart and sophisticated as it wants to be. It's mostly logic chains of apologetics that want it to be. Fucking thing didn't even have the god damn balls to see its big, transgressive theme of Luke coming to terms with his mistakes through. Just killed him off after a magnificently executed twist that only matters if Luke doesn't get killed off (answer me this: if Luke was gonna die anyway, what was the point of him not dying in person? And don't give me crap about leaving an X-Wing on that island for Rey in the next movie, we all know the movies weren't planned that far ahead). And this is what people hold up as "revolutionary" storytelling.

 

[Hawki]

What did that get them? The "safe" movie ended up considerably less commercially succesful than the two "risky" movies that were Rogue One and Last Jedi.

I think that's a bit early to say. It's well on its way to earn 1 billion.

Anakin isn't actually that important to the prequels, all things considered. He doesn't do anything really important to the galaxy until the third movie, and that was just killing Dooku and then killing children.

You're right that Anakin is arguably tertiary in the first two episodes. I think that's more due to poor writing than anything else.

The prequels are about deconstructing the chosen hero narrative (so deconstructing the normal SW story happened nearly 20 years ago), Anakin is told he's super special awesome, and it ends up warping him into a villain.

All true, but again, Anakin's linneage (or lack of it) is touched on. Both remain true.

Meanwhile, literal nobodies are the heroes and villains of the force, even if you only know the movies.

Yoda, Mace Windu, Qui-Gon Gin, Obiwan Kenobi, Count Dooku, Darth Maul, even Palpatine himself. And that's if you only know the named characters without reading the credits to know all the other jedi names.

I think you can cross Mace and Qui-Gon off that list in the context of the movies by themselves - Mace is never that important in the films, and Qui-Gon is only important for a single film. Dooku, Maul, and Palpatine aren't heroes, so that's a moot point. Yoda is insanely powerful and clearly not a nobody, since he's got a seat on the Jedi Council and held in high regard by Jedi and non-Jedi alike. That leaves Obi-Wan. Now, even if we treat him as a "nobody," he still isn't the main character of the prequels. Obi-Wan's linneage, or lack of it, is a non-issue. The same can't be said for Luke, Anakin, or Rey.

Again, Anakin is the Chosen One, and that hangs over him. Luke is the son of Anakin/Darth Vader, and that hangs over him. Rey dealing with granddaddy issues via Palpatine is an extension of this. Rey being a nobody, bereft of family ties or some prophecized destiny? In the context of the films by itself, that's more interesting. And, IMO, far more humanizing.

Not really. mostly because there aren't a lot of moral grays presented in TLJ.

The entire point of Canto Bight is to show Finn that the galaxy isn't a moral binary. That there isn't just "good vs. evil," but plenty of people who exist only for themselves. There's also DJ, who subverts the archtype pioneered by Han. Not every rogue has a heart of gold, some are just in it for themselves.

You can argue that this isn't a lot of moral greyness, but it's a lot more than the films have usually portrayed.

I think I posted it here (but it's been a while, I've slept), Anakin isn't actually that important to the prequels, all things considered. He doesn't do anything really important to the galaxy until the third movie, and that was just killing Dooku and then killing children. The prequels are about deconstructing the chosen hero narrative (so deconstructing the normal SW story happened nearly 20 years ago), Anakin is told he's super special awesome, and it ends up warping him into a villain.

There's a thing to poke at. Firstly, although I agree with you in general principle for most of your post, Anakin being a flop in the prequels is more due to Lucas mucking it up than actual intent. The Star Was saga, at least as professed by Lucas by the time the prequels were going, was the tale of Anakin. His fall, and his repentance. That would make intent to be that Anakin is the main protagonist that the series revolves around. The fact that he was at best a deuteragonist in the prequels who didn't actually move the plot all that much is more a failure of Lucas' direction.

So far as the wider point about bloodlines go, I sometimes wonder how much people conflate themes from the old EU with the new EU. The old EU did, as a matter of fact, have a lot to do with bloodlines, just by how much of the dang thing revolved around the Skywalker clan. Luke, Leia, Han, and their children are the focus for nearly all the novels (and the galactic events they focused on) that wrote canon for 30ish years in the "Star Wars moving present". The ultimate expression of which was the "Legacy" time period that's actually Star Wars future which revolves around Luke's descendant saving the galaxy from the Sith - twice. Peppered throughout the past, present, and future timelines, you also have some recurring families, although I can't actually think of any where the fact they were descended from somebody had an effect on plot; rather than a theme, they were more of the kind of easter egg wink which is the delight of tortuous continuity contortions (example: "Cassius Fett", a Mandalorian warlord 4000 years before the movies, who goes on to never actually being mentioned as a famous ancestor by the contemporary Jango or Boba Fett).

But the thing is, from my observation, most of the people who think that TLJ is "liberating Star Wars storytelling from bloodlines" don't actually know much or anything about the old EU, and as a matter of fact disdain the very idea of decades of collective pulpy stories of uneven quality which make up the mythos. They regard all that as so much baggage that they were happy to see Disney jettison. So you'd think that they'd only know about the movies, and would be taking those on their own merits. And you're right: taking just the movies, there isn't any theme on dynasties of power. The only thing that comes close is Vader and Luke's father-son relationship, naturally, but that isn't a theme that you have to have a notable parent to be notable. That's a theme of kinship, and Lucas reading too much of Campbell's Hero's Journey and taking it literally.

Tl;dr: Last Jedi is not nearly as smart and sophisticated as it wants to be. It's mostly logic chains of apologetics that want it to be. Fucking thing didn't even have the god damn balls to see its big, transgressive theme of Luke coming to terms with his mistakes through.

Um, he does come to terms with his mistakes. If he didn't, he wouldn't show up on Crait.

Just killed him off after a magnificently executed twist that only matters if Luke doesn't get killed off (answer me this: if Luke was gonna die anyway, what was the point of him not dying in person? And don't give me crap about leaving an X-Wing on that island for Rey in the next movie, we all know the movies weren't planned that far ahead). And this is what people hold up as "revolutionary" storytelling.

-Luke projecting himself is a masterful choice for two reasons. One, it harkens back to his question of facing down the First Order. We see that if he'd been there physically, he'd have been shredded immediately. Two, he saves the Resistance, defeats Ben, and (re)establishes a legend for himself all without actually wielding a weapon. That's a very Jedi thing to do, despite the number of people who wanted Luke to do something akin to what Vader does in Rogue One.

-The purpose of the ship is to show how Luke got to Ach-To, to symbolize the whole burying his past thing (visual storytelling with it being underwater), and with it leading the audience to think that he flies to Crait rather than projecting himself. I strongly doubt that Rey using it in Rise was planned, but it works excellently within its own film.

 

[Agema]

It's so frustrating, though. Between Rogue One and Last Jedi it really felt like they were finally getting over it and starting to evolve the series past all of this King Arthur crap. It's not just that Rise of Skywalker shat all over George Lucas' work, it even shat all over LucasFilm's work under Disney. I like Star Wars but I don't want Star Wars to be this relic that's locked away into a museum where no one is ever allowed to do anything with it because they're afraid of breaking it. "Your parents were no one of consequence, you're your own person, make your own destiny." was a genuinely positive moral and they just destroyed it. "No, actually you're the granddaughter of this evil dictator who was supposed to have died 50 years ago" is just nothing. It's meaningless. I she had actually been raised by Palpatine and the movies were about her learning to reject his morals and become a hero despite being raised as a villain, that might have been a compelling character arc, but as it is that revelation matters little to her and matters little to the audience. It just undermines a perfectly good and pretty universal message. That's the note the new trilogy ends on. "You ain't shit unless you're related to someone important.". Thanks, I hate it. Then, of course, both of Abrams parents were television and film producers so I imagine that's what helps him sleep at night.

The thing about JJ Abrams is that he might take on stuff with classic source material, but he doesn't have respect for that source material - in the sense that he changes what he fancies. It's just a palette for him to make what he likes. Whilst Lucas might have gone off the boil as a director in his 90s movie hiatus, he was at least creative. Abrams is I fear much less so. The original productions Abrams has been associated with as creator seem to me to have nearly all been collaborations, and I cannot help but wonder if it was more that the other guy(s) did the base idea and Abrams polished it.

I think people like Abrams - polished, professional, and with a grasp of simple popularity - ultimately always retreat to cliche and expectations. As you say, the King Arthur fantasy trope that the peasant turns out to be the lost son of the king becomes irresistable to such a mindset. Of course, to some extent, it necessarily reflects fans. Some want an explanation for why the universe is as it is. That someone has to luck out on the genes midichlorian count and it might not be the kid of the last person to do so is more reality and a better reason than anything. But strangely to many people that doesn't feel like a reason - it might even be uncomfortable to them (as you also note about Abrams own background). I remember back in the last movie or so some people furious at the idea Rey's parents are nobodies: it didn't satisfy them: I bet you Abrams noticed that, too.

What did that get them? The "safe" movie ended up considerably less commercially succesful than the two "risky" movies that were Rogue One and Last Jedi. And let's be honest here for a moment, Force Awakens wasn't the overwhelming success it was because it's especially good, but because people back then had a lot of unwarranted good will towards a new Star Wars movie. The red flags were there, people just chose to overlook them because they were excited for more Star Wars.

In a way, that is exactly what safety is: sacrificing brilliance in the knowledge glossy adequacy will keep the dollars rolling in. Arguably, it's the model under which all large businesses dream to operate, because turkeys really hurt. No-one loses their job or reputation if they spend $300M on a film which will guarantee ~$1B at the box office, but if they spend $300M and might get anywhere from $500M to $1.5B, results at the lower end might see heads roll.

 

[Asita]

Eventually the movie reveals to us, and I'm not making this up, that Rey is the grand daughter of Emperor Palpatine

I think you're right here. One might hope for a message that anyone, with luck of the talent genes and hard work, can make it to the top. But Star Wars has instead decided to teach us that if you're not born to greatness because mummy/daddy was the dog's bollocks, then fuck you redshirt (to mix a science fiction metaphor). It's all very medieval aristocratic.

It's so frustrating, though. Between Rogue One and Last Jedi it really felt like they were finally getting over it and starting to evolve the series past all of this King Arthur crap. It's not just that Rise of Skywalker shat all over George Lucas' work, it even shat all over LucasFilm's work under Disney. I like Star Wars but I don't want Star Wars to be this relic that's locked away into a museum where no one is ever allowed to do anything with it because they're afraid of breaking it. "Your parents were no one of consequence, you're your own person, make your own destiny." was a genuinely positive moral and they just destroyed it. "No, actually you're the granddaughter of this evil dictator who was supposed to have died 50 years ago" is just nothing. It's meaningless. I she had actually been raised by Palpatine and the movies were about her learning to reject his morals and become a hero despite being raised as a villain, that might have been a compelling character arc, but as it is that revelation matters little to her and matters little to the audience. It just undermines a perfectly good and pretty universal message. That's the note the new trilogy ends on. "You ain't shit unless you're related to someone important.". Thanks, I hate it. Then, of course, both of Abrams parents were television and film producers so I imagine that's what helps him sleep at night.

Except all of that is fan-reading. Rey's parentage was never treated as a point for or against her in-universe. Point of fact, the characters were content with their ignorance of her background. I can draw comparison to Mistborn's Vin in this regard. The mechanics of the setting establishing that she must have noble blood, who that noble was is practically irrelevant to the characters (well...except the Steel Inquisition, but taking care of such transgressions is kinda their mandate). It's a curiosity, but it's not really important. So too is it here. Nobody in setting had any lofty expectations for Rey or dismissed her due to presumptions about her heritage. Hell, nobody in-story so much as asked or speculated about it. Her lineage was a non-entity within the story. It was the audience who was speculating about her surname, not the characters.

Rey didn't even care until that scene. She didn't pretend she was some hidden princess or believe she was the secret love-child of Luke or some war hero. The extent to which she cared was contained in how she desperately clung to the belief that her family hadn't abandoned her and would come back for her. Not that her parents were important people, just that her family loved her and didn't deliberately try to get rid of her. It's very similar in that respect to Futurama's Leela; she doesn't care that her parents were mutants living in the sewer, she's ecstatic to finally meet and spend time with them because, as someone who grew up as an orphan, that's all she ever wanted.

"Your parents were no one of consequence, you're your own person, make your own destiny" is not something that appeared. At all. Hell, Johnson's on record saying that the reason he decided that Rey's parents would be nobodies is because he felt that would be the hardest thing for her to hear. And, again, that's confusing her desire to have a family with the audience expectation that her family was special due to how Abrams presented them (or, rather, pointedly kept them offscreen in the flashback) in TFA.

 

[Agema]

And, again, that's confusing her desire to have a family with the audience expectation that her family was special due to how Abrams presented them (or, rather, pointedly kept them offscreen in the flashback) in TFA.

Which was probably also motivated by Abrams's desire to take a safe approach and follow the original plan of Star Wars. Orphan with unclear background on desert world turns out to be saviour of the galaxy, joining a small, plucky resistance (including roguish pilot, etc.) against a massive military power with planetbuster weaponry, etc. One might kindly think of things like "homage" or representing a certain cyclical nature of the trilogies, or kindly referencing the preceding movies, but...

... really it's that Abrams knew his one job was not to blow up Disney's expensive and potentially valuable new IP, so he just recreated the feel and pattern of ANH right down to large chunks of the characters, setting and plot, thereby surrendering the opportunity to make something far more interesting. Hence some of George Lucas's criticisms (after he found his ideas for the new episodes politely ignored): I might not trust Lucas to direct after eps 1-3, but I think he saw clearly that eps 7-9 were not about exploring new places and new ideas.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

Colin Trevorrow's script got leaked [https://www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/colin-trevorrow-script-star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-has-reportedly-leaked/]. (I think we're still waiting on confirmation of its authenticity)

If it's legitimate, it's goddamn heartbreaking. I was in the "it was okay, but felt like we lost a lot in the process." Palpatine is still in it, but as a holocron ghost that is more a minor player. Rey and the others are trying to figure out whether the Jedi should live on or die to change. Kylo Ren falls completely to the dark side and is killed in a final confrontation (presumably with Rey). No bloodline stuff, no deus ex Lando, no mildly incestuous kiss with no zero chemistry (seriously, both my partner and I cried at Leia's death, but practically screamed "Fuck you!" at the screen when that happened).

Like, I doubt we would have seen everything (there's nothing that suggest the entity Palpatine refers to is dealt with at all and they probably would want a more definitive resolution), but it sounds so much better than what we got to the point that I suspect they will something akin to Splinter of the Mind's Eye [https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Splinter_of_the_Mind%27s_Eye] (the famous non-sequel that was expected to be The Empire Strikes Back before SW became a mega hit) using that script as an alternative Episode IX for a legends book and comic run. I know I'd buy it.

I'm not screaming for Kennedy's head, but it does feel like whoever is in charge of the series needs to be more willing to defend their directorial talent, as this marks movie number 2 after Solo where serious studio interference clearly played a part in producing a lower quality product than was originally anticipated.