I loved so much of what it wanted to do, and I really disliked the way that it tried to do it.
Official Star Wars Thread
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Randalf
Ancient Mariner
Yeah, while TLJ is one of my favourite Star Wars movies and definitely the very favourite from the recent trilogy, I definitely agree that it is somewhat problematic from the trilogy narrative point of view.
Then again, I think it provided a lot of thematical substance and interesting ideas for the third film to potentially explore. In the end, Rise didn't do that, but yeah, it was enjoyable blast nonetheless. A bit too busy and messy, but it played the fanservice cards very well to make up for some of it's biggest problems.
So after sleeping on it, some more detailed thoughts on TROS.
What I liked:
-Death Star Wreck. Great setting and the fight between Rey and Kylo worked for me. It would have been a lot more impactful if it hadn't been the umpteenth time they fought, but hey.
-Han's curtain call. That scene was really poignant.
-Kijimi. The whole location felt very Star Wars-y, and even if it was ultimately of no consequence, it was quite enjoyable.
-Leia. Handling her was probably the hardest thing to do in this film, and they did a good and respectful job with it. I felt uncomfortable watching her, but I don't know if there would have been a better way to go about it.
-Palpatine. The whole set-up around Palpatine was questionable, but Palpatine himself was great.
-Rey's healing powers actually amounting to something.
-Rey on Tattooine. I wasn't sure about this when I saw it, but looking back, I think that was a pretty good ending.
What I thought was meh:
-Rey being Palpatine's granddaughter. The film gave away in the opening crawl that Palpatine's back, and right afterwards that there is more to Rey's backstory, and... you know, Vader being Luke's father worked because it wasn't set up. It came out of nowhere. When it was revealed that Rey was Palpatine's granddaughter, my reaction was just, "Okay. So that's it."
-The Hindu planet celebrating Holi. Gotta find new markets, I guess.
-The whole scene on the Star Destroyer being a retread of the Death Star in ANH. It was a great sequence in the original, and merely brand recognition bait here.
-Lando fetching the cavalry. At least they didn't save the day all by themselves.
-The Kylo-heals-Rey-routine. I rolled my eyes when Kylo reappeared. That was just clichéd. If both Kylo and Rey had died, there would have been a real sense of sacrifice.
What I thought was stupid:
-Luke. So Force Ghosts can grab objects and move stuff around with the Force now. Could think of a few moments in other films when this would have come in handy.
-CGI Luke and Leia. Unnecessary and creepy.
-Threepio's memory being wiped only to be restored. How consequential.
-So there's a Sith planet and a Sith language now and thousands of black-clad guys hanging out and not doing anything. I thought Sith picked their apprentices from a pool of potentially-powerful Jedi, but now they're a species, or how am I supposed to understand this?
-That Sith compass. There's only two of them, but somehow a major workforce with at least hundreds of thousands of employees go there to build a super fleet. Which brings me to...
-Palpatine's plan. As much as I enjoyed Palpatine, I also thought it's kind of weird that he would be able to build a huge fleet of fully manned Death Star Destroyers without anybody noticing.
-Hyperspace skipping. Another one of those things you'd think they would have employed before at some point.
-Chewie gets a medal.
What I liked:
-Death Star Wreck. Great setting and the fight between Rey and Kylo worked for me. It would have been a lot more impactful if it hadn't been the umpteenth time they fought, but hey.
-Han's curtain call. That scene was really poignant.
-Kijimi. The whole location felt very Star Wars-y, and even if it was ultimately of no consequence, it was quite enjoyable.
-Leia. Handling her was probably the hardest thing to do in this film, and they did a good and respectful job with it. I felt uncomfortable watching her, but I don't know if there would have been a better way to go about it.
-Palpatine. The whole set-up around Palpatine was questionable, but Palpatine himself was great.
-Rey's healing powers actually amounting to something.
-Rey on Tattooine. I wasn't sure about this when I saw it, but looking back, I think that was a pretty good ending.
What I thought was meh:
-Rey being Palpatine's granddaughter. The film gave away in the opening crawl that Palpatine's back, and right afterwards that there is more to Rey's backstory, and... you know, Vader being Luke's father worked because it wasn't set up. It came out of nowhere. When it was revealed that Rey was Palpatine's granddaughter, my reaction was just, "Okay. So that's it."
-The Hindu planet celebrating Holi. Gotta find new markets, I guess.
-The whole scene on the Star Destroyer being a retread of the Death Star in ANH. It was a great sequence in the original, and merely brand recognition bait here.
-Lando fetching the cavalry. At least they didn't save the day all by themselves.
-The Kylo-heals-Rey-routine. I rolled my eyes when Kylo reappeared. That was just clichéd. If both Kylo and Rey had died, there would have been a real sense of sacrifice.
What I thought was stupid:
-Luke. So Force Ghosts can grab objects and move stuff around with the Force now. Could think of a few moments in other films when this would have come in handy.
-CGI Luke and Leia. Unnecessary and creepy.
-Threepio's memory being wiped only to be restored. How consequential.
-So there's a Sith planet and a Sith language now and thousands of black-clad guys hanging out and not doing anything. I thought Sith picked their apprentices from a pool of potentially-powerful Jedi, but now they're a species, or how am I supposed to understand this?
-That Sith compass. There's only two of them, but somehow a major workforce with at least hundreds of thousands of employees go there to build a super fleet. Which brings me to...
-Palpatine's plan. As much as I enjoyed Palpatine, I also thought it's kind of weird that he would be able to build a huge fleet of fully manned Death Star Destroyers without anybody noticing.
-Hyperspace skipping. Another one of those things you'd think they would have employed before at some point.
-Chewie gets a medal.
Vantage Point
Educated Fool
I have enjoyed the new trilogy, though probably just each film in isolation. When you put them together, they don’t work quite as well. To me it seems really strange that they didn’t plan the trilogy in anyway. I’d have thought the first thing they would do, would be to come up with a starting point of where it all begins, and an end point of where they want it to finish, with some important points connecting the two together. Then they could go off and write their scripts for the individual films and have them fit to major plot points, so it all works.
As for the Mandalorian, have been watching, still got a couple of episodes to go. Have been enjoying it, though don’t think it has been quite as good as the hype surrounding it.
Have also started with series 7 of Clone Wars, and that has been good. Interested to see where the Ahsoka story goes. I did enjoy her appearances in Rebels, so be nice to fill in the gaps as to what happened to her prior to that series.
As for the Mandalorian, have been watching, still got a couple of episodes to go. Have been enjoying it, though don’t think it has been quite as good as the hype surrounding it.
Have also started with series 7 of Clone Wars, and that has been good. Interested to see where the Ahsoka story goes. I did enjoy her appearances in Rebels, so be nice to fill in the gaps as to what happened to her prior to that series.
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I can agree with all of this. I especially loved how Rey finished Palpatine - turning his own power against him is a very, very Jedi way to win.
Wogmidget
Shitpost bot
Randalf
Ancient Mariner
I agree with you about Palpatine himself being rather cool in the film, regardless how stupid, needless or whatever the concept and the way of bringing him back was!
And this Rey thing... yeah. I think it was very forced way to explain her powers and make her "important." And while TLJ didn't make things too easy for the third film, I think that it handled Rey's character very well, and while Abrams may have been very serious in TFA about the mystery of Rey's parents, I think that TLJ made the whole thing much better and more interesting:
*In TFA, Rey appears as nobody, who still has hope that her parents will return. She thinks that it'll makes things better and there's some reason behind it all. People speculate that she's Obi-Wan's daughter or something like that.
*In TLJ, it is revealed that her parents are... nobodies who sold her to slavery. Meaning that Rey is indeed just very, very force sensitive and powerful nobody. I think it's an interesting twist, that forces the character to make her own story and identity. She's Rey, and it's up to her to define who she is. In a way, Rey's parents and her grip into her childhood is killed.
*...but in Rise of the Skywalker, we learn that she actually isn't nobody after all, rather than a granddaughter of fucking Darth Sidious. Yeah, I get that the movie, in a way, deals with her sort of ignoring this fact and choosing her own destiny regardless who she's descendant of, but I think that story about Rey as nobody who eventually becomes a great Jedi through sheer force, will and determination etc. is a much more powerful idea than this tossing around whether she is a nobody or not. Meh. Then again, even TLJ strongly indicates that she has a lot of concealed power, which kind of supports that she's indeed a descenant of someone very remarkable, but combined with the way how the character was written, I just don't really like this Palpatine thing at all. In a way, her being descenant of Palpatine and later adopting the name Skywalker makes her much lesser character for me. I'm not saying it's a bad story direction per se - it just makes her much less relatable, where as her being a "nobody who rises into greatness" type hero for a new Star Wars trilogy and many new, young Star Wars fans is, at least in my opinion, much more relatable and stronger personal journey.
Rey MysteriousParents -> Rey Nobody -> Rey Palpatine who becomes Rey Skywalker just feels like cheap retconning - which it indeed is, actually. Regardless that it works ok within the context of this one movie.
Also, I think that one way to look at The Force Awakens as a title is indeed the awakening of the force in Rey - someone without a Jedi/strongly force sensitive parent(s). The fact that Finns is confirmed to be force sensitive as well kind of supports this awakening of the force itself, not just the abilities passing from one generation to another within one or two strong families. The whole Rey Palpatine thing, for me, kind of diminishes many interesing and actually good thematic aspects of this trilogy.
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My problem with this is more fundamental. In TFA, Rey's back story was introduced as a mystery. Specifically, the question was who her parents were. From that point on, you could just round up any suspects you want under the presupposition that she would be related to someone already established in the universe. The revelation was impossible to be a shock or a surprise, because someone was bound to come up with it, and therefore it loses a lot of potential impact on the viewer. In my opinion, the revelation that the main character is actually descended from the most evil man in the universe - which, mind, wouldn't be a first in Star Wars - deserves more than the level of the resolution to a Whodunnit.
It comes down to the conflict between the two directors. JJ wanted to do something to mirror the original trilogy, clearly. He wanted to make his own version of Star Wars, and revealing the protagonist as the daughter/granddaughter of a major antagonist was part of this. The first 60 minutes of TROS are clearly JJ's version of TLJ, where he rushes all the stuff he wanted to do into too short a space and basically undoes everything he didn't like in Rian Johnson's movie. In JJ's version - and remember, he handed story drafts off to Johnson and the guy who was supposed to do 9 originally - it is clear that Rey's discovery of her parentage was supposed to echo Luke's similar discovery.
Rian Johnson clearly had other ideas, and went a totally different route with it. Which, as I have stated in the past, I loved. The idea that the Force shouldn't be a monolithic thing in the hands of the select few is wonderful, and would have been fine if they played it up. Rey gained almost nothing in TROS by being Palpatine's relation. In fact, the story is even better if you consider her as an usurper, an unexpected point of rebellion. You can still quite easily do the point of "all the Jedi are within you". The Force and the philosophical teachings of the Jedi are more important than family.
But that's not what JJ did, so he had to "undo" TLJ before doing his movie.
Rian Johnson clearly had other ideas, and went a totally different route with it. Which, as I have stated in the past, I loved. The idea that the Force shouldn't be a monolithic thing in the hands of the select few is wonderful, and would have been fine if they played it up. Rey gained almost nothing in TROS by being Palpatine's relation. In fact, the story is even better if you consider her as an usurper, an unexpected point of rebellion. You can still quite easily do the point of "all the Jedi are within you". The Force and the philosophical teachings of the Jedi are more important than family.
But that's not what JJ did, so he had to "undo" TLJ before doing his movie.
I agree with the above. Having different directors on each film is a cool idea, but they probably should’ve come up with a basic outline first. It seems they were sticking with auteur theory on this trilogy more than on the original. In other words, the originals had different directors but it was less about personal voice and more about telling a coherent story.
I don't want to speculate on the motivation for changing the director between TFA and TLJ, but to be fair, Disney did go back to the original intention George Lucas had when ESB was produced. He wanted to let other directors do their version of Star Wars after he had done the original. Given the great creative difference between Abrams and Johnson, it almost seems like Disney wanted to do the same.
There are only two problems: First, Lucas did not like ESB (probably the only person in the world) so he took over for ROTJ again. He didn't direct it, but he had creative control over it. Second, ANH was not conceived as the opening of a trilogy, it was produced as a stand-alone film. Lucas may have had a greater story in mind, but ANH was self-contained. He only went public with this saga thing around the time ESB was being produced. So a different director and a different creative vision was not so much a problem. TFA set up a trilogy in virtually every scene, so if that was to be taken seriously, Johnson had to follow up on it, which he didn't do for whatever reason.
It could have been a great experiment. Disney knew Star Wars was a reliable cash cow, so this was a great opportunity for creative freedom. If TFA had been produced as a self-contained film, we might be talking differently about all this.
There are only two problems: First, Lucas did not like ESB (probably the only person in the world) so he took over for ROTJ again. He didn't direct it, but he had creative control over it. Second, ANH was not conceived as the opening of a trilogy, it was produced as a stand-alone film. Lucas may have had a greater story in mind, but ANH was self-contained. He only went public with this saga thing around the time ESB was being produced. So a different director and a different creative vision was not so much a problem. TFA set up a trilogy in virtually every scene, so if that was to be taken seriously, Johnson had to follow up on it, which he didn't do for whatever reason.
It could have been a great experiment. Disney knew Star Wars was a reliable cash cow, so this was a great opportunity for creative freedom. If TFA had been produced as a self-contained film, we might be talking differently about all this.
I think it was a combination of wanting to go back to the original intention of ESB but also trying to recapture the success of Marvel by turning Star Wars into this large all-encompassing franchise. That's why even though Rise of Skywalker is supposed to be the final film, there is still a lot left open. It's two mission statements at odds with each other.
I choose to believe any time Patrick Stewart gets delivery he responds with "Bravo!"
Midichlorians reference
I can't believe that they separated Grogu and Mando for real 
Luke's appearance was cool, but I was hoping they wouldn't have Skywalkers in this show too. Luckily, due to (average) de-aging CGI, doubt they'll have him often. I was hoping it was one of the remaining Jedi from the cartoons who everyone was talking about.
Gonna have to watch the cartoon shows in preparation for S3.
Luke's appearance was cool, but I was hoping they wouldn't have Skywalkers in this show too. Luckily, due to (average) de-aging CGI, doubt they'll have him often. I was hoping it was one of the remaining Jedi from the cartoons who everyone was talking about.
Gonna have to watch the cartoon shows in preparation for S3.
That was awesome. Luke arriving was pitch perfect and we'll see Grogu again. The Book of Boba Fett should be aces. I'm freaking out so hard right now.
Saapanael
Ancient Mariner
I’m out of touch with anything Star Wars that isn’t the film series. Can I just pick up The Mandalorian from scratch or should I know something beforehand? There’s a bunch of SW cartoons. Should I watch those? I don’t really want to. Is any of the SW stuff worth watching at all (as a person who isn’t a huge fan of TV series)?