Star Wars 9 : The Rise of Skywalker

[eldaec]

The one thing out of it that sounds entirely plausible to me is that Rise of Skywalker might have been sabotaged partially because JJ is going to WB and Disney wanted to tarnish his brand in case he was going to be doing work on DC which could be a threat to Marvel if it ever got crowd pleasing movies.

This is the stupidest thing I've read on the internet today.

[grebo]

Abrahms was trying to  a decision I support 100%

[BobtheSomething]

JJ can handle “making a monster movie”?  Did you see Super 8?  It became a cascade of failure the moment the monster entered the movie.

[HaemishM]

So, apparently, #ReleaseTheJJCut is trending because of a reddit post. I have no idea if the post is BS or not. The one thing out of it that sounds entirely plausible to me is that Rise of Skywalker might have been sabotaged partially because JJ is going to WB and Disney wanted to tarnish his brand in case he was going to be doing work on DC which could be a threat to Marvel if it ever got crowd pleasing movies.

I'm pretty sure absolutely no one of sound mind at Disney is worried in the slightest by DC movies, even the good ones.

[MahrinSkel]

Welp, I saw it. It did feel like a lot of it wound up on the cutting room floor, there were some dialog references to things that never happened on screen, and a lot of Lando's performance seemed awfully disjointed for the original cast member that got the most dialog.

It was...disappointing. 40 years, and it limped over the finish line as a blatant 'We gotta wrap this up before we lose the momentum' fizzle. There were no character arcs, we never found out what Finn didn't tell Rey when they thought they were going to die, the ancient Jedi texts were never a factor....

They didn't really tie off any loose ends except for 'Where did Rey come from', and they didn't really do that well. If I hadn't seen every other entry in the series in theaters, I probably would have skipped it.

--Dave

[Velorath]

It was...disappointing. 40 years, and it limped over the finish line

That's only if you buy into the 9 part Skywalker Saga garbage. That story crossed the finish line 36 years ago. It's really just 4 years to limp across the finish line of the first trilogy Disney has released since they bought this new IP to exploit (because it would have been a tragedy if they had only had the top 6.5 movies this year instead of the top 7.5 (Spider-man obviously being the half).

Yeah, it's a shame that this trilogy ended up being the last opportunity to have Luke, Han, and Leia together and they couldn't even manage to get them all on screen at the same time. Aside from that though, they're just bad sequels and that's a pretty common thing.

[Riggswolfe]

So, apparently, #ReleaseTheJJCut is trending because of a reddit post. I have no idea if the post is BS or not. The one thing out of it that sounds entirely plausible to me is that Rise of Skywalker might have been sabotaged partially because JJ is going to WB and Disney wanted to tarnish his brand in case he was going to be doing work on DC which could be a threat to Marvel if it ever got crowd pleasing movies.

I'm pretty sure absolutely no one of sound mind at Disney is worried in the slightest by DC movies, even the good ones.

Fair enough, it could have been sheer pettiness then. Who knows.

[Threash]

It doesn't even have to be pettiness, nothing in those notes sounded good. More scenes with Rose? why? Jannah as Lando's daughter? that would have been bitched about non stop and reinforced that whole "only one black person in all of Star Wars" trope. FOUR extra minutes of Kylo dying? do people realize how fucking long that is? Only the force ghosts might have been cool, and yes they probably got removed because of China not because Disney wanted to fuck JJ or any other retarded conspiracy. Even then, hearing Ahsoka and Kanan was my favorite part of that scene.

[jgsugden]

You can't unscrew the pooch.  This is done.  Hopefully, they'll look at the Mandalorian's response and learn a lesson.  Hopefully, the change of course this summer was in response to them looking at the early footage of the Mandalorian and realizing the error of their ways - and they're already working on a path tp a better future.

However, TFA was an homage to ANH.  TLJ and RoS were just bad echoes that didn't understand what they needed to be - and certainly made it harder to tell a good Star Wars story that takes place after the events of these films. 

At least we did not have to endure Lucas' plan of delving deeper into the titti-chlorines.

[eldaec]

The correct plan from here isn't even hard. Make more things like R1. Stop fucking around adding entire new story till you have confidence in yourselves.

I won't get it, but I want a solo 2. I actually want to see Emilia Clarke fucking over Alden Ehrenreich in a film that also has unnecessary amounts of Donald Glover. Everything right about Solo is easy to carry into a sequel and everything bad is easy to drop. And the first movie left us set for a sequel far better than TFA of TLJ did.

[Velorath]

The correct plan from here isn't even hard. Make more things like R1.

So more movies filling in details about shit we already know about taking place around the time of the OT, featuring bland characters and a plot that meanders from place to place, but cool battle at the end and OMG guys look at Vader fuck shit up!?!

[Draegan]

Star Wars is easy, hire someone like you did with Marvel to run the show who knows what they are doing.

[eldaec]

The correct plan from here isn't even hard. Make more things like R1.

So more movies filling in details about shit we already know about taking place around the time of the OT, featuring bland characters and a plot that meanders from place to place, but cool battle at the end and OMG guys look at Vader fuck shit up!?!

I don't give a crap if it 'fills in details' but setting it in the existing GCW gives you well liked setting for free and no pressure to actually change the galaxy, just tell the story of these 4 to 6 dudes. Nobody seems to think WW2 films are 'unnecessary' just because we know how it ends.

Also,  the approach you describe works fine for the MCU so Star wars could definitely use more of that.

Star Wars is easy, hire someone like you did with Marvel to run the show who knows what they are doing.

It does seem odd that Filoni still doesn't have some role as an overall creative producer.

[Samprimary]

Samprimary, that was awesome.  Do the Mandalorian next.

hey all and welcome to Star Wars: Lets Get Back To Kurosawa, Episode One

starring Space Witcher, Merchandisable Muppet, Budget Lando, Murder Roomba, and Full Price Werner Herzog

highlights include

- a new mostly untested realm of the star wars timeline, this time to be explored by a live action series not painfully obviously for the 8 to 14 year old boy demographic
- why did you watch those other ones anyway. they were so obviously painfully for children. why do you do this to yourself
- its star wars so you reluctantly start watching it thinking 'maybe it will be okay this time' and you caress the scar on your face and have a flashback to the prequel movies, but banish as much doubt as you can
- you kind a wanna geek out about this shit, you just wanna try so you convince your spouse to watch it with you
- she is like ugh fine
- main character 'mando lorean' is here to be a badass bounty hunter just trying to make his way in a work-a-day world and usually he's pretty good but he is definitely not invincible and often bites off too much to handle, especially considering that this is half wild west half feudal japan and opportunities abound to get your shit thrashed
- he arrives on Hoth 3 to score a bounty and murders a dude with a door cause they fucked with him
- we meet the first of the wacky insufferable crewmembers that every other similar tv series teaches us mando is destined to be paired with for the rest of the show's run, a blue fish man with valuable musk glands and the powers of nervous questioning
- psych bro he gets binned in some carbonite and we literally never see or hear from him again. mando does this shit solo bro
- work sucks so budget lando sends him off to meet werner herzog who is actually played by werner herzog. lol like holy shit
- "welcome to my, werner herzog lair" werner herzog says in his very werner herzog voice that you are now reading this in. "i thank you — i thank you for finding your way here, in what i am assured you, as well, know, that there is a certain underscoring spite to the universe, an essence of grim and destined decadent struggle of the lives we lead. as Sisyphus before you, you have come to me, yes, and i know not if the mechanism is through a matter of material desperation, or .. or, or, of a personal anomie and disenchantment, yes ... a fetid longing for that which challenges you ... you seek to enlist of your own free will upon this dance, yes, you are a puppet of fate. do the stakes amuse you as they do i? i, i offer you the pillaged bones of your own dead world, that you might anoint yourself in their chitinous embrace and submit yourself to ready and additional slaughter ... i admire your conceit, the masks you hold, as do we all .. yours a more literal one, in a sense, you subsume yourself in martial errandry as a personality. we are much alike, you and i,"
- "okay i'll do it" says mando just to move the plot along and keep this from turning into My Dinner with Werndré
- we would have watched that though lets be real
- he travels to Tatooine 4 and immediately gets his shit wrecked by land piranha
- Catchphrase Pig teaches him he must have a land piranha to cross the terrain, as fantastic space technology has not yet mastered 'hopping over tiny gaps'
- he arrives at Werner's Funhouse Depot of Horrors to find that Murder Roomba is not programmed for the stealth playthrough
- fuck. ok, kill everyone then
- Murder Roomba announces he will blow up. it is hilarious
- everyone's dead
- SURPRISE the target is actually a fuckin baby yoda puppet thing which is approximately three times as cute as internet videos of clumsy kittens bopping their head into you looking for pats
- your spouse suddenly has eyes the size of fucking dinner plates and is almost for real cryin and from this day until the series ends she will be the one making sure you're watching the series the fuckin minute every new episode of Cute Baby Yoda drops
- your fuckin facebook feed explodes. it's This Is The Way, I Have Spoken, etc and cute baby yoda memes from now until the end of all creation bud
- holy shit star wars got iconic again lol ok
- mando lorean says "i just met this fuckin thing but if anything happened to it i would kill everyone in the world and then myself"
- they sail off to another episode

[TheWalrus]

Awesome. Can't wait for the Jawa episode where we find out his ship is composed of panels that just click into place. Space Jalopy.

[Riggswolfe]

It doesn't even have to be pettiness, nothing in those notes sounded good. More scenes with Rose? why? Jannah as Lando's daughter? that would have been bitched about non stop and reinforced that whole "only one black person in all of Star Wars" trope. FOUR extra minutes of Kylo dying? do people realize how fucking long that is? Only the force ghosts might have been cool, and yes they probably got removed because of China not because Disney wanted to fuck JJ or any other retarded conspiracy. Even then, hearing Ahsoka and Kanan was my favorite part of that scene.

I think more scenes with Rose would have been nice. Reducing her role looks like caving to the Incel crowd. I say this as someone who was more or less meh on Rose because the entire arc she was in was the most painful shit in TLJ. It wasn't her fault in any way but it just didn't give her any chance to shine.

The correct plan from here isn't even hard. Make more things like R1. Stop fucking around adding entire new story till you have confidence in yourselves.

I won't get it, but I want a solo 2. I actually want to see Emilia Clarke fucking over Alden Ehrenreich in a film that also has unnecessary amounts of Donald Glover. Everything right about Solo is easy to carry into a sequel and everything bad is easy to drop. And the first movie left us set for a sequel far better than TFA of TLJ did.

Solo is the only Star Wars movie I didn't see in the theater. The crushing disappointment of TLJ was still too fresh and I was just "meh" especially when I heard about production problems. Which is a shame because I liked it more than Rogue One even with a couple of moments that made me eyeroll. I think they did it no favors by releasing it in May so close to TLJ. If they'd held it back to December people would have had a year to cleanse their palates and it might not have flopped as it did.

Star Wars is easy, hire someone like you did with Marvel to run the show who knows what they are doing.

It does seem odd that Filoni still doesn't have some role as an overall creative producer.

I would bet the reasons boil down to Kathleen Kennedy not wanting to give someone that much control. I may be wrong but I'd be shocked if she wasn't super nervous about her job and is afraid if she gives someone else that much control they'll run away with it and she'll be shown the door.

[HaemishM]

Budget Lando.

BRA-VO.

[Velorath]

The correct plan from here isn't even hard. Make more things like R1.

So more movies filling in details about shit we already know about taking place around the time of the OT, featuring bland characters and a plot that meanders from place to place, but cool battle at the end and OMG guys look at Vader fuck shit up!?!

I don't give a crap if it 'fills in details' but setting it in the existing GCW gives you well liked setting for free and no pressure to actually change the galaxy, just tell the story of these 4 to 6 dudes. Nobody seems to think WW2 films are 'unnecessary' just because we know how it ends.

Also,  the approach you describe works fine for the MCU so Star wars could definitely use more of that.

The MCU generally has memorable/likable characters and the movies tend to move the story overall story forward. So no, that's not really the same formula as telling us the story of the half dozen brave, but cardboard characters who died succumbing to the elements to build the rebel base on Hoth or whatever.

[Khaldun]

The prequels were only bad because Lucas was bad at handling them. The basics had a lot of potential: how Anakin came to hate Obi-Wan, how the Emperor rose to power, how the Jedi fell and were forgotten so quickly, how Luke and Leia were hidden, how the Rebellion started, etc.

The sequels, in contrast, ALWAYS would have required a thoughtful plan to be successful--someone who could sit down and say, "Well, what happens after the good guys win?"  The people writing the EU struggled with this too. In this case, the plan would have to include, "Well, what is happening three or four decades after the good guys won?" considering the ages of the original actors--you didn't have the option of doing a sequel with middle-aged versions of the original trilogy's main characters.

There are other successful films/franchises that have struggled with the same problem, and made the same bad choice: do the original over again! It's an especially bad choice if you don't acknowledge what that implies--that the good guys can never win, that they just are stuck in the same story over and over again. If the good guys stay plucky and upbeat despite that, they start to seem stupid and shallow. If they recognize that they're stuck in the same cycle, they have to be depressed and morose, which complicates them as good guys. Unless you make them the children or successors of the OG good guys, in which case they're young and naive and don't realize they're stuck doing a bad re-enactment of their parents' lives. But the viewers do.

So you need a plan. And there's really only a few alternatives of narrative infrastructures to choose from:

a) the next war is against a completely different kind of adversary, for completely different stakes, with completely different tactics and themes: it's against underground organizations or criminal syndicates or corruption within the good guys or warlords in remote regions; it's against a new kind of galactic evil; etc.
b) the struggle to build something better than the Empire OR the Republic is difficult and perilous and requires hair-raising adventures but also tough dramatic choices; same for the Jedi Order
c) everything you know is wrong: a secret is revealed that changes the story as we know it and creates a completely new dynamic that sets allies against each other (at least for a movie or two)

A) seems best--B) is complicated and doesn't really fit the pulp/serial origins of Star Wars. C) takes having a really great idea about that secret.

But they didn't do it--they didn't even seem to *recognize* that they needed to think about it until they got into The Last Jedi. And I'm gonna stick to my guns forever here: at least Johnson understood what Abrams and the Disney execs didn't, which is that you had to change up the focus and driving ideas to make this an actual sequel rather than a dumb re-enactment. The Rey/Kylo-Ben stuff that everybody kind of liked in Rise of Skywalker is entirely due to how he worked that relationship in TLJ--Abrams didn't do much of anything except say "she's the good one, he's the baddie".

[HaemishM]

Honestly, I'd have absolutely loved to see some stories set in the immediate aftermath of the original trilogy, with the overarching theme being "how do we rebuild something better than the Empire but without the structural problems that led to the fall of the Republic." If the Mandalorian wants to spin off a story following Gina Carano's character mopping up the remnants of the Empire, I am so there. Star Wars as a universe in which to set different types of stories isn't really worse than the Marvel Universe as a backdrop, but it does require some thought other than "we paid $4 billion for this property, give me a movie every 6-12 months."

[Khaldun]

Seriously, imagine if in season 3 or 4 of The Mandalorian, the narrative frame shifts from "Man With No Name" to "The Dirty Dozen" or "Where Eagles Dare"--the New Republic hires a squad of mercenaries, ex-Rebel soldiers, etc. to track down and take out the most dangerous surviving Imperial officers, governors and assets, but not everyone in the new government agrees so there's the danger of running into opposing NR forces/authorities.

That would have been a great premise for a sequel series set 10 years out with middle-aged Hamill, Ford, etc,--Luke, Lando and Han agree to join the Hunt Squad, Leia bitterly opposes it and for at least one movie goes splitsville from Han over it. That's how you tell a new story--maybe over time they come back together because they come upon a threat that's bigger than just Imperial remnants--an underground syndicate of Dathomir witches, Hutt crimelords, a Mara Jade-like figure, etc., who are determined to keep both the New Republic and the Empire fragmented and divided--and Leia ends up reluctantly agreeing that you have to fight fire with fire. Great structure for adding new characters, for changing up relationships, for shifting the story, for creating new mysteries, etc.  They could even have done it with legacy characters as a much later thing (e.g., now)

[Draegan]

It's a good fiction a lot of legacy books wrote about. To make it a movie arch you'll need a central premise to build towards like end game.

Maybe that's civil war or a revelution.

They fucked it up so who cares anymore. Because the prequels and sequels are so shitty and fucked up you can never tell a story in that time period.

New major star wars stories.. like the next set of big movies will have to reset it in another 1000 years before or after

[Velorath]

So you need a plan. And there's really only a few alternatives of narrative infrastructures to choose from:

a) the next war is against a completely different kind of adversary, for completely different stakes, with completely different tactics and themes: it's against underground organizations or criminal syndicates or corruption within the good guys or warlords in remote regions; it's against a new kind of galactic evil; etc.
b) the struggle to build something better than the Empire OR the Republic is difficult and perilous and requires hair-raising adventures but also tough dramatic choices; same for the Jedi Order
c) everything you know is wrong: a secret is revealed that changes the story as we know it and creates a completely new dynamic that sets allies against each other (at least for a movie or two)

A) seems best--B) is complicated and doesn't really fit the pulp/serial origins of Star Wars. C) takes having a really great idea about that secret.

For the purposes of a sequel trilogy where you're trying to end up with a 9 part story arc, I think some form of option b is the only thing that makes thematic sense. As presented in the movies (in other words, completely disregarding whatever comics, books, shows, etc..., are considered canon) the overall story is that one man using the Dark Side of the Force, gains political power, eliminates the Jedi, and plunges the galaxy into war. After a long detour into evil, the kid who was prophesied to bring balance to the Force eventually accomplishes that goal with some redemptive help from his son.

Things are left with that son now the last known active Force user. Trade negotiations, clone wars, and galactic civil wars aside, the heart of this whole horrible era of history lies in how man can abuse the Force and the nebulous ways in which the Force balances itself. The Sith teachings of course are bad, but at the same time the Jedi order was largely ineffective. Lucas thought about exploring the concept of the Force by introducing microscopic creatures who controlled it or something to that effect. That of course is stupid and continuing down the road of midichlorian shit. There is something though to exploring why this energy field that binds everything is only able to be manipulated by a select few and why the masses are at its mercy.

There's a number of ways you can go with the basic setup of how Luke handles being the only known living person who was actively trained in the use of this dangerous natural phenomena that seemingly empowers people either through bloodline or just at random. In some respects it's akin to mutants in the MU. People are born with access to power others don't have. In this case it nearly led the galaxy to ruin once already. Does Luke try to train new Force sensitive people in the ways of the Jedi? Does he come up with a new set of teachings? Does he figure out some way to cut off their access to the Force or find some way to block the Force from being directly accessed by anybody? Do other Jedi/Sith/self-taught Force users come out of hiding now that Vader isn't actively hunting people down? It's not even a story that needs to be told from Luke's point of view as these are all questions you can answer by showing the ramifications a couple generations down the road.

I mean, I'm not going to try to say what they should have done because a) I'm not a writer working for Disney on Star Wars, b) it's too late now, and c) considering Episodes 1-3 were total garbage I'm certainly not losing sleep over Episodes 7-9 being bad. They could have done something that felt like it flowed naturally from the story told in the first 6 movies though instead of something that just felt like a typical Hollywood soft reboot.

[jgsugden]

Answers to some of the dumb questions about the miracle fleet.

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/rise-of-skywalker-visual-dictionary-palpatine-fleet

[HaemishM]

Well, that was dumb and I am the poorer for having read it.

[Ruvaldt]

Not going to waste my time.  This movie was garbage.

[IainC]

Answers to some of the dumb questions about the miracle fleet.

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/rise-of-skywalker-visual-dictionary-palpatine-fleet

That was somehow even stupider than the actual film.

[Riggswolfe]

They should've just used the Star Forge from Knights of the Old Republic and called it a day. 30 years isn't enough time to build that massive fleet in secret in the way that article suggests. Not in my opinion at least.

[SurfD]

They should've just used the Star Forge from Knights of the Old Republic and called it a day. 30 years isn't enough time to build that massive fleet in secret in the way that article suggests. Not in my opinion at least.

Yep.  That explanation is just pants on head stupid, and hand waves away a metric fuckload of things that simply would not work, no matter how many decades you had.

Star destroyers are fucking MASSIVE.  I don't care how advanced your manufacturing capabilities are, you are not going to be cranking these things out in secret in the hundreds in a handful of decades.
Star destroyers are fucking MASSIVE.  I also don't care how advanced your automation capabilities are, you are not crewing hundreds of these things with the children of a cult, unless your "ultra secret sith cult" has an adult population the size of a fucking metropolis......in which case your chances of remaining secret usually fly out the window.
I don't care how "well placed" your moles are in galactic industry, SOMEBODY from accounting is going to notice hundreds of TRILLIONS of credits worth of starship parts disappearing and there is no way you are going to hide that shit for long.

[HaemishM]

It would have made more sense if they'd said that Exegol was a droid planet powered by Energon cubes so they wouldn't have to worry about piloting the destroyers. Worked so well for the trade federation. 

[eldaec]

'There are some more planets behind the one that sounds like a sneeze' is what I would have said. And it isn't technically incompatible with what we see on screen.

It wasn't the actual destroyers I found hard to accept, but the lack of a functioning society to support the implied millions of crew.

[Cyrrex]

Honestly, all of that could have been handled and explained if the dude would have just allowed some of this shit to breath.  They happily borrow concepts from the old EU stuff, the idea of their being a so-called 'Unknown Region'....which is simply a part of the galaxy far away from the core where the distances simply become too vast to cross and are therefore uncharted (this is where Thrawn comes from in the EU, I don't know what Rebels said about any of that).  Any old school nerd can tell you that there are thousands of planets and vast populations out there.  A couple fucking sentences here and there would have been all we needed.

Anyway, I think there are bigger problems to address than how such a fleet came to exist in the first place or how they manned it.  I am consistently more bothered by the way they shit all over how time and distance work and all the convenient coincidences for how those two things always manage to line up anyway.  For example. 

And also, Dear Space Ship Captains:  spread out that formation a bit, if you would be so kind.

[Brolan]

They can’t spread the formation while JJ is trying to get the record for most ships in one shot.

[Khaldun]

they should have just uploaded a Macintosh virus, it's about as credible and sensible

[Samprimary]

they should have just uploaded a Macintosh virus, it's about as credible and sensible

Welcum to hawf