Star Wars 9 : The Rise of Skywalker

[NowhereMan]

Big battle, everyone dies. C.S. Lewis that shit.

[Sir T]

Naa. if you want him to actually finish the book have it an exquisitely described feast lasting 600 pages then they all drop dead by poisoning.

[Khaldun]

D&D have shown pretty thoroughly that they've got a reasonably good eye for doing a second draft on someone else's story. And equally that they're pretty bad when they're working without that net.

[eldaec]

D&D were certainly good at adapting GRRM’s work in seasons 1-6.  It’s when they had to bridge the gap and jump to the end that things went straight to hell.

You spelt '1-4' incorrectly.

Thing is, star wars needs to address its story issues, not its production values.

D&D were not a great fit for that.

[Brolan]

Now is coming out that while the Netflix deal was not technically against the Lucasfilm agreement Kennedy was pissed about it.  She wanted them concentrated on Star Wars.  Not some Netflix stuff in addition to her projects. So she did a soft firing.

[Draegan]

Star Wars needs someone who knows how to craft a consistent story arc over whatever number of movies like the Marvel properties. I doubt Fiege can do both properties. What they've been doing is dumb. It's just filling in holes to a dated story.

They need to just kill everyone and start fresh in another made up period.

[Riggswolfe]

My biggest problem with their "A Star Wars story" brand was that the two movies we got were just filling in back stories to the main movies. I wanted to see unique stuff. I think the Mandalorian series will be a good step in that direction. I hope it is super successful so they finally go "Oh, maybe people want to see something else besides Yoda's childhood" or whatever stuff they've thought of.

[Khaldun]

I'm with Kennedy both because she really does need people who are the forward-looking custodians of this IP and because those guys are wankers.

They really need to sit down and decide on one hand: what are the basic principles for storytelling in this world? and on the other hand: what's fun? what's good?

It's a tough setting, actually. It has some really great baselines. It's not a shiny human-Earth future--it's a grimy world, stuff looks used. It's huge, it has tons of different sapients. It has the Force. It has scale, it has gigantism. It's got some pulp-fiction innocence to it, but it's also got dark stuff of an epic kind.

It's got some messy as fuck stuff that no one working in this universe has thought out. Is it intentional that the soldiers and officers of the Empire are "human"? If so, what does that mean? Is the Force really whatever whatever? (all the whatevers it's been said to be, including: is it inherited?) Can you really just jet around all over everywhere in ten seconds or is that just JJ Abrams being his usual storytelling dumbass self? What makes the "Outer Rim" what it is? Why couldn't the Empire extend control etc.? Why in a galaxy where you seemingly can go anywhere in ten seconds is anywhere remote, forgotten, obscure, forbidden, etc.? Why didn't the Empire just sent three Star Destroyers to every system in the galaxy if they can hyperdrive there in seconds with no real fuel issues? You name it, the world-building is somewhere between "The Expanse" level thoroughness and JK Rowling "magic is magic, whatevs, fuck off".

[Draegan]

You can't have anymore movies with the empire or it's leftovers anymore. Leave that to comics, books and cartoons.

[eldaec]

Of course you can. Nobody stopped making films with the Third Reich in them just because the ending has been filmed.

[Cyrrex]

I'm with Kennedy both because she really does need people who are the forward-looking custodians of this IP and because those guys are wankers.

She might be right about that in this particular case, but in the larger sense of things she is wholly responsible for the current state of SW, and has been so for a long, long time.  She has basically been at the helm of everything other than the OS and the prequels since....maybe all the way back to the first EU books?  Not sure exactly, but she has had veto power over everything.

Which is only to say that even though this might be the right call, it would be fair to say KK is herself a huge part of the problem.

[Khaldun]

Right, which is why she needs someone to really take the reins.

[Riggswolfe]

Is it intentional that the soldiers and officers of the Empire are "human"?

According to the old West End games d6 RPG source books it was. The Empire was very, very human first. The implication was that aliens were at best second class citizens and were often slaves. I think it's not an accident that a lot of the separatists in the prequels were alien races. Especially if Palpatine is our Hitler analogue here and he was playing on human racism among other darker impulses.

Can you really just jet around all over everywhere in ten seconds or is that just JJ Abrams being his usual storytelling dumbass self?

Prior to JJ, I've seen estimates for something like 25,000 light years in a day for a Star Wars ship which means the trip from Alderaan to Tatooine took around 2 days or so if memory serves. I think JJ just has no sense of scale or just doesn't care about it. I enjoyed the hell out of the Force Awakens but the travel times "we pulled the lever, push it back, we're there now!" and that dumb ass scene where people looked up in the sky and saw Starkiller base blow up a whole different solar system made me sigh. Of course, he pulled the same shit in 2009 Star Trek with Spock literally watching Vulcan die from a whole other planet.

So uh...yeah. JJ in the sequel trilogy.

What makes the "Outer Rim" what it is? Why couldn't the Empire extend control etc.? Why in a galaxy where you seemingly can go anywhere in ten seconds is anywhere remote, forgotten, obscure, forbidden, etc.? Why didn't the Empire just sent three Star Destroyers to every system in the galaxy if they can hyperdrive there in seconds with no real fuel issues? You name it, the world-building is somewhere between "The Expanse" level thoroughness and JK Rowling "magic is magic, whatevs, fuck off".

Prior to JJ crossing the galaxy took a week or two. And you had to have safe routes. The unknown regions were unknown because they hadn't been scouted so trying to hyperspace into them was super risky.

Which is only to say that even though this might be the right call, it would be fair to say KK is herself a huge part of the problem.

I agree which annoys the hell out of me because so much of the toxic fanbase, especially the Incel part of it, rages about her constantly. It just annoys me they're semi-right though it's not related to her having a vagina.

[HaemishM]

The incel base is never right. Kathleen Kennedy sucks as a producer and brand shepherd for the series, but not for the reasons any of the incel twats claim.

[eldaec]

The Force Awakens is the only star wars source with instant travel. It is just JJA being bad.

Kennedy isn't so much part of the problem as she is not a solution to the problem. It does seem they need a creative lead, which I don't think she is trying to be.

[Chimpy]

[Brolan]

That link doesn’t spoil the ending, does it?  Since that is out now.

[Rendakor]

It's a Revenge of the Nerds gif; it's safe.

[Khaldun]

These days they'd remake that as "Revenge of the Normie Bros" or something, since the nerds are kind of getting their way a lot.

[Cyrrex]

Will be going to one of the first regular showings today, so I will be able to come back here soon and report whether or not Baby Yoda is Rey's mother.

[Khaldun]

Congratulations, people who wanted to know about Snoke and the Knights of Ren and this and that backstory and have everything explained, because from what I'm hearing, that's what this movie is: an endless series of disconnected scenes trying to satisfy every fan gripe from The Last Jedi. Hope you enjoy your Powerpoint presentation.

[Trippy]

Yeah just the titles of some of the reviews I’ve glanced at have been brutal.

[Jeff Kelly]

The narrative will be „well RoS sucked but it’s because JJ Abrams had to fix everything that Rian Johnson fucked up and that didn’t work out“. and not because it’s a design by committee appeasement to every gripe of a small but vocal raging mad fanbase.

[Trippy]

Yeah but if it wasn't for Rian there wouldn't have been an avalanche of hatred towards the franchise that had to be fixed

[TheWalrus]

I'm shocked that people who have vocally reiterated time and again how Star Wars doesn't appeal to them anymore still don't like Star Wars. My gast remains flabbered.

[Jeff Kelly]

Just like with Mass Effect 3, this will haunt us for a long time as raging neck beards everywhere will feel emboldened by this and demand every piece of entertainment to be tailored to their preferences.

[Threash]

It's going to make over a billion easy. Probably closer to 1.5.

[Trippy]

That'll be a crushing disappointment if it does. The Last Jedi grossed 1.3 billion. The Force Awakens grossed 2 billion.

[Velorath]

The narrative will be „well RoS sucked but it’s because JJ Abrams had to fix everything that Rian Johnson fucked up and that didn’t work out“. and not because it’s a design by committee appeasement to every gripe of a small but vocal raging mad fanbase.

RoS sucks because among other things it’s just one more trip back to the well of Palpatine and planet destroying weapons. It feels like a movie that was made solely out of obligation due to the first two movies already being out there.

[Samwise]

Did they at least cram a dumb time travel plot into it, or is it just more boring clone shit?

[Jeff Kelly]

Did they at least cram a dumb time travel plot into it, or is it just more boring clone shit?

It’s basically vignettes explaining every dumb lore question those people have just so that they get their canon explanations for their weird fan theories. Also lots of backpedaling and dunking on TLJ and Rian Johnson. Just not a coherent or original movie.

[Lucas]

Among others, my biggest gripe is (will talk more extensively about this whole trilogy in another post. BIG SPOILERS AHEAD) :


For something like that to happen, the trilogy should have left some sort of "breadcrumbs" from the beginning, so I understand that I probably was expecting something impossible.

[Lucas]

By the way, after you are done watching Episode IX, go read the topic about Episode VII, especially page 2-3 (that's where I stopped for now). I'm laughing my ass off   

[Comstar]

Saw it at midnight.

It's a bad, bad movie. Differently bad from the prequels and others sequels.  Worse, from another point of view.

Kathleen Kennedy's head will be gone, but with a prearranged golden parachute. MAYBE Eisner as well, but he's probably safe.

JJ fucked it up.

The actors are fine, it's not their fault. I don't think Lucas had anything to do with it, and I suspect he's as unhappy as most of the rest of who see it will be. There's going to be multiple hour critic explanations for why the movie is bad, which are going to be much more entertaining, so we have that to look forward to.

[Velorath]

Congratulations, people who wanted to know about Snoke and the Knights of Ren and this and that backstory and have everything explained, because from what I'm hearing, that's what this movie is: an endless series of disconnected scenes trying to satisfy every fan gripe from The Last Jedi. Hope you enjoy your Powerpoint presentation.

Eh, stuff like Snoke and the Knights of Ren take up maybe two minutes of the movie (and in the Knights of Ren’s case they aren’t explained, they’re just there and occasionally do stuff).

The puppet master, “architect of all your pain” stuff is just bad. It’s like they took Christoph Waltz’s stuff from Spectre and made it worse.