The Rise of Skywalker spoilers thread

-Akronite- said:

But he didn't murder a child...?

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He planned to though... It was extremely out of character, to @BMAN 's point.. Luke went out of his way to save Anakin Skywalker and turn him back, but his own nephew, in his charge, without speaking to Leia or Han, he contemplated murdering... murdering him in his sleep, without confrontation.

And what's more, he loses to this child, his padawan; how?? And his decision allows Kylo to get up from the rubble and slaughter the remaining students not willing to turn... And, for whatever reason, the other students at the school who went with Kylo decided to leave their lightsabers behind when joining the Knights of Ren (who, we never see again).

This entire plot point is just poor writing.. and I get why Hamill criticizes all of the parts of Luke's story, because they don't really fit with the character whatsoever.

-Akronite- said:

I'm in the minority in really enjoying the casino stuff. In terms of concept it was somewhat prequelly because it was something different, but thematically it made way more sense to me than most of the stuff you'd see in the prequels.

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One of the reasons the casino scenes are problematic; other than poor pacing, bad writing, bad acting, and really odd direction, was because Finn trusted this dude he met in a jail cell with the Rebellion's plans and is then ultimately betrayed out of nowhere... It was pretty obvious how this was going to go down, and there's no reason for it to have happened -- by the third act, the entire reason for watching the movie was invalidated.

Think about it.

Going to the casino made no positive difference to the story whatsoever ... Had Poe trusted in Leia, Finn never would have left. Hell, had Poe trusted in Finn, who said they needed to talk to their commanders, they never would have left; but instead of talking this over, Poe felt he was best capable of making these decisions without telling anyone else and actually keeping his mission secret. ... That actually ended up costing the Rebels massively. So he's not a hero here; and Finn is somewhat of an idiot for going along with him. "Who is more the fool, the fool or the fool who follows him?"

So by the end, we see every character fail at what they set out to do, from Luke, to Leia, Rey, Kylo, Poe, Finn ... it's a story where every character finds a way to fail; because the movie is about "failure."

But that does not make for an entertaining film -- let alone a Star Wars film.

It's as though Johnson really did not understand the project he was tasked to work on, and Kennedy was just unable or unwilling to prevent this really odd movie from being made.

-Akronite- said:

Also, Phantom Menace might be my favorite prequel. It's a dumb movie, but holds the most nostalgia points for me, and the duel/death of Qui-Gon is pretty good. But in terms of action sequences they all have some fun stuff.

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That is a unique take, I will say that..

I do recall seeing it in theaters and I liked it at the time... Wasn't blown away, more like "hmm.." But there were some fun scenes..

Kind of crazy that the only truly good Star Wars movie we've gotten since Return of the Jedi was a fucking spin-off that featured about five minutes combined of Skywalkers.

It's also becoming increasingly clear that the secret to making a good Star Wars movie is to take the ideas of George Lucas, but give him no power over the final script or the directing of the films. Because, while George Lucas does have a lot of great ideas, the prequels proved that, for every one of them, he has about four hundred godawful ones.

Jack Brickman said:

It's also becoming increasingly clear that the secret to making a good Star Wars movie is to take the ideas of George Lucas, but give him no power over the final script or the directing of the films. Because, while George Lucas does have a lot of great ideas, the prequels proved that, for every one of them, he has about four hundred godawful ones.

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Yep. Excluding George Lucas completely from these trilogies was a huge mistake.

RG said:

Yep. Excluding George Lucas completely from these trilogies was a huge mistake.

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Yeah, but as we saw with the prequels, giving him total power resulted in arguably even worse results.

Gotta find a middle ground. Problem is, I'm not sure he was really all that willing to play ball without total control.

gourimoko said:

He planned to though... It was extremely out of character, to @BMAN 's point.. Luke went out of his way to save Anakin Skywalker and turn him back, but his own nephew, in his charge, without speaking to Leia or Han, he contemplated murdering... murdering him in his sleep, without confrontation.

And what's more, he loses to this child, his padawan; how?? And his decision allows Kylo to get up from the rubble and slaughter the remaining students not willing to turn... And, for whatever reason, the other students at the school who went with Kylo decided to leave their lightsabers behind when joining the Knights of Ren (who, we never see again).

This entire plot point is just poor writing.. and I get why Hamill criticizes all of the parts of Luke's story, because they don't really fit with the character whatsoever.

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I don't agree. As made clear in the movie, it was a low point for Luke and he was ashamed of the mere contemplation, which he did not carry out. The whole debacle sets in motion his arc in this film. By the way, Hamill is actually very positive about the movie.

For the record, I hated that TFA set Luke as a hermit hiding on an island as a failure. But I thought TLJ did a good job of telling the Luke story as it was handed to them.

Ideally, I would've preferred to see them get rid of the empire/rebellion dynamic, or rather flip it, by establishing a new Republic and Jedi Order. Then you could have a civil war or growing terrorist conflict led by Vader-fetishists or something (I'm sure you can cite 18 different EU stories that follow some sort of story like this, but I don't care about EU personally). Perhaps the conflict in the new movies sets the new Republic on a different path by learning the lessons of the old Republic the hard way and overcoming them. That's sorta what TLJ is doing with Rey, but so much other stuff feels like a mess because of the strange big picture decisions.

Anyway, we agree that JJ made some mistakes, but you always seemed more interested in some of the mystery stuff that I was completely bored by.

One of the reasons the casino scenes are problematic; other than poor pacing, bad writing, bad acting, and really odd direction,

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Don't really agree with any of these points, but go on...

was because Finn trusted this dude he met in a jail cell with the Rebellion's plans and is then ultimately betrayed out of nowhere... It was pretty obvious how this was going to go down, and there's no reason for it to have happened -- by the third act, the entire reason for watching the movie was invalidated.

Think about it.

Going to the casino made no positive difference to the story whatsoever ... Had Poe trusted in Leia, Finn never would have left. Hell, had Poe trusted in Finn, who said they needed to talk to their commanders, they never would have left; but instead of talking this over, Poe felt he was best capable of making these decisions without telling anyone else and actually keeping his mission secret. ... That actually ended up costing the Rebels massively. So he's not a hero here; and Finn is somewhat of an idiot for going along with him. "Who is more the fool, the fool or the fool who follows him?"

So by the end, we see every character fail at what they set out to do, from Luke, to Leia, Rey, Kylo, Poe, Finn ... it's a story where every character finds a way to fail; because the movie is about "failure."

But that does not make for an entertaining film -- let alone a Star Wars film.

It's as though Johnson really did not understand the project he was tasked to work on, and Kennedy was just unable or unwilling to prevent this really odd movie from being made.

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Don't agree at all with the bolded. I think it's what set the film apart and made it highly entertaining to me.

It was different. I liked that. I was surprised as I watched the movie. They had twists that I wasn't expecting. That's a rare thing in a Star Wars film or any major production like this. It left some people scratching their heads and gave others a bad taste in their mouth, which I can understand, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

That is a unique take, I will say that..

I do recall seeing it in theaters and I liked it at the time... Wasn't blown away, more like "hmm.." But there were some fun scenes..

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I was just thinking about it the other day. They are all crap in their own ways (2 and 3 in fairly similar ways), but TPM is the one that probably entertains me the most, in large part because I was the youngest when it came out. Story-wise it's a failure for Star Wars, but pod-racing and that three-man duel are fun.

I have 3 head canons. Either:

1) Only the OT exists.
2) The new movies exist but disregard the prequels.
3) Prequels exist and nothing matters.

I will continue to view any OT movie with canon 1 in mind.

Anyway, I should probably stop getting so contentious with people about a sensitive subject and head back to the gun control thread.

gourimoko said:

He planned to though... It was extremely out of character, to @BMAN 's point.. Luke went out of his way to save Anakin Skywalker and turn him back, but his own nephew, in his charge, without speaking to Leia or Han, he contemplated murdering... murdering him in his sleep, without confrontation.

And what's more, he loses to this child, his padawan; how?? And his decision allows Kylo to get up from the rubble and slaughter the remaining students not willing to turn... And, for whatever reason, the other students at the school who went with Kylo decided to leave their lightsabers behind when joining the Knights of Ren (who, we never see again).

This entire plot point is just poor writing.. and I get why Hamill criticizes all of the parts of Luke's story, because they don't really fit with the character whatsoever.



One of the reasons the casino scenes are problematic; other than poor pacing, bad writing, bad acting, and really odd direction, was because Finn trusted this dude he met in a jail cell with the Rebellion's plans and is then ultimately betrayed out of nowhere... It was pretty obvious how this was going to go down, and there's no reason for it to have happened -- by the third act, the entire reason for watching the movie was invalidated.

Think about it.

Going to the casino made no positive difference to the story whatsoever ... Had Poe trusted in Leia, Finn never would have left. Hell, had Poe trusted in Finn, who said they needed to talk to their commanders, they never would have left; but instead of talking this over, Poe felt he was best capable of making these decisions without telling anyone else and actually keeping his mission secret. ... That actually ended up costing the Rebels massively. So he's not a hero here; and Finn is somewhat of an idiot for going along with him. "Who is more the fool, the fool or the fool who follows him?"

So by the end, we see every character fail at what they set out to do, from Luke, to Leia, Rey, Kylo, Poe, Finn ... it's a story where every character finds a way to fail; because the movie is about "failure."

But that does not make for an entertaining film -- let alone a Star Wars film.

It's as though Johnson really did not understand the project he was tasked to work on, and Kennedy was just unable or unwilling to prevent this really odd movie from being made.



That is a unique take, I will say that..

I do recall seeing it in theaters and I liked it at the time... Wasn't blown away, more like "hmm.." But there were some fun scenes..

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I can't get over how many critics just explain away the shitty storytelling in episode 8 as being edgy and different. I could go on and on about it but Luke is clearly the worst and I sure don't buy Rian Johnson's "times change, people change" explanation either. When a character's defining trait is his eternal optimism even when everyone else is telling him the opposite, they better give me a good explanation why he would try to murder a child in cold blood. And I'm sorry but a vague force dream is nowhere near enough to cause him to flip his entire outlook 180 without a second thought.

Why is it so hard for some to see Luke become a grumpy old hermit that does not want to be bothered? Obi Wan became one, Yoda became one, hell, Mark Hammill himself became one.

& In his old age he saw what Vader did, murdered almost every force user in the galaxy, enforced tyrannical terror, etc etc. He foresaw the same shit happening in Kylo Ren (WHICH CAME TO FRUITION) and in a moment of weakness tried to do something about it.

Really not that hard to understand.

Would you consider murdering Hitler before he became what he became? Of course you would. That's millions of lives you would save.

So he should have just murdered Vader then

BMAN said:

So he should have just murdered Vader then

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Huh? Are you talking about after Vader already committed all of his atrocities and was an old Man?

Not really a good comparison.

howler1313 said:

I can't get over how many critics just explain away the shitty storytelling in episode 8 as being edgy and different. I could go on and on about it but Luke is clearly the worst and I sure don't buy Rian Johnson's "times change, people change" explanation either. When a character's defining trait is his eternal optimism even when everyone else is telling him the opposite, they better give me a good explanation why he would try to murder a child in cold blood. And I'm sorry but a vague force dream is nowhere near enough to cause him to flip his entire outlook 180 without a second thought.

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Right. Like, being unique is cool, but it doesn't excuse it from being shitty.

BMAN said:

So he should have just murdered Vader then

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Exactly. All of Luke's greatest successes were when he went against conventional wisdom and kept his hope and faith alive. You can't stress how evil Vader's reputation was. Not only was he known as some sort of space Himmler, but he had both "killed" Luke's mentor, imprisoned Han, and blown up an entire planet in front of Luke's face. He had seen more than enough first hand to know that all of the bad stories about Vader were true, and yet he was willing to die believing that Vader could be saved.

We're supposed to believe that that same man would try to kill his nephew in his sleep because of a dream? That stretches it beyond believability for me and seems like Rian just wrote the story arc with a different character in mind.

Edit: and I should add that I don't think it would have been impossible to portray him as a weary pessimist after all these years, but a hand-wavy dream has nowhere near enough emotional and story depth to sell it for me. If the Luke of the original trilogy had that dream, here's what he probably would have done. He wouldn't have believed it and trusted in his flesh and blood like he had before, kept Ben from the dark side, and avoided the future conflict entirely.

Lyst said:

Huh? Are you talking about after Vader already committed all of his atrocities and was an old Man?

Not really a good comparison.

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How do you figure?