The General Star Wars Thread

I guess I can see the appeal of Force awakens from that lens. And honestly if I can pretend that the original trilogy never existed, an admittedly impossible task, Force Awakens is at least passable.

My problem comes down to a lack of worldbuilding and a severe lack of ambition as far as storytelling is concerned. It may be that it set out to accomplish what it wanted but if you wanted anything more it doesn’t really do that.

Last Jedi at least got me thinking. Years ago I would have said the best thing it has is Kylo Ren and Rey. And while still sort of true now I think the most interesting part is strangely Poe and Holdo. So bizarre.

I liked all the sequels—even if Rey being a Palpatine was just weird and random—but I liked her as a protagonist. Especially when they showed her being vulnerable; her loneliness in the cave, saying her parents were nobody, even Dark Rey.

>"Don't be afraid of who you are."

>growls at her

Edited by Keybreak on Apr 27th 2024 at 9:51:16 AM

I don't really care that Force Awakens wasn't very ambitious. It was supposed to win people's interest in Star Wars again in the context of 2010s audiences. Maybe I don't speak for everybody but I think it's reasonable to say that if audiences weren't so easy to sway with what is nostalgia and throwback candy put on screen then it wouldn't have made billions of dollars.

As far as I see it, Force Awakens gets to be like Batman 89 where it is a fun visually pleasing action flick that gets people to take the lore of Star Wars seriously again. It's Star Wars back to basics. And JJ set a basic template just like he did with Star Trek 2009. And while that movie is a better film overall, I don't think Force Awakens is that bad of a film. Now Last Jedi on the other hand, that movie is awful and it's really hard to see it as some subversive masterpiece of cinema. But Force Awakens is a normal movie. It's like a Mc Donalds combo meal. "Oh, it's generic and unhealthy and adds nothing" who cares. It gets the job done.

You wanted a more challenging film? That's the job of the sequel which Rian completely botched. You can't go about completely blaming JJ for a movie he didn't direct. Hell, if Last Jedi didn't make so many stupid decisions than Rise of Skywalker probably wouldn't have been bad.

Again, Force Awakens isn't perfect and there are things I would have fixed with hindsight but to say it's a terrible movie is like saying X-Men 1 is a bad movie.

Edited by NightShadow2020 on Apr 27th 2024 at 11:53:02 AM

I mean, I totally blame Abrams for putting any future director into a really awful position for a sequel, yeah, including making a point of hyping the viewers up for supposed plot threads he had no intention of ever following up on, and for which following up on would have been problematic for future writers. Rian had the unfortunate position of being handed a story that couldn't both be adequately written while also adequately following up on the haphazard installment that preceded it.

But, I do think Abrams has a very strong sense of character dynamics and relationships, and regarding Rey I believe that the character as presented in The Force Awakens was a very compelling character with a very unique introduction and approach to The 'Verse, all of which was slowly filed off of her as the movies went by as the trilogy got increasingly obsessed with the question of her parentage and nothing else for the character.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Apr 28th 2024 at 12:11:01 PM

Yeah, TFA Rey is probably my favorite version of her character since I like her character dynamics with the cast, and her introduction is one of the most effective sequences I've seen in a long while.

Most of the problems with the sequels are not the individual movies, as they are pretty typical blockbuster fluff, but they were advertising themselves as part of a greater, ongoing narrative that simply didn't deliver. Audiences really wanted to get invested, but there was diminishing returns.

Really the stupid part about everyone hating that Rey is a Palpatine is that I remember people were guessing her parentage after the movie came out and her being a Palpatine was an option.

Rey being a nobody as TLJ suggests is better in my opinion as it shows that anyone can be a hero and special. However, I don't think Rey being a Palpatine is a bad idea, I just think very little is done with the idea. So it's kind of the worst of both worlds, she isn't a nobody (which I would prefer) but there's also little reason for her to be a Palpatine (somewhat wasting what could have been interesting).

Zero from Mega Man X is like, the perfect blueprint for a Rey Palpatine storyline.

Zero is one of the most popular characters in the series and it's in part because he's the final creation of Doctor Wily. Sure his connection to Wily is dropped after the 6th game, but the consequences of him being Dr. Wily's masterpiece influences the plot of the series and the Zero series.

Both ideas are good, but you've got to pick one and stick with it. It was such a blatant retcon that everyone noticed.

Having her parentage be revealed in Force Awakens (whether or not she already knew ahead of time) could have led into some interesting stories. Likewise, I did enjoy the "your parents were nobody" reveal in Last Jedi because it was really a character reveal, hammering it in for Rey personally. But then they did a hard turn because everybody has to be related to somebody or whatever.

I actually don't agree with this. I'm not particularly a fan of Abrams, but this isn't a case like Lost (though admittedly, I dropped off of Lost after the first season, so I'm going based on the standard story about Lost, not personal experience) where a bunch of elaborate mystery boxes were set up with nothing inside them and frankly nothing could be inside them due to the sheer size of the damn things.

Like, what plot threads are set up that are impossible to follow up on?

Where is Luke Skywalker is answered in TFA. Why is he there? I mean, you can come up with a bunch of reasons, the most obvious, tying into one of the other mysteries is because Snoke isn't alone. He was, I dunno, part of a Dark Sider group, made up of the heirs of former apprentices who escaped their masters and banded together at the edge of the galaxy, who believed with Palpatine dead and the mainline Sith wiped out, it was their time. He fought them at their base and is either stalemated with them, or won, but everyone's ships got destroyed, so there's no way back. [ETA: Why doesn't Snoke go after them, or send the First Order after them? Because he's double crossing them and sending anyone back there is a terrible idea. They're trapped, leave 'em alone until he has Starkiller base all ready for use, then he can blow up the entire system without risking any sort of direct confrontation. But Ben/Kylo wants Luke badly, so Snoke lets him try. You can also use this to get your opening action scene and have some confusion where Rey believes she's led the First Order to them and use that to get your main characters back together a lot sooner than the last five minutes of the movie...]

You can also use this for a soft retcon of TFA's opening crawl about Luke being the last Jedi, if you want by either having had him re-establish a Jedi Academy on the planet and have been training people, or he took the most combat capable Jedi with him to this confrontation.

You can tie it into the second big character mystery, why did Ben Solo fall? Keep the Snoke was manipulating him thing, only expand it. The group was trying to corrupt the Jedi Academy, Luke found out, gathered his most combat capable Jedi, but left Ben in charge of the rest, to defend them, because he loved and trusted his nephew so much that he couldn't see that Ben was the most corrupted of the bunch. The order trusted his judgement and suffered for it.

Already addressed who is Snoke, as for Rey's parentage, I'd keep Rey Nobody here, that's a good reveal and heightens the contrast between her and Ben, given his bloodlines.

I think that's all the plot threads? I'm not going to claim its brilliant or anything, but it's fine. It's also sort of the job Rian took on, writing the middle of a story where someone else is going to be writing the beginning and end.

But also, he sort of has to set up plot threads? It's the first film in a trilogy that apparently doesn't have an overall plot structure, if he hadn't set up plot threads, or had set them up with only one possible/intended destination, he'd really be binding the hands of whoever does the second and third films. Frankly, TLJ is worse at this, as it sets up basically no threads for the heroes for the third film. The villains have a potential civil war due to Snoke's death, but the heroes...I mean, I guess they'll continue to oppose the bad guys? All six, or seven of our surviving Resistance people?

But maybe I'm missing some? What plot threads would have been problematic to follow up on?

Edited by ECD on Apr 28th 2024 at 7:45:56 AM

Agreed with Last Jedi setting up no threads and I will criticize it in general for being a bizarre film that chased overcomplication over fulfilling storytelling.

Like, Finn being told that there are corporations selling weapons and cruisers to both the First Order and Resistance is so... meaningless? It's a non reveal anybody? Of course we have corporations that sell ships to various sides, with some selling some to both sides? Does anybody remember that the Incom T-65 X-Wing starfighter is a model for a starship from a company? Same as the Mon Calamari Star Cruisers who had a corporation themselves that partnered with wider intergalactic corporations. This is the most non-factor things I can think of and Last Jedi was all "Hey, you guys buy weapons too." Like WTF is the alternative? Ride Space Horses into battle! Or Space Whales! Wars are won and fought with industry am I wrong? This sort of screenwriting feels like post modern escapism divorced from reality. Oh wait no "We can't fight anything we hate. Save what we love instead." Yeah Rose, your sister should have just not sacrificed herself. It's not like she did both or anything.

Compare this to Force Awakens which was very basic and simple. First Order is empire remnant, Resistance is new rebels, they have a superweapon, Rey the Jedi has to stop them. I loved that Rey was this sort of historian who knew the lore of Star Wars vaguely and was able to use that knowledge to one up her enemies? Frankly a lot could have been expla9ined if they revealed the true lore of Jakku, that it's a Coruscant from the distant past with these underground cities buried by a desert, that only she seems to care about and have access to. Would explain her interest in lore and history and would have helped make Rey awesome.

You know what Last Jedi did? It focused on her parentage, and nothing else. Again, closing possible threads and not replacing them with any. I don't care that she's a nobody or a Palpatine, what I care about is her personality and character traits.

Wanna talk about another dead plot point? Why does Rose not do anything in Rise of Skywalker? Well, fans being assholes aside, it's because Rose was a boring character who had no threads to continue... I guess besides the awful forced "subversive" romance with Finn, which thankfully JJ dropped. It's almost like she had no role in the story that was this important. In fact, I bet that Paige Tico was probably originally Rose as well but then the first act needed some sort of sacrifice so Paige was created to die instead in a sort of "bake the cake and eat it too." Maybe that's a theory but considering that Paige isn't really relevant to Rose afterward, to the point where she discards that necklace which should mean something, maybe I'm not far off.

Unpopular opinion, but I really liked Rose and loved her relationship with Finn. I disliked how Rise threw it out the window off-screen, it made the trilogy feel even more disjointed and made a large part of TLJ pointless.

I like Rose a lot too!

Apparently her original intended role in TROS was as the main trio's Mission Control, relaying messages and orders between them and Leia, but Carrie Fisher's death forced these scenes to be scrapped.

Same here.

Albeit, I don't believe her reduced role is due to backlash.

Their relationship ending may have been linked to the backlash, but I agree her reduced role was probably (mostly) other reasons. I do understand why her role was reduced regardless, I just think it hurt the trilogy to reduce it to that extent.

Edited by king15 on Apr 28th 2024 at 3:48:29 PM

Both the TFA and TLJ suffer the flaw of a simplified mindset that offers nothing deep underneath.

The whole capitalism is evil lesson in TLJ becomes a waste of time when you realize that nothing has or will change. Like, what is the Resistance supposed to do? Not buy weapons? Are they implying that the arms dealers are the real instigator of war? Should we attack them instead of the enemy trying to kill us?

Same thing with TFA and the First Order. By all accounts, it should be a small underdog terrorist organization as the timeline suggested. But apparently, it bought into the whole oppressor vs oppressed mindset, meaning that the First Order cannot actually be depicted as an underdog and the Resistance/Republic cannot be depicted as stronger. Thus, the First Order is depicted as the Empire 2.0, which undermines ROTJ showing the Empire collapsing after the Battle of Endor.

The end result? The new generation of Rebels looks like incompetent cosplayers wanting to feel like Rebels instead of being actual Rebels restoring the Republic.

Gone are the days of Incom in Legends where they straight up went "Fuck the Empire, hey engineers and everyone responsible for the X-Wings, let's defect to the Rebellion".

Of course stuff like "Oh everyone claims to have changed but they're still selling to the Empire" was put in Force Awakens beforehand; all the companies that gave the Empire ships and weapons basically just rebranded themselves but still supplied the First Order on the down low.

Which I think is technically more realistic than what happened in Legends.

Edited by theLibrarian on Apr 28th 2024 at 11:00:16 AM

TBH, given both that and the emphasis TFA put on the war with the First Order not being all that special because these cycles just keep happening over and over, I suspect the original plan was to have the big victory at the end of the trilogy yo not just be to defeat the villains, but also to somehow stop the cycle of war between dark and light entirely.

Hence both TFA and TLJ constantly bringing up that this war is just one in a long line of them, the general apathy and resignation a lot of the side characters have for what is going on, and establishing that while everyone's fighting the only parties actually getting anywhere are the ones profiting off both sides.

There was a review I saw way way back that suggested Kylo Ren's plan to just tear everything down and build something new once he took power was a meta commentary on the fact the people in charge want to do something new with the franchise and Rey represents the fanbase who refuses him.

I don't remember the exact specifics but nothing really is done with Kylo Ren just being sick of the whole light vs dark argument.

Because the next movie goes back to Jedi vs Sith.

I'm more pro-TROS than most, but yeah, abandoning the theme of Cutting the Knot on the entire series of "Force wars" was my biggest disappointment with it. Hell, even Kylo wanted to do that in TLJ, with his whole speech about burning everything down and building something new and glorious from the ashes, because the Galaxy's in the darkest timeline already, so literally any alternative would be better.

Yeah, while I have mixed opinions about the execution of a lot of the stuff in TLJ, it set up a ton of really interesting things for Rise to explore. I think it was a missed opportunity for Rise to not follow through, though I do understand why it didn't.

Agree.

Yeah, I suppose that they knew that the sequel trilogy wouldn't be the last mainline series of films, so they couldn't actually solve the dark vs light thing because they had to leave room for future films open.

Edited by king15 on Apr 28th 2024 at 4:13:43 PM

I suspect they didn't follow up on the whole breaking of the cycle of light vs dark is because that's the very foundation that Star Wars is built on.

Plus JJ is a very fanservice kind of guy, so there's no way he's the director to do that kind of story in Star Wars.

It's a shame because both TLJ and TROS had some delightfully trippy scenes of weird Force stuff, and I'd have loved to see them take that to the next level with the "find a permanent solution" thing.

Page bottomer.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Apr 28th 2024 at 9:19:31 AM