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The Rise Of Skywalker — Official Review and Opinions Thread — Page 16

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Because of the massive letdown that was TFA I decided to read the plot summary on Wikipedia because if there is one thing I learned from TFA it’s to never trust JJ Abrams ever again, and I have made the right decision.

Rey is Palatine’s granddaughter. Seriously? Why couldn’t she simply be Rey from nowhere?

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fmalover said:

Rey is Palatine’s granddaughter. Seriously? Why couldn’t she simply be Rey from nowhere?

Subverting the subversion of expectations is what’s hot now.

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And once we had the Death Star in Episode IV, there is no reason not to continue the technology. You complain about the appearance of the Emperor’s fleet out of nothing and yet in ROTJ we had a second (and larger) Death Star show up the same way. I really get the sense that you do not carefully think how the OT may done similar things before you judge the ST so harshly.

Pointing to what is widely considered the weakest part of ROTJ, namely the reappearance of a Death Star is hardly a good defense for the ST reintroducing superweapons two more times. Additionally, the second Death Star at least has a function in the story, while in TROS they are just an artificial way of adding tension to a pretty boring space battle.

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I’m pretty bummed about a lot of what I saw in TROS, but what I didn’t quite expect was for the space battle to be so… Lackluster? Given the hilarious amount of ships, I foolishly thought it would be a balls to the wall action sequence. Nothing emotionally engaging like ROTJ’s finale but at least visually satisfying to watch. Nope. The environment looked too dark compared to how lit up and full of life the Death Star II attack was. To this day, nothing competes with that fleet battle.

The Rise of Failures

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fmalover said:

Because of the massive letdown that was TFA I decided to read the plot summary on Wikipedia because if there is one thing I learned from TFA it’s to never trust JJ Abrams ever again, and I have made the right decision.

Rey is Palatine’s granddaughter. Seriously? Why couldn’t she simply be Rey from nowhere?

Rey always had to either be related to someone or have had training as a kid. During TFA i always assumed she was a student of Lukes that survived the destruction of the temple. Luke to protect her sent her away. Its thr only explanation i could come up for her abilities. The force, not matter how strong it is, doesnt give you abilities.

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I was always fine with Rey Nobody - it’s a central theme of SW, or ought to be, that your destiny isn’t determined just by your blood.

“That Darth Vader, man. Sure does love eating Jedi.”

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Rey is strong with (the light side of) the Force, because Kylo is strong with the Dark side. The force always balance itself. She had natural abilities in the Force feeding on that balance and waiting to be revealed.

Han: Hey Lando! You kept your promise, right? Not a scratch?
Lando: Well, what’s left of her isn’t scratched. All the scratched parts got knocked off along the way.
Han (exasperated): Knocked off?!

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Not any more…

Now even Jakku is part of a Palpatine cultist plot.

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I thought the film was very entertaining and fun, but I wonder if the plot details of this trilogy had been leaked prior to the films coming out, how would people feel about it?

Would they read it and think, “wow, this is fun and exciting?”
Would they think it reads like fan-fiction?
Would they feel like like it’s a natural progression of the story from the OT?

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The plot for this movie actually was leaked before the movie came out. From what I saw most people hated it. They complained about most of the same things that people are complaining about now, like Rey being a Palpatine, the overly complicated plot, and Kylo’s unceremonious death. Some people refused to believe that the leaks were true, even after the trailer confirmed almost everything.

My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

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One point of TFA that really didn’t fit with Rey being a complete nobody was that she could understand wookies and droids. That is not a normal skill. Now that we know who she belongs with and can guess at her upbringing, it makes sense. And a few more pieces seem likely. I would guess from his running and hiding that Palpatine’s son refused to have children while his father was alive. I would also assume he was born before ROTS. So he married, and Rey was born sometime post ROTJ. Then he finds out his good ol’ dad is back from the dead and goes into hiding. So he probably lived on Coruscant or another core world and Rey must have learned to understand wookies and astromech droids there before they went into hiding. And it seems safe to assume that Rey’s father had no force abilities or he probably would have been Palpatine’s first choice. So it skipped a generation (unlike the Skywalkers).

I think that information maintains what TLJ had to say about anyone can be strong in the force. And the outcome of TROS definitely states that who you are is not based on your blood. Rey may have Palpatine blood, but she is not on the Dark side like her grandfather. And Kylo did not have to be on the dark side because of his grandfather. And TROS reveals Finn as the nobody who is force sensitive. So those themes carry forward even if Rey is now a Palpatine. For me it made sense, though so did her coming from nowhere.

And I read the leaked plot summary before seeing the film. I liked the plot summary and was excited for the film until I read the critic reviews. Then the viewer reviews started coming in an most were the same reaction I had to the leaked plot summary. And in the end, I enjoyed the film more than the leaked plot summary. There were a couple of things that the leak had that weren’t in the film. I wish they would have kept the Lando/Jannah plot, but they left it open to still exist outside the films. And I’m really not sure how this film had a more convoluted plot than the PT films. My reaction to those was that there was too much in them. That was not my reaction to TLJ or TROS. Both films had me enthralled and the time flew by. I didn’t feel overloaded at all. Overall I think that under Disney, Lucas film has made 4 outstanding movies and 1 good one. I think those 4 are better overall than what Lucas did with the PT.

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yotsuya said:

One point of TFA that really didn’t fit with Rey being a complete nobody was that she could understand wookies and droids. That is not a normal skill. Now that we know who she belongs with and can guess at her upbringing, it makes sense. And a few more pieces seem likely. I would guess from his running and hiding that Palpatine’s son refused to have children while his father was alive. I would also assume he was born before ROTS. So he married, and Rey was born sometime post ROTJ. Then he finds out his good ol’ dad is back from the dead and goes into hiding. So he probably lived on Coruscant or another core world and Rey must have learned to understand wookies and astromech droids there before they went into hiding. And it seems safe to assume that Rey’s father had no force abilities or he probably would have been Palpatine’s first choice. So it skipped a generation (unlike the Skywalkers).

I think that information maintains what TLJ had to say about anyone can be strong in the force. And the outcome of TROS definitely states that who you are is not based on your blood. Rey may have Palpatine blood, but she is not on the Dark side like her grandfather. And Kylo did not have to be on the dark side because of his grandfather. And TROS reveals Finn as the nobody who is force sensitive. So those themes carry forward even if Rey is now a Palpatine. For me it made sense, though so did her coming from nowhere.

And I read the leaked plot summary before seeing the film. I liked the plot summary and was excited for the film until I read the critic reviews. Then the viewer reviews started coming in an most were the same reaction I had to the leaked plot summary. And in the end, I enjoyed the film more than the leaked plot summary. There were a couple of things that the leak had that weren’t in the film. I wish they would have kept the Lando/Jannah plot, but they left it open to still exist outside the films. And I’m really not sure how this film had a more convoluted plot than the PT films. My reaction to those was that there was too much in them. That was not my reaction to TLJ or TROS. Both films had me enthralled and the time flew by. I didn’t feel overloaded at all. Overall I think that under Disney, Lucas film has made 4 outstanding movies and 1 good one. I think those 4 are better overall than what Lucas did with the PT.

My take, it’s a lot easier to adapt someone else’s story (the OT), than to come up with a new story, which the PT largely was, even if we knew the outcome of the story. Despite the overall better execution of the ST story on an individual film basis, it still ended up having a ton of issues, and controversy associated with it, which have been debated at length, and managed to become a disjointed mess of conflicting artistic visions.

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How does Rey being a Palpatine explain how she could speak Wookiee? It’s a lot more believable she picked up languages here and there from travelers passing through Niima Outpost over the years.

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I hesitate to post this here as I’m not sure whether it’s legit or not however it does make sense based on what we know so far, this is the supposed leak from reddit that sparked the #releasethejjcut movement which is currently trending on twitter, the poster is claiming inside info from the production of TROS concerning what happened behind the scenes of this production, take it as you will folks.

Original POST:

Since shortly after release weekend, I’ve been corresponding with someone who worked closely on the production of TROS and works for one of the major companies I cannot disclose here. I have verified the source to my satisfaction. To protect the source, I am rewording what we spoke about over the last two weeks and am submitting it to you in bullet point format I have written based on what they told me. The TLDR is that they were upset with the final product of TROS and wanted to share their perspective on how it went down and where it went wrong.

-The leakers for TROS had an agenda and are tied to Disney directly. My source confessed that they have an agenda as well in that they struggle with ignoring what’s been happening to someone who they think doesn’t deserve it.

-JJ always treated everyone on and offset with respect so my source’s agenda is that what Disney has done to JJ and how much they screwed him over should be something people are at least aware of, whether you like him as a filmmaker or not.

-Disney was one of the studios who were in that Bad Robot bidding war last year. Disney never had much interest in BR as a company but they did in JJ because they saw WB (who JJ went with in the end) as a major threat.

-JJ is very successful at bringing franchises back like Mission Impossible, Star Trek and Star Wars. WB is struggling with DC and aside from Wonder Woman, DC is still seen as a bit of a joke in its current state by the GA.

-WB wants Abrams for some DC projects. My source said that this generation’s Star Wars is the MCU, and Marvel’s biggest threat is a well operational DC. They want to keep DC in the limbo that they’re in right now. Abrams jumpstarting that franchise with something like a successful, audience-pleasing Superman movie makes them nervous. Their goal is to make JJ look bad to potential investors/shareholders.

My source mentioned this shortly after the premiere: “The TROS we saw last night was not the TROS we thought we worked on”.

-JJ was devastated and blindsided by this. He’s been feeling down over the last 6 months because of some of the ridiculous demands Disney had that changed his movie’s story. While the scenes were shot, a lot of the changes were made in post-production and the audio was rerecorded and altered. My source said they’ve never seen anything like this happen before. He’s the director and he wasn’t in the know about what they were doing behind his back.

-Apparently, JJ felt threatened over the month leading up to the premiere.

-Rian was never meant to do IX despite some rumors that he was.

-JJ was brought back by Iger, not KK. Disney insisted on more fan service, less controversy.

-JJs original agreement when he signed on was indicating he would have way more creative control than he did on TFA. It became evident this wasn’t the case only a couple of weeks into shooting when the trouble with meddling started.

-JJ wanted to do some scenes he thought were important but Disney shut it down citing budgetary reasons.

-May 2019: JJ argued that those scenes were crucial. He had to let go of one of the scenes. The other scene he insisted on was approved at first. He did reshoots and additional photography in July. The new scene was shot at BR in October.

-The “ending that will blow your mind” was a part of this. Older actors were included like Hayden, Ewan and Samuel and anyone who wasn’t animated. The force ghosts weren’t meant to be voices because they shot that footage on camera. The actors were in costumes. Rey was supposed to be surrounded by the force ghosts to serve as sort of a barrier between her and the Sith surrounding them.

My source thinks but can’t 100% confirm that this is because of China. It’s an office talk of sorts. Some VFX people claimed they got a list of approved shades of blue they could use on the Luke force ghosts. Cutting this out was when the bad blood turned into a nightmare for JJ because the movie he was making was suddenly unrecognizable to him in almost every way.

My source knows JJ well enough to know that he’s just not the yelling type but apparently in a meeting he yelled something along the lines of “Why don’t you just put ‘directed and written by Lucasfilm’ then?” My source wasn’t present for that exchange but knows some who were.

-Disney demanded they shoot some scenes that would have things in it for merchandise. “They fly now” is one of them. It’s also JJ’s least favorite scene. At a November screening of a 2:37 cut, he cringed, groaned and laughed when the scene was on.

My source says that JJ was most likely not joking when he said “you’re right” in the interview where they asked him about TROS criticism.

-JJ’s original early November cut was 3 hours 2 minutes long.

-In January, JJ suggested that they turn this into two films. My source told me this well before Terrio mentioned it in an interview a couple of days ago. When Disney said no, JJ was content with making this 3 hours long.

-Over a period of 9 months JJ started realizing that one by one his ideas and whole scenes were being thrown out the window or entirely altered by people who have “no business meddling with the creatives”.

-They were not on the same page when it came to creative decisions and it became obvious that Disney had an agenda in addition to wanting to please shareholders. Disney could “afford messing up IX for the sake of the bigger picture” when it came to protecting things unrelated to IX.

-The cut JJ eventually and hesitantly agreed to in early December was 2:37 minutes long. It wasn’t the cut we saw which he wouldn’t have approved of (and which is 2:22 long). Apart from the force ghosts, there were other crucial and emotional scenes missing. The cut they released looked “chopped and taped back together with weak scotch tape” (JJ’s words).

-The movie opened with Rey’s training. Her first scene with Rose was shortly after Rey damaged BB-8 during the training. Rose made a silly joke about how Poe is going to kill her for damaging BB-8. There was a moment where Rey took a minute to process what just happened when she saw that vision during training. She looked distressed and worried. The next scene was noise as the Falcon was landing and Rey runs over there. Those two women who kissed at the end were visible in this shot and they were holding hands. One of them ran towards the Falcon as it landed.

-Kylo on Mustafar scene was 2 mins longer. There was a moment where Kylo seemed a bit dizzy and his vision was shown as blurry for a second. Almost as if time half-stopped while everyone in the background was slow-mo fighting. Kylo hears Vader’s breathing, then shakes his head and time goes back to moving at a normal pace and he jumps right back into the battle (the scene from the trailer where he knocks that guy down which did end up in the movie later).

-They cut some of the scenes from the lightspeed skipping segment. Some of the planets that were cut were Kashyyyk, Naboo, and Kamino.

-The scene where the tie fighters are chasing them through the iceberg - those corridors were inspired by a video game JJ used to play in the 90s called Rebel Assault 2 (the third level in the game with the tunnels on Endor specifically).

-Jannah was confirmed to be Lando’s daughter.

-Rey not only healed Kylo’s face scar but she killed Kylo when she healed Ben. Kylo ceased to exist when Rey healed him. My source mentioned that some people assume it was Han Solo who healed him but that isn’t true and that wasn’t Han Solo. That was Leia using her own memories as well as Ben’s to create a physical manifestation of his own thoughts to nudge him towards what he needed to do. That was her own way of communicating that with him. And it wasn’t possible without her dying in the process. She made the ultimate sacrifice for her son and this flew over people’s heads with the Disney cut.

-The late November cut (the last cut JJ approved of) had scenes with Rose and Rey still. JJ wanted to give her a more meaningful arc. Disney felt that that was too risky too. My source mentioned that Chris Terrio said that it was because of the Leia scenes but this is only partially true because she had four other scenes including two with Rey/Daisy that Leia was not in.

-Finn wanting to tell Rey something was always meant to be force sensitivity. In the 3 hour cut, it’s explicitly stated. There was a moment when Jannah and he were running on top of that star destroyer and Finn needed to unlock or move something and he force-moved it and acted surprised when it happened. This was replaced with a CGI’d BB-8 fixing whatever he needed to fix on there.

-Babu Frik was nearly cut because some execs at Disney thought he would be the new Jar Jar. They are really surprised that people love him this much. He was JJ’s idea and was created in collaboration with some artists and puppeteers. The personality was all JJ.

-There were a bunch of scenes where Rey and Kylo (separately) went through quiet moments of reflection to deal with what they were going through. On her part, her going through the realization that there’s something sinister about her past. Him going through regret and remorse but trying to shut it out. My source said that the Kylo scenes were especially amazing because of Adam’s performance and how he managed to portray that inner turmoil. It provided much more context and added deeper meaning to both his battle with Rey and the final redemption arc at the end. It didn’t happen so suddenly and it was more structured than what we got.

-The Kylo/Rey scene where he dies was at least 4 minutes longer with more dialogue. Ben was always supposed to die. Source also added that if he wasn’t, then that might’ve been in an earlier draft which they haven’t read. The first draft they read included Lando (the first few didn’t). The Reylo kiss and Ben’s death was not part of the reshoots. It was a part of the re-editing. Even the cut that JJ thought was coming out earlier this month had a longer version of that scene than what was shown in the theatrical cut.

-JJ was against the Reylo kiss (or Reylo in general). This was Disney’s attempt to please both sides of the fandom.

-JJ was not happy with where TLJ took the story. The final result is a mix of that story and the story told by Disney and whoever they tried to impress (“certainly not the fans”). JJ is gutted over the final result. Star Wars means a lot to him. He had to sacrifice large chunks of the story in TFA but he was promised more creative control on TROS and instead the leash they had him on was only tightened as time went by. A source said that this is the one franchise and the one piece of his work that he didn’t want to mess up and instead it turned into his worst nightmare. When he found out that he was blindsided with the cut they presented, he said “what the fuck??” when Kylo was fighting the Knights of Ren at the end and the Williams music that was used for it was not what he wanted at all. He seemed to think it was out of place.

-JJ’s cut still exists and “will always exist”. We most likely will never see it unless “someone accidentally leaks it.”

Peace is a lie
There is only passion…

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DominicCobb said:

yotsuya said:

DominicCobb said:

I hope someday Lucas’s treatments do come out, I’d be curious. But knowing his past writing processes (on the OT and PT), it’s more likely than not that his treatments were pretty short and vague. More importantly, even if Lucas himself had made the films he would have certainly changed the story of his treatments significantly over the course of time. So the idea that they should have chained themselves to those treatments just because they had Lucas’s name on them is monumentally silly.

More importantly, the idea that evil will always return is “nihilistic” is ridiculous. It’s just factually true. The idea that evil can be defeated once and for all is pretty naive. It works for a fairy tale yes, but Star Wars has been becoming less and less a fairy tale with each new entry. The idea that evil will always return is sophisticated and nuanced (perhaps too much so for some viewers, which is why they ditched it in TROS), and the message that there will always be good to face that evil is anything but nihilistic. It’s the very heart of what Star Wars is - never ending hope in the face of potential despair.

Exactly. We do know that they kept some of what Lucas had come up with. They also revisited a lot of his abandoned ideas for earlier films. I would love to see his treatments, but if you read some of his other treatments, the final films came out much different. And in history and myth, evil is something always lurking and endangering the good we create. The idea that Star Wars should somehow deviate from that and must keep what the heroes of the OT worked so hard to win is indeed silly. Each generation has their own fight and some generations lose that fight (the PT).

I don’t agree with everything your saying but it is important to remember Flash Gordon. Star Wars, like old space opera serials, is supposed to be a never ending saga, where we know no matter what the heroes will always be there to save the dar. If the evil can be defeated for forever, that’s it’s not really never ending is it?

This gets back to the fact that I fully believe that many people just fundamentally did not want to see movies made set after ROTJ, whether they say so or not. Simply put, to make a story set after ROTJ, you needed to undo that ‘happily ever after’ victory. What made TFA and TLJ so great is that they didn’t just wantonly undo it, they gave a thematic reason for doing so that justified their addition to the story. TROS… not so much.

Going forward, should they just keep making movies about rebels vs empire, with more Death Stars? Just seems like that’s going to get old real fast. It already feels stale and recycled, to me.

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idir_hh said:

I hesitate to post this here as I’m not sure whether it’s legit or not however it does make sense based on what we know so far, this is the supposed leak from reddit that sparked the #releasethejjcut movement which is currently trending on twitter, the poster is claiming inside info from the production of TROS concerning what happened behind the scenes of this production, take it as you will folks.

Original POST:

Since shortly after release weekend, I’ve been corresponding with someone who worked closely on the production of TROS and works for one of the major companies I cannot disclose here. I have verified the source to my satisfaction. To protect the source, I am rewording what we spoke about over the last two weeks and am submitting it to you in bullet point format I have written based on what they told me. The TLDR is that they were upset with the final product of TROS and wanted to share their perspective on how it went down and where it went wrong.

-The leakers for TROS had an agenda and are tied to Disney directly. My source confessed that they have an agenda as well in that they struggle with ignoring what’s been happening to someone who they think doesn’t deserve it.

-JJ always treated everyone on and offset with respect so my source’s agenda is that what Disney has done to JJ and how much they screwed him over should be something people are at least aware of, whether you like him as a filmmaker or not.

-Disney was one of the studios who were in that Bad Robot bidding war last year. Disney never had much interest in BR as a company but they did in JJ because they saw WB (who JJ went with in the end) as a major threat.

-JJ is very successful at bringing franchises back like Mission Impossible, Star Trek and Star Wars. WB is struggling with DC and aside from Wonder Woman, DC is still seen as a bit of a joke in its current state by the GA.

-WB wants Abrams for some DC projects. My source said that this generation’s Star Wars is the MCU, and Marvel’s biggest threat is a well operational DC. They want to keep DC in the limbo that they’re in right now. Abrams jumpstarting that franchise with something like a successful, audience-pleasing Superman movie makes them nervous. Their goal is to make JJ look bad to potential investors/shareholders.

My source mentioned this shortly after the premiere: “The TROS we saw last night was not the TROS we thought we worked on”.

-JJ was devastated and blindsided by this. He’s been feeling down over the last 6 months because of some of the ridiculous demands Disney had that changed his movie’s story. While the scenes were shot, a lot of the changes were made in post-production and the audio was rerecorded and altered. My source said they’ve never seen anything like this happen before. He’s the director and he wasn’t in the know about what they were doing behind his back.

-Apparently, JJ felt threatened over the month leading up to the premiere.

-Rian was never meant to do IX despite some rumors that he was.

-JJ was brought back by Iger, not KK. Disney insisted on more fan service, less controversy.

-JJs original agreement when he signed on was indicating he would have way more creative control than he did on TFA. It became evident this wasn’t the case only a couple of weeks into shooting when the trouble with meddling started.

-JJ wanted to do some scenes he thought were important but Disney shut it down citing budgetary reasons.

-May 2019: JJ argued that those scenes were crucial. He had to let go of one of the scenes. The other scene he insisted on was approved at first. He did reshoots and additional photography in July. The new scene was shot at BR in October.

-The “ending that will blow your mind” was a part of this. Older actors were included like Hayden, Ewan and Samuel and anyone who wasn’t animated. The force ghosts weren’t meant to be voices because they shot that footage on camera. The actors were in costumes. Rey was supposed to be surrounded by the force ghosts to serve as sort of a barrier between her and the Sith surrounding them.

My source thinks but can’t 100% confirm that this is because of China. It’s an office talk of sorts. Some VFX people claimed they got a list of approved shades of blue they could use on the Luke force ghosts. Cutting this out was when the bad blood turned into a nightmare for JJ because the movie he was making was suddenly unrecognizable to him in almost every way.

My source knows JJ well enough to know that he’s just not the yelling type but apparently in a meeting he yelled something along the lines of “Why don’t you just put ‘directed and written by Lucasfilm’ then?” My source wasn’t present for that exchange but knows some who were.

-Disney demanded they shoot some scenes that would have things in it for merchandise. “They fly now” is one of them. It’s also JJ’s least favorite scene. At a November screening of a 2:37 cut, he cringed, groaned and laughed when the scene was on.

My source says that JJ was most likely not joking when he said “you’re right” in the interview where they asked him about TROS criticism.

-JJ’s original early November cut was 3 hours 2 minutes long.

-In January, JJ suggested that they turn this into two films. My source told me this well before Terrio mentioned it in an interview a couple of days ago. When Disney said no, JJ was content with making this 3 hours long.

-Over a period of 9 months JJ started realizing that one by one his ideas and whole scenes were being thrown out the window or entirely altered by people who have “no business meddling with the creatives”.

-They were not on the same page when it came to creative decisions and it became obvious that Disney had an agenda in addition to wanting to please shareholders. Disney could “afford messing up IX for the sake of the bigger picture” when it came to protecting things unrelated to IX.

-The cut JJ eventually and hesitantly agreed to in early December was 2:37 minutes long. It wasn’t the cut we saw which he wouldn’t have approved of (and which is 2:22 long). Apart from the force ghosts, there were other crucial and emotional scenes missing. The cut they released looked “chopped and taped back together with weak scotch tape” (JJ’s words).

-The movie opened with Rey’s training. Her first scene with Rose was shortly after Rey damaged BB-8 during the training. Rose made a silly joke about how Poe is going to kill her for damaging BB-8. There was a moment where Rey took a minute to process what just happened when she saw that vision during training. She looked distressed and worried. The next scene was noise as the Falcon was landing and Rey runs over there. Those two women who kissed at the end were visible in this shot and they were holding hands. One of them ran towards the Falcon as it landed.

-Kylo on Mustafar scene was 2 mins longer. There was a moment where Kylo seemed a bit dizzy and his vision was shown as blurry for a second. Almost as if time half-stopped while everyone in the background was slow-mo fighting. Kylo hears Vader’s breathing, then shakes his head and time goes back to moving at a normal pace and he jumps right back into the battle (the scene from the trailer where he knocks that guy down which did end up in the movie later).

-They cut some of the scenes from the lightspeed skipping segment. Some of the planets that were cut were Kashyyyk, Naboo, and Kamino.

-The scene where the tie fighters are chasing them through the iceberg - those corridors were inspired by a video game JJ used to play in the 90s called Rebel Assault 2 (the third level in the game with the tunnels on Endor specifically).

-Jannah was confirmed to be Lando’s daughter.

-Rey not only healed Kylo’s face scar but she killed Kylo when she healed Ben. Kylo ceased to exist when Rey healed him. My source mentioned that some people assume it was Han Solo who healed him but that isn’t true and that wasn’t Han Solo. That was Leia using her own memories as well as Ben’s to create a physical manifestation of his own thoughts to nudge him towards what he needed to do. That was her own way of communicating that with him. And it wasn’t possible without her dying in the process. She made the ultimate sacrifice for her son and this flew over people’s heads with the Disney cut.

-The late November cut (the last cut JJ approved of) had scenes with Rose and Rey still. JJ wanted to give her a more meaningful arc. Disney felt that that was too risky too. My source mentioned that Chris Terrio said that it was because of the Leia scenes but this is only partially true because she had four other scenes including two with Rey/Daisy that Leia was not in.

-Finn wanting to tell Rey something was always meant to be force sensitivity. In the 3 hour cut, it’s explicitly stated. There was a moment when Jannah and he were running on top of that star destroyer and Finn needed to unlock or move something and he force-moved it and acted surprised when it happened. This was replaced with a CGI’d BB-8 fixing whatever he needed to fix on there.

-Babu Frik was nearly cut because some execs at Disney thought he would be the new Jar Jar. They are really surprised that people love him this much. He was JJ’s idea and was created in collaboration with some artists and puppeteers. The personality was all JJ.

-There were a bunch of scenes where Rey and Kylo (separately) went through quiet moments of reflection to deal with what they were going through. On her part, her going through the realization that there’s something sinister about her past. Him going through regret and remorse but trying to shut it out. My source said that the Kylo scenes were especially amazing because of Adam’s performance and how he managed to portray that inner turmoil. It provided much more context and added deeper meaning to both his battle with Rey and the final redemption arc at the end. It didn’t happen so suddenly and it was more structured than what we got.

-The Kylo/Rey scene where he dies was at least 4 minutes longer with more dialogue. Ben was always supposed to die. Source also added that if he wasn’t, then that might’ve been in an earlier draft which they haven’t read. The first draft they read included Lando (the first few didn’t). The Reylo kiss and Ben’s death was not part of the reshoots. It was a part of the re-editing. Even the cut that JJ thought was coming out earlier this month had a longer version of that scene than what was shown in the theatrical cut.

-JJ was against the Reylo kiss (or Reylo in general). This was Disney’s attempt to please both sides of the fandom.

-JJ was not happy with where TLJ took the story. The final result is a mix of that story and the story told by Disney and whoever they tried to impress (“certainly not the fans”). JJ is gutted over the final result. Star Wars means a lot to him. He had to sacrifice large chunks of the story in TFA but he was promised more creative control on TROS and instead the leash they had him on was only tightened as time went by. A source said that this is the one franchise and the one piece of his work that he didn’t want to mess up and instead it turned into his worst nightmare. When he found out that he was blindsided with the cut they presented, he said “what the fuck??” when Kylo was fighting the Knights of Ren at the end and the Williams music that was used for it was not what he wanted at all. He seemed to think it was out of place.

-JJ’s cut still exists and “will always exist”. We most likely will never see it unless “someone accidentally leaks it.”

My God, if this is true? Poor JJ…

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Knowing the corporate world I wouldn’t say its far fetched for a company like Disney.

Peace is a lie
There is only passion…

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It’s 100% far-fetched. It’s fan-fiction from a very controversial subreddit. The idea that Iger, who sought out Abrams personally, only did so to hamstring WB’s attempts to make successful DC movies (which they’re already doing - Joker is going to make more than Rise of Skywalker worldwide) doesn’t make any sense unless you’re the sort of person who is already inclined to believe all the conspiracy theory stuff that goes along with being a DC “Release the Snyder Cut” fan.

A hashtag on twitter isn’t evidence of anything but people on twitter enjoying the open trade of hot takes and loud opinions. Besides which, there’ve been warnings that malcontents would be pushing a “Release the JJ Cut” campaign last week, because being loudly anti-Disney is good money for a lot of people whose online incomes depend on patreon donations, YouTube monetization, etc.

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yotsuya said:

liamnotneeson said:

yotsuya said:

Broom Kid said:

DrDre said:

Both JJ and RJ reverse engineered the OT to figure out where to go with their part(s) of the story either in an attempt to replicate the Star Wars formula, or to deliberately starkly deviate from it at key moments, but neither feels like a good, and natural way of developing a story to me. It feels very artificial, like the writer is constantly aware someone (the audience) is watching over their shoulders, and so the entire trilogy is shaped by what the writers’ believe are the audience’s expectations, and they either chose to cater to, or subvert those expectations.

There are only 2 films I can think of in the entire saga that didn’t do the above (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back).

Writers are always aware the audience is watching/reading. Knowing that isn’t a bad thing. Catering to it CAN be a bad thing, depending on how indulgent the writers get. Pandering is absolutely a bad thing. But many good, natural ways of developing stories involve keeping the audience in mind. “Write for yourself first” is great advice for any storyteller, but that “First” implies that there ARE other concerns to keep in mind as well.

But creation (especially on a scale this big) isn’t all inspiration and desire. Sometimes you have to plink and plunk at it, and that can feel (or appear to be from the backseat) artificial in the moment. That’s where the craft comes in. Passion can’t get a project across the line alone. Often you have to “artificially” introduce things that didn’t just appear in a flash, hand-delivered from the muse.

But that’s also a huge part of why I feel like judging finished work mostly on suppositions of behind-the-scenes machinations and making-of anecdotes isn’t very useful. Most of the audience will never know HOW a thing got made, or what went into its making, or even think to wonder about that aspect, and it honestly shouldn’t really matter. What matters is if it works or if it doesn’t - and if it doesn’t, WHY it doesn’t should be pretty clearly explained without having to go “I bet the guy who wrote it just didn’t feel it like this other guy did.”

Granted, The Rise of Skywalker was very obviously fumbled in its execution and I imagine there are plenty of behind-the-scenes stories we’ll hear eventually as to why it’s such a mess. But acting like the very business of creating fiction is somehow “artificial” because they had knowledge of “the formula” and chose to tinker with the recipe for their own purposes seems like a weird read considering how often that exact bit of business is NECESSARY as a creator to come up with solid work.

Just because we notice the artifice involved in creating and maintaining good fiction doesn’t mean that by the mere fact of our noticing it that it’s now BAD. That’s unfair not only to the writer, but to us as well, because it assumes that we shouldn’t be smart enough to spot seams if we’re looking for them. Of course we are. Most audience members are, honestly. The magic of a good story is that it distracts us from looking, or it engenders enough goodwill that even if we do spot the seams - we don’t care. In some cases, even the seams look good to us.

Basically, what I’m saying is: The Rise of Skywalker doesn’t work because the elements IN the story aren’t well-thought-out, and aren’t executed very well on top of that. If I’m not willing to indulge an imaginative exercise as to how a fabulous movie I watched this weekend was written and executed - like, for example, I didn’t finish watching Little Women the other day and conjure up a possible story as to how Greta Gerwig adapted the book to explain why it worked the way it did - I don’t know that it makes sense for me to do that when JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio drop the ball.

I do think it’s safe to assume they didn’t MEAN to drop the ball.

Well, not all of us think they dropped the ball.

No offense, but I don’t understand how one can think that they didn’t drop the ball. To me, after seeing the movies and the lack of consistent character development, and hearing about all of the drama behind the scenes, I don’t get how one could hear and see all this and think that Disney did a great job.

I am one of the apparently large number of people who really enjoyed the film. I have yet to find any major problems with it. I liked what the characters did, and where the movie went and I loved the ending. I thought that part was perfect.

When I say they dropped the ball, I’m referring to the ST as a whole. I liked TROS a lot.

yotsuya said:

And frankly, I don’t really care what drama happens behind the scenes on a movie. Often the most drama filled productions turn out to be the best films. So many greats in cinema history have had troubled productions that it seems to be a requirement for a truly great film. And to be clear, Disney cares about the end product and I have yet to hear of any interference with either Marvel or Lucasfilm. All the good and bad things about this film have the stamp of Abrams all over them

Disney’s interference in the actual moviemaking was probably minimal, that’s correct. I’m referring to Lucasfilm obviously not having a plan, firing directors all over the place, not consulting George Lucas at all (not a huge problem tbf), and choosing to “play it safe” with every movie except for TLJ, in which of course they let Johnson do whatever he wanted.

yotsuya said:

And I found the character development in the three films to be very consistent.

I do think you’re wrong on this, but I’ve already responded to you on this before. I just don’t know how after comparing TFA and TROS to TLJ, especially with Finn, you can find any meaningful character development in TLJ, and even more so between characters. Our 3 main protagonists for the ST- Rey, Finn, and Po- aren’t in the same place for most of the movie. How are we supposed to really care about these characters when we don’t see them growing to care for each other?

No offense, kid, but I don’t think you know how to boil water.

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[Dumb post, deleted for misreading post, move along]

No offense, kid, but I don’t think you know how to boil water.

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I’m not saying none of that is true, it could be, but you know social media and clickbait articles are going to run with this as the truth without it ever being verified.

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the hashtag is definitely speeding up this morning, but the response to the hashtag is pretty skeptical it seems, so that’s somewhat reassuring, I guess. Kind of.

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I didn’t notice who posted that thread originally, but I actually spoken to u/egoshoppe a few times on reddit. He actually has an account on here (egosheep, I believe). While I’ve disagreed with him on things before, as long as I’ve kept up with his comments and posts he has always tried to back up what he says with actual sources, like interviews or articles.

I can’t speak to the validity of his source, but I don’t think egoshoppe would have posted this if he didn’t think there was some truth to it. It is possible he has become a troll, but that would be pretty surprising to me honestly. And it is also possible his source is just feeding him what he wants to hear. It’s hard to say. But my interactions with egoshoppe have always been positive regardless whether or not we were disagreeing about something, because he seems he just wants to understand what happened behind the scenes of the Sequel Trilogy.

I still am going to not take this as the truth until more proof is provided, but if it isn’t true, either Ego has changed a lot or his source is just a troll. Hopefully this will be validated or debunked eventually.

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If he doesn’t know how anything at Disney (or WB, or Lucasfilm) really works, his belief in this person’s “veracity” doesn’t count for much though. That doesn’t mean he’s a troll, but posting things to Saltier than Crait doesn’t do a lot for credibility in any account. I don’t know this man, but I can disbelieve the story he’s been fed without casting aspersions on his personality or his being (I wasn’t trying to do that, anyway.) I don’t think you need to defend his character, because I’m not really assaulting it.

But this story is very detailed and very outlandish and is based on a premise that is pretty ridiculous, because it ultimately suggests Bob Iger is willing to use Star Wars and JJ Abrams as human shields to protect Marvel Studios from an ascendant Warner Bros.

All you have to do is look at 2019’s box-office totals to see how little sense that makes.

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No worries, I didn’t think you were attacking his credibility. I came back here to post that after I realized who made the post on reddit.

The whole Disney trying to undermine WB through JJ and Star Wars does sound pretty bonkers. At first I just felt like writing this off as another 4chan-like “leak”, but it coming from egoshoppe makes me pause a little. Honestly my primary thought is “what the hell is going on”. This is all very weird.