As I said, it’s the ideal that the Jedi should strive for, so naturally it should be how they accomplish their ultimate victory. They figured out a beautiful way to accomplish it in TLJ but just ignored the concept entirely when it came to the final installment because face melting cool and bad ass or whatever.
Ben Solo goes after her, and convinces Palpatine to let Rey live, by allowing Palpatine’s spirit to possess him. As this happens what remains of Ben tells Rey, that it will only be a matter of time before he is consumed, and she should kill him. She does, and Palpatine’s spirit tries to get back to the clone body, but Rey destroys it before he can enter the clone. Being without a vessel for his spirit, the Force ghosts of the Jedi appear, and destroy Palpatine’s spirit.
IIRC this was a pretty popular rumor before the movie came out? Something like this. I know at the least a few people thought the redemption/sacrifice Ben was going to make in the movie was along these lines.
I remember so many people also just kind of automatically assuming there were going to be a ton of force ghosts in the climax once Palpatine got announced. It just seemed to follow that if you were bringing back a long dead bad guy you now had the door open to ALSO bring back all the long dead good guys as a counter.
Ben Solo goes after her, and convinces Palpatine to let Rey live, by allowing Palpatine’s spirit to possess him. As this happens what remains of Ben tells Rey, that it will only be a matter of time before he is consumed, and she should kill him. She does, and Palpatine’s spirit tries to get back to the clone body, but Rey destroys it before he can enter the clone. Being without a vessel for his spirit, the Force ghosts of the Jedi appear, and destroy Palpatine’s spirit.
IIRC this was a pretty popular rumor before the movie came out? Something like this. I know at the least a few people thought the redemption/sacrifice Ben was going to make in the movie was along these lines.
I remember so many people also just kind of automatically assuming there were going to be a ton of force ghosts in the climax once Palpatine got announced. It just seemed to follow that if you were bringing back a long dead bad guy you now had the door open to ALSO bring back all the long dead good guys as a counter.
I think the issue wasn’t just bringing back Palpatine, but by extension killing him again. How are you going to convince people he’s really gone this time? I don’t think blocking some lightning, whilst saying “I’m all the Jedi” was very convincing. For all we know he has clones waiting for him all over the galaxy. The entire concept of his return just wasn’t properly thought out beyond some flashy action sequences.
I think the issue wasn’t just bringing back Palpatine, but by extension killing him again. How are you going to convince people he’s really gone this time?
Yeah, that’s why speculation/rumor turned to the Force Ghosts having something to do with it. Seeing his SPIRIT get snuffed out was probably the only way you could say “okay, he’s gone.” But that wasn’t the way they went with it, and there weren’t any ghosts on the scene.
It’s part of the bizarre disconnect, because everyone who follows these films seems to have a pretty general understanding of story and myth as it is, and even if they couldn’t overtly articulate WHY they expected certain things, the setup FOR those expectations is right there in the scenario. If you’re bringing back a bad guy from the dead at the very end of a story thoroughly populated with heroic ghosts, it’s more or less begging the question of how those ghosts are going to have their part to play in FINALLY, COMPLETELY defeating this old villain once and for all.
Honestly, having Kylo sacrifice to trap Palpatine as a spirit with no body, and then ghost Ben and Anakin teaming up to ensure Palpatine’s ultimate eradication isn’t even a huge creative leap. It doesn’t make any sense why it wasn’t even considered or pursued.
I think the purpose of not doing that was specifically to keep agency with the main protagonists, just like how Luke doesn’t actually swoop in to save the day as to not overshadow the new characters we’re meant to be following this trilogy.
“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” - DV
I think the purpose of not doing that was specifically to keep agency with the main protagonists, just like how Luke doesn’t actually swoop in to save the day as to not overshadow the new characters we’re meant to be following this trilogy.
Yeah I actually thought the ghosts were one of the few things handled tastefully.
But what is the purpose of keeping agency with the main characters, if the final showdown is so underwhelming, and unconvincing? The entire conflict is extremely contrived, since not even the creators’ believed the possibility of Rey going to the dark side was believable, hence the idea of Palpatine possessing her was introduced. Then they decide, that zombie Palpatine isn’t threatening enough, so he has to drain them and turn into ROTJ Palpatine for the final showdown, despite the fact that his clone looked like a Zombie version of PT Palpatine. Then he has to do something threatening, and so they say, let’s have him shoot lightning into the sky. That looks cool! Finally, they decide to blow him up (again), but let’s have Palpatine declare he is all of the Sith, and Rey all of the Jedi, such that we can pretend this is some kind of epic final showdown between the Jedi and the Sith. None of this is earned through good storytelling. Like with Poe declaring all is lost, and Lando suddenly arriving with a huge fleet, it’s all pay-off without setup. It repeats many of the pay-off moments of ROTJ, but without the buildup, and emotional context of its predecessor. Just make it bigger and louder, maybe then the viewers won’t notice, that it’s all a facade. Maybe they won’t notice, that we made the entire conflict of the last two movies irrelevant, because the FO is completely overshadowed by a contrived new threat, such that we can have our moment of redemption for Ben Solo. Let’s give all the Star Destroyers Death Star rays to artificially raise the stakes, but then put them in a situation, where they can’t actually use them. Rise of Skywalker in a nutshell:
The finale being contrived is its own issue, had the story not written itself into such a mess it still should have been about the new main characters and not the old, which would just be unfair and unsatisfying in its own way.
“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” - DV
The finale being contrived is its own issue, had the story not written itself into such a mess it still should have been about the new main characters and not the old, which would just be unfair and unsatisfying in its own way.
Yeah I mean I don’t see how having the ghosts kill Palpatine would have fixed any of the real issues going on here. Just would have been more fan service.
Better ending: as Rey holds off the lightning with the sabers, Yoda whispers “the Force is for knowledge and defense.” She drops the sabers, closes her eyes. The lightning makes her stronger. She walks right up and embraces Palpatine. The lightning stops. He loses all his power and becomes a helpless, feeble old man mortally wounded. Rey goes to heal him and he refuses and dies. The Sith cultists commit mass suicide.
heil Palpatine!
I think the purpose of not doing that was specifically to keep agency with the main protagonists, just like how Luke doesn’t actually swoop in to save the day as to not overshadow the new characters we’re meant to be following this trilogy.
There’s a way to combine the two, and it’s not an all or nothing, either. I think that, again, simply bringing Palpatine back like that begs the question of old heroes also returning to combat him in this “once and for all the end of everything” type battle. Rey can still have the agency in that situation (coming up with the plan, striking the decisive blow, etc…) but there needs to be the confidence in your own characters and in your storytelling to be able to incorporate these sorts of things into your ending, and if you don’t have that confidence, you probably shouldn’t be pursuing an avenue that actively demands you go there.
It’s just another example of Rise of Skywalker being packed full of scattered and scared decisionmaking. They didn’t have any faith in figuring out how to incorporate past heroes into a generational conclusion so they just sidestepped the whole thing, and it wound up completely unsatisfying. The first thing we see her do in the movie is hover in place pleading for those old heroes to commune with her. The story is itself asking for those heroes to return THROUGH the main character. She’s expressing her agency by asking them to come visit her. If they ACTUALLY VISIT HER in the end, and actively help her strike the decisive blow (or realize the pacifist plan she comes up with) against Palpatine once and for all, that’s not overshadowing her. They just didn’t have the will (or the ability, or the time, or all three) to figure out a way to get to that ending in a satisfying way. So they did a shortcutted half-ass version of it instead and called it a wrap.
Part of the reason Rey is such a strong character in TFA and TLJ is because in those instances, the writers didn’t succumb to the need to protect their character, to remove obstacles from her path or engineer situations so she can more easily realize her potential. If they needed their character to be strong enough to do what the story’s arcs dictated they do, dramatically - they cleverly and creatively wrote their character to BE that strong in organic, natural means within that story. Rise of Skywalker is a good example of writers not believing in their characters fully, and playing “prevent defense” to use a football metaphor.
In the end, I just find myself treating the ST like Dragon Ball Z’s Buu Saga/Dragon Ball’s Buu Arc. It’s there, but I don’t think I’ll go out of my way to watch it. The OT/Cell Saga had a much better, more satisfying ending.
They didn’t have any faith in figuring out how to incorporate past heroes into a generational conclusion so they just sidestepped the whole thing, and it wound up completely unsatisfying.
Arguably this problem plagues the entire trilogy, only the buck stops here.
“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” - DV
Part of why it sucks is that it is ostensibly the end, the final conclusion. If episodes 10-12 were a foregone conclusion rather than explicitly precluded by all the marketing, I might be just a bit less harsh on this movie.
It really is difficult for me to muster goodwill for this movie. It’s just so… dumb is the only word that fits it. It’s a paint by numbers cowardly way to handle the conclusion. And I don’t blame anybody in particular, just the platonic construct of the “author.” I don’t care what went on behind the scenes or politically, the end result needs to be treated as a product of an author, even if there were many hands involved at a high level. And I just don’t see that author as having anything interesting to say. It feels to me like someone tasked with doing something they didn’t want to do and finding the easiest path to completion. An algorithm wrote the movie, with no sense of myth and only a sense of storytelling inferred from earlier material and regurgitated as a matter of rote.
It’s an after dinner mint served in lieu of the final course, which turned out to use artificial sweetener.
The author of this movie, who appears to be no one particular person and could very well not truly exist as such, is a hack fraud. It’s really saying something that the prior movie, without being modified at all, makes for a genuinely superior ending and your movie actively detracts from the sum of the series. This movie felt obligated to exist, and this pervades it.
It was made by Gill from The Simpsons.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
It was made by Gill from The Simpsons.
Possibly the single greatest way to describe it.
Indeed! Well put!
Whopper.
Peace is a lie
There is only passion…
The more I dwell on it the less I blame this movie for its shortcomings, I feel like I can’t lay all the criticism on IX’s shoulders given the tight spot it was in. Had there been a through line things would be different, but especially in hindsight I got issues with the whole trilogy and TROS inherited some of that baggage, forcing it to be worse than it would have been with a cleaner structure underneath to support it.
“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” - DV
The more I dwell on it the less I blame this movie for its shortcomings, I feel like I can’t lay all the criticism on IX’s shoulders given the tight spot it was in. Had there been a through line things would be different, but especially in hindsight I got issues with the whole trilogy and TROS inherited some of that baggage, forcing it to be worse than it would have been with a cleaner structure underneath to support it.
This movie could have been about Max Rebo getting the band back together for one final performance of Jedi Rocks and it would have been better than TROS.
I don’t buy for a second the argument that the movie was dealt a shit hand from which to build from. Palpatine’s terrible return was the fault of TROS. Rey Palpatine was the fault of TROS. The lack of a final character arc for Finn, the total waste of Hux, the corner they painted the story into in the final battle, the joke of a final scene was all the fault of TROS.
There was a universe of squandered possibility here, and the filmmakers deserve no credit for this complete abdication of vision.
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
Putting aside all my issues with it, TLJ was setting up a potential masterpiece.
Peace is a lie
There is only passion…
I don’t hate this movie nearly as much as most people on here, but I agree that most of the fault lies with Abrams and Terrio. There’s nothing in TFA or TLJ that would prevent the third installment from being good. But instead of sticking to their vision, Abrams and Terrio decided to try and please everyone, which has never worked once in the entire history of entertainment.
My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX
I don’t buy for a second the argument that the movie was dealt a shit hand from which to build from.
Agreed. The only bad hand they were dealt was the loss of Carrie, and no matter how they handled it, that was pretty much always going to be the most forgivable component of the film. Everything else feels like it was picked piece by piece out of a random Star Wars plot generator. I don’t hate it, but it’s definitely disappointing to think about what could have been- not just for the TROS but for the sequels as a whole.
And even the Carrie thing was an unforced error, because there was nothing about Rise of Skywalker that necessitated digitally resurrecting her out of old footage. It wasn’t a necessity that they do that, much less in the weird way that they did it either.
Respectfully addressing the character’s death off-screen wasn’t even considered, and in the execution, they ended up doing the opposite of “honoring” her.
The bad hand they were dealt was the fact that no-one gave a crap about the story after TLJ. Unlike TESB, which left the world trembling in anticipation for the next instalment, TLJ left folks saying “eh, I don’t care anymore”.