oojason, exactly! While The Last Jedi isn’t perfect with the transition between it and The Force Awakens it at least continues the narrative established. The Rise of Skywalker just feels like a reset as Rey goes through the same trials and tribulations she overcame in The Last Jedi. People often talk about how the Throne Room in The Last Jedi rips off straight from Return of the Jedi but don’t mention how The Rise of Skywalker does the very same thing when Rey confronts Palpatine. Dark Rey is more or less the equivalent to the mirror cave. It goes on and on. The Rise of Skywalker feels like J.J. was continuing the story he felt should’ve happened after The Force Awakens with a few tweaks to accommodate things that couldn’t be undone like Luke’s death.
Omni, I can’t wait to read this book. She also gives her thoughts on the Prequels. It should be a great read. I agree with her. I like Kathleen Kennedy. Just not always with Star Wars. There’s no disputing she’s had a great career as a producer. However as president of Lucasfilm I don’t think she’s the right person to head the company. I agree with her about Han. I think what she’s saying is spot on. There’s no consequences or payoff from Han’s death. They played a little with it in The Last Jedi but only on face value versus delving into how it haunts Kylo. I guess you could say The Rise of Skywalker does a little with his redemption but the context is jumbled up. The same could be said with Luke’s death. It has no consequence on the story. I agree with her about Rey. We don’t know anything about her as she’s surrounded in mystery and how she comes to use the Force is very inconsistent with established rules and lore.
Her comments abou Luke, Leia, and Han remind me of this exchange from George and Lawrence Kasdan.
Kasdan: I think you should kill Luke and have Leia take over.
Lucas: You don’t want to kill Luke.
Kasdan: Okay, then kill Yoda.
Lucas: I don’t want to kill Yoda. You don’t have to kill people. You’re a product of the 1980s. You don’t go around killing people. It’s not nice.
Kasdan: No, I’m not. I’m trying to give the story some kind of an edge to it.
Lucas: I know you’re trying to make it more realistic, which is what I tried to do when I killed Ben—but I managed to take the edge off of it—and it’s what I tried to do when I froze Han. But this is the end of the trilogy and we’ve already established that there are real dangers. I don’t think we have to kill anyone to prove it.
Kasdan: No one has been hurt.
Lucas: Ben and Han, they’ve both—Luke got his hand cut off.
Kasdan: Ben and Han are fine. Luke got a new hand two cuts later.
Lucas: By killing somebody, I think you alienate the audience.
Kasdan: I’m saying that the movie has more emotional weight if someone you love is lost along the way; the journey has more impact.
Lucas: I don’t like that and I don’t believe that.
Kasdan: Well, that’s all right.
Lucas: I have always hated that in movies, when you go along and one of the main characters gets killed. This is a fairytale. You want everybody to live happily ever after and nothing bad happens to anybody.
Kasdan: I hate it when characters get killed, too.
Lucas: Oh, you do.
Kasdan: I do.
Lucas: I resent it and I resented it when I was a little kid. I would watch and there would be these five guys and one of them would be the funny clown and halfway through, one of them gets killed. Why did they kill the lead? He was the best character.
Marquand: I felt that about Ben the first time I saw Star Wars.
Kasdan: But that one worked like crazy.
Lucas: Yes, I know. But we’ve done that. The same thing with Han. The biggest reaction we got was when people asked, “How can you leave the movie half finished?” Well, the main thrust of this one is that it has to be fun.
Kasdan: All of our material here is not fun.
Lucas: Well, I know we’ve got the serious side.
Kasdan: We have a lot of grim stuff here.
Lucas: Well, that’s why we have to concentrate on the fun.
Kasdan: There isn’t much fun stuff. There is the Jabba stuff.
Lucas: That’s fun.
Kasdan: And the Ewok stuff and that’s it.
Lucas: There are three parts to the movie: Jabba, the Ewoks, and Luke and the Emperor. Luke and the Emperor are not fun and the other two are. I think that we can roll along with the fun parts and still have this undercurrent of a fairly serious study of father and son, and good and evil. The whole concept of the original film is that Luke redeems his father, which is the classic fairytale: a good father/bad father who the good son will turn back into the good father. We can have a serious line and still have a fairly light film.
The whole point of the film, the whole emotion that I am trying to get at the end of this film, is for you to be real uplifted, emotionally and spiritually, and feel absolutely good about life. That is the greatest thing that we could possibly ever do.