Broom Kid

I don’t think Carrie’s passing had much to do with it at all. I think Trevorrow couldn’t come up with a version of the story where he could redeem Kylo, and that’s what caused the split. None of his drafts have it, and the Jack Thorne draft that does have it… he probably didn’t want his name on that once he read it, because shortly after it came in, he was gone. Most of the other aspects of the two approaches share similarities (which is probably why Trevorrow got the credit he got, even if Abrams and Terrio really did page one rewrite it) but the only really big difference is Kylo.

I do believe the wedge issue was Lucasfilm execs believed this story needed to have the redemption of its bad guy, and the writer/director they initially hired to deliver that ending didn’t feel the same way. The guy they got to replace Trevorrow not only would do it, but he’d resurrect Carrie Fisher in order to get it done. Oh, and he ALSO directed the biggest domestic earner of all time, whereas the other guy just made Book of Henry.

That probably seemed like a pretty brilliant move in September 2017.

DominicCobb said:

I’ve heard the 50 completed scripts thing too. If it’s true, it’s crazy it never got made, though I guess that’s how Lucas rolled. You almost have to think it’s a shame too? Unless it sucked of course. I wonder if they’d ever consider reviving the concept for D+, but I doubt it.

My bet is that they’ve basically been parting it out for whatever they need.

But yeah, if they ever need a quick hit of content for their streaming network, it’s got to be very tempting to know the development process on a full 5 season series is already finished. Literally all you have to do is start shooting it.

IIRC, Underworld had a Palpatine Origin Story episode that essentially made the case Palpatine only really sought out the Sith because he couldn’t handle getting done wrong by his girlfriend.

Ronald D. Moore talked about it some after everything got sold, and I think that interview he gave is where we found out the whole show had something like 50-plus completely finished scripts? Also that Moore and Lucas would get in full-on FIGHTS over the story direction. Not gentle disagreements, but very heated arguments about what “Star Wars” can be.

Which I thought was awesome. Make that dude fight for his story, not just sit there and dole it out. Make him do the work of justifying the ideas that fly into his head, as opposed to just handing them down to people like they’re historical documents.

I really wish that Coruscant uprising stuff had somehow made it through the development process. It looks so good.

IIRC, the version in the film and on the isolated score is slightly different than the one on the soundtrack. Someone matched the waveforms up and the iso score was different than the TLJ and TFA soundtracks (which were identical)

That last two paragraphs of mine that you just quoted are speaking directly to that, though. It’s a big part of Hamill’s performance, and why that performance is so good.

FreezingTNT2 said:

Wish they made it clear within the film itself that he didn’t really want the Jedi to end.

They did. He literally says it to Kylo at the close of their duel.

He’s angry and upset and he’s got an audience to vent to in Rey, so he’s trying to convince himself as much as he is trying to convince her that the last few years of his solitary life on this rock mean more than they actually do. His behaviors are saying just as much as any line of dialog would (and even then, he gets an actual line of dialog that makes it explicit later in the movie)

But it’s not an accident we see him carefully folding his Jedi robes, or that he’s still got a shrine with the Sacred Jedi Texts up and standing, or that he can’t make himself destroy the tree, and that he’s very upset at the possibility of Yoda having burned those books. All of those things are clear evidence that he’s not really dedicated to letting the Jedi end. He’s talking a good game but he hasn’t convinced himself, and every time push comes to shove he chooses to PROTECT the Jedi way, not destroy it. The very fact he chooses to train her at all speaks to the idea that he’s not convinced that it’s really “time for the Jedi to end.”

When did Rian Johnson say that? He’s obviously afraid - it’s in Hamill’s performance, it’s in Luke’s behavior, it’s definitely present in the moment where he talks a good game about burning down the tree and then doesn’t do it because he’s scared to.

Yes, he wants to stop the cycle, but he’s also scared to do it. And eventually he learns that his method of stopping the cycle is a bad one anyway, because while his intent was good, the way he went about it wasn’t.

He’s not “suddenly” on Ahch-To because of fear, it was always a part of why he went there. Fear, Shame, Anger, Sadness… all of that is mixed together in his motivations to cut himself off and stay cut off.

Him having Leia’s saber stashed away in there isn’t a “plot hole.”

Streaming has become so mainstream and prioritized that for many people, the option to watch, much less own, physical discs isn’t even really an option to them. The idea that there’s a big enough number of people who would buy physical releases of the show instead of streaming them doesn’t seem realistic to me, I agree. They wouldn’t lose money if they issued this series on blu-ray or 4K UHD.

For better or worse (largely worse if you care about things like picture quality) the mainstream audience considers streaming to be the primary home video format now, and prefer to watch their shows via the internet. The discs wouldn’t be competition with that. They’d be a very cool secondary income stream for the property though, and they should exploit that.

He also kept his Jedi robes. And when he went to go burn the tree - he couldn’t burn it. Yoda had to do it for him. Luke didn’t really want the Jedi to end, (“I will not be the last Jedi” are some of the last words he ever speaks") and he couldn’t make himself do it. That he kept Leia’s lightsaber as a memento isn’t a “plot hole” because it doesn’t undo or mess up anything from a plotting perspective, much less a thematic or character one. It’s absolutely in keeping with the Luke from The Last Jedi. Luke was being dishonest to both himself and Rey about why he was really on that island, and it wasn’t some big noble aspiration. He was depressed and scared and ashamed.

I didn’t ignore what you said concerning the fire range - the movie also establishes that the First Order probably could have, at any point, jumped ahead and just wiped them out, but Hux instead chose to just follow behind and essentially torture them instead of just getting it over with. He’s being sadistic and awful and enjoying it instead of putting in the work.

Which is ALSO a thematic element that keeps getting referenced and paid off later in the movie - the villains’ hubris and arrogance gets them ruined. Had Hux been as ruthless as he pretends he is, the movie would have ended after 30 minutes. Had Snoke been paying attention instead of feeling himself, he wouldn’t have gotten bisected. If Kylo had been paying attention instead of raging out on Crait, he would have figured out what was really going on before it was too late.

Here’s a larger point that I’m trying to make - aside from the fact these “plot holes” aren’t really plot holes at all, if your deconstruction of the story is being done solely to point out how there are ways to effectively end the story after 30 minutes because the bad guys “could have” done something else that they didn’t do and it would wipe out the good guys, then you’re not really worried about the story or the plot-holes, you’re basically trying to invalidate the movie, period. That’s not fixing a story, that’s anti-storytelling. That’s suggesting that our heroes need to be so pigeonholed BY the plot that the course of action they take is the only possible course of action they COULD take. That’s video-game routing, not large-scale movie storytelling. What’s the end goal of this criticism, and what is it that it’s saying about the story and the characters and the themes and ideas they represent?

The rate of cannon fire and the distance on that cannon fire isn’t important enough to invalidate whole themes and arcs, and suggesting the story needs to work that way in order to be successful doesn’t make any sense to me. Especially not in the face of how clearly the film DOES communicate all its ideas and details as they’re happening.

We’re not talking technicalities at all, though. Nothing I mentioned is a “technicality.”

And that “technicality” you are trying to mention in regards to a plot hole that isn’t, doesn’t address or even begin to engage with any of the larger thematic or character questions I brought up, either.

Poe basically led a charge, against orders, based on his own personal feeling, to destroy a big weapon that could be used against the Resistance, that got a bunch of valuable resources (and even more importantly, human lives) eradicated for little gain, and that gain was even more solidly dwarfed by the fact his “positive” outcome ended up not mattering because the second they dropped out of lightspeed a bigger, more deadly, more threatening ship greeted them. The dreadnought doesn’t matter in comparison to Snoke himself being on the scene - and that scenario gets paralleled at the end of the film on Crait to highlight the futility of pursuing that sort of “heroic” action without paying attention to what it really means in the larger scheme.

Again, that’s not a plot-hole. And where does “fixing” that “plot hole” even leave you in the context of that story and what it’s doing?

But nobody’s going to do that because their perspective is so minimized that “chilling” and busying themselves with almost anything else isn’t an option. So much of who they are and what they see themselves AS is wrapped up in… that.

So they can’t “chill” because there’s nothing in it for them (or at least they don’t see that yet, if they ever will).

The only exit is exhaustion, really. Eventually you gotta hope people get tired enough and through attrition, they just quit. And then it’s a question of whether or not we keep paying attention to that churn.

That’s not a plothole, and it doesn’t really have anything to do with the point I’m making regarding Finn’s suicide run.

Poe was reckless, and did endanger the fleet. Again, this is very clearly shown to us through visuals and dialog. He also reduced the number of threats that followed them through hyperspace, yes - but considering Snoke’s flagship showed up anyway, (a giant ship that literally dwarfed the dreadnought, and brought its own set of Star Destroyers with it) the idea that losing all those pilots and ships to destroy the one dreadnought was “worth it” in the way Poe thought it was is very clearly shown by the film to be not true.

But again: What happens to the story if that “plot hole” is patched up? What is that saying in the context of the larger story, and where is it pointing? If you’re “fixing” stuff without keeping any of that in mind, what are you actually “fixing?”

Poe’s arc is started by Paige’s sacrifice, and how that sacrifice wasn’t quite in vain, but was definitely unneccessary in the larger scheme. Having Poe be in charge of a similar situation on Crait, and recognizing his mistake this time, goes a long way towards resolving that arc later in the cave when Finn is, emotionally and character-wise, where Poe was.

And that’s how you wind up with Finn wanting to make Paige’s sacrifice, but this time even less effectively, with even more on the line, and being stopped by Paige’s sister from doing that so that both Finn and Poe can complete their character arcs in this story. That’s not a plot-hole.

OutboundFlight said:

Since when are Reylos racist? Apparently I’ve been misinformed because I always assumed they were pro-Disney.

assumptions != information, though, haha. (Also, not sure how the opposite of Racism is Disney. That doesn’t make any sense)

Again: Not all “Reylos” are racist. Not all “______________” are ever just one thing. It’s why phrases like “Not all men” became comedy cliches, because everyone understands “Not all ___________” is a truism - but that’s also not the point, because in many cases nobody’s really trying to say “all ____________ are ______” in a serious, thoughtful discussion.

But some Reylos, in defending their headcanon (a big problem with Reylo has always been their weird insistence on their headcanon being validated as actual canon, as if that would somehow make their ship better instead of lamer and less fun - which is exactly what happened) accidentally displayed and even promoted racist thoughts and POVs, specifically when it came to the ways they’d disqualify the possibilities that Rey might couple with either Finn or Poe.

Anyway, it’s just another branch on the very tribalistic and angry tree that is modern online fandom, the same rules more or less apply: Groups of people who have chosen to substitute their personalities with their fandom behave nonsensically and irrationally with each other, because the point of their presence in the fandom isn’t to like things, it’s to get mad at other people for not liking things the way they want them to. So some Reylos accidentally showed their racism, and some “anti-Reylos” made a meal out of that. Were some of those “antis” unfair and opportunistic and bad faith about it? Of course they were. Not many of the people involved are honestly trying to “do the right thing” they’re just trying to feel self-righteous and justified for a small moment in an otherwise unremarkable and substance-free day. So if they can get that “win” at the expense of a total stranger on the internet, they’re going to do it.

There’s already a ton of lines, plus the music, plus the editing, plus the visual information, that show the audience that his run isn’t going to work.

The movie is also asking you to remember what a “successful” suicide run would look like - i.e. the beginning of the movie, where Rose’s sister died helping destroy the dreadnought, but that destruction didn’t actually help the resistance, and in fact hurt it immensely. A lot of the same visual and audio cues are there in Finn’s run, and the movie is hoping you’ll remember that, and remember that it ended up being a bad idea, poorly executed, that wasn’t worth the cost.

So you’ve got:

Poe saying they need to get to the cannon
Poe saying it won’t work once the cannon is charged
The AT-AT’s killing everything on the way to the cannon.
The cannon visibly being charged
Finn angrily waving everyone off for the sake of not letting them win (despite the fact they’re going to win even if he does blow up the cannon)
Poe saying the cannon is charged and it’s not going to work
Rose saying it’s not going to work
The ship, which was introduced as being a rattletrap hunk of trash, literally melting and falling apart the closer it gets
The rapid cutting showing how quickly it’s melting the closer it gets.
The music rising and getting more desperate/despairing the closer he gets.

here’s another question - since most of the criticism is coming from an “In the moment” POV, what do you think happens AFTER this scene, where Finn kills himself flying his speeder into the cannon - or the ship fails out and just smashes into the front of it, or goes in and explodes, and now the front of the cannon is blackened/charred but still spinning, or the cannon actually explodes and takes out a couple AT-AT’s on either side but there are still a bunch of walkers and Kylo’s ship (a larger version of which we just saw with the Holdo maneuver) - and the ability to call for reinforcements to just bring another one of those things down and continue the siege: What’s the story after this point? What is happening after the momentary “Yes, Finn is the suicidal hero like Paige was” that is adding to the overarching themes of the story? Why, after seeing two not particularly successful suicide missions complete themselves already in this movie, would the third time be the charm especially considering the tons of evidence being spoken/shown/heard that it 100% wouldn’t work and would be easily the least successful suicide mission of the film, and how would it’s hypothetical “working” make this movie’s aims and thematic strengths stronger than if Finn is stopped?

That scene isn’t happening in a vaccuum, and I don’t know how much more clear the movie needs to be about communicating the futility of Finn’s intent. The scene only works because of it’s obviously tragic nature: He’s going to kill himself, it’s not going to matter, and it’s a damn shame. You empathize with him, you understand why he’s doing it, but you know it’s doomed to fail. Nothing in the sequence there is suggesting his potential success (which isn’t even really a potential outcome at all) will benefit anyone.

I understand why they postponed the release of the Art book (probably to tie-in better to the big blu-ray/4k/home video launch of the movie) but at this point I feel like they should just ship it now. I’m not even really going out of my way to find leaks and scans and I feel like I’ve already read it twice based on how prevalent the images are, haha.

I think it’s been determined the editing was done to remove the original theatrical footage from the doc and replace it with the current cuts? I believe that’s the case. Everything else seems to be exactly the same.

I think it’s definitely safe to say then, that what Burnett read on YouTube is 100% what Trevorrow was looking to make before that Jack Thorne draft came in, and then he left/got fired. If the only thing he’s commented on is that stuff in the art book isn’t referring to his drafts, and is no-commenting THE ACTUAL DRAFTS, especially considering how quick he was to deny credit for the Jack Thorne draft…

Episode IX: Duel of the Fates was almost the last chapter in the Skywalker Saga. Pretty crazy.

Speaking of YouTube - I almost checked out that MauLer guy, after seeing someone on another forum I visit link to a funny back and forth on his twitter and going “oh yeah, he’s a youtuber, the Original Trilogy guys seemed to vouch for him.” So I followed the link and looked at his profile and… He basically just stalks some other YouTuber called “MovieBob” and a critic named Patrick H. Willems. That seems to be the last two straight weeks of his twitter feed, at least. I scrolled down for awhile and he’s just making fun of “MovieBob’s” weight and Willems’ intelligence and screencapping tweets by a YouTuber named Jenny Nicholson, who I guess has already blocked him. I know I got called out earlier for “judging a book by its cover” but it really seems like he’s a pretty toxic media personality, to me. Nothing but personal attacks on other people and angry tweets about people not liking things the way he wants people to like them.

But I guess liking things and focusing on the things you like don’t get your Patreon numbers where they need to be…

Looks like the next investor call is February 4th. It’s possible Iger mentions the box-set there. It’s also very possible he doesn’t, but the timing seems decent to mention to investors what their Rise of Skywalker home video plans are.

I saw that Anthony Breznican did his job and actually got in contact with principals and debunked the rumor, as opposed to the rest of “Film Twitter” which apparently just gossiped at each other in Direct Messages and posted .gifs all day.

Game on!

That’s not a Disney thing, really - that sort of thing almost never happens at any studio. And if it does, it only happens DECADES later.

Part of the reason “The Beginning” was so remarkable back in 2001 was because people DIDN’T do that for new movies. And Lucasfilm never really did it again, either. And “The Beginning” was still somewhat sanitized.

People love behind-the-scenes drama - but the people who have to still work in the industry once the drama is over don’t love it very much, and they don’t love having a salable version of it available at will for consumers to memorize, either. So those sorts of “warts ‘n’ all” documentaries and tell-alls are for later, when that effect diminished, and there’s a lot of distance accumulated.

it’s not a question of Disney trying to appear squeaky clean, it’s more that nobody wants their dirty laundry from work aired out like that.

No, he was specifically talking about the Rose/Leia stuff.

He gave the initial interview, and people got upset because he made it sound like Rose lost screentime because of Leia’s VFX work.

Then he gave the clarificaton, which didn’t actually make anyone less upset, because he basically said they didn’t even give her those scenes to shoot with “Leia” in the first place, they cut them at the script stage.

He walked that back by saying he meant what they wrote for those scenes was apparently too taxing for the VFX team to make real that they cut them before ever sending them over.

Keep an eye on Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, and Variety, definitely.