Broom Kid

People don’t overcome their shortcomings and then never ever make them ever again for the rest of their life, though.

His mistake in this example is “seeing that his nephew will commit genocide on a scale his father never dreamed of and instinctually flicking on a lightsaber” - before immediately feeling a flood of total shame at himself in response. It’s actually a lesser mistake, considering the first time he tried to save one of his genocidal relatives he kicked the hell out of him and then cut his hand off before just barely managing to stop himself from delivering the killing blow.

Nobody solves a problem in their life once and then it stays solved forever. Even real life heroes struggle with those sorts of things. That he made that mistake (among others, including subtly succumbing to hubris and vanity) doesn’t erase his maturation as a character (especially considering the rest of the film’s characterization of Luke, and Hamill’s amazing work in bringing it depth and meaning). It complicates it, but by the end of the film’s arc, it’s enriched. Luke does something no Jedi’s ever done, not even Yoda. He only unlocks the potential and ability within himself to do that because he learns - finally - from the failures he kept incurring (as we all do) when his life continued past “happily ever after.”

Oh. You were talking about that.

OK. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

DuracellEnergizer said:

1. Yellow is hardly a unique lightsaber colour. It’s been a less common tertiary lightsaber colour for the Jedi since TCW.
2. Even if it was, she of all characters doesn’t deserve it.

What kind of character “deserves” what kind of color? What’s the criteria behind this? I’ve never heard anyone suggest the colors are “Deserved” or not.

Absolutely. “Lightspeed moves at the speed of plot” was a phrase created to explain how Empire Strikes Back’s timeline made any sense (it still doesn’t, really. Neither does the ‘12 parsecs’ retcon they made w/ Solo’s boast) and the thing I keep coming back to is that none of these logic gaps and nitpicks would matter if the story was good at distracting you from them. Or if the story was good (and executed well on top of that) at all.

It’s not as if these problems were explicitly addressed IN the story that it’d make the story better. That’s the real problem. Even if Merry’s whole point in the movie was to stand over someone’s shoulder and explain how Lightspeed Skipping made sense, or how the necklace got located so quickly, it wouldn’t make those scenes any better. Sure, they’d be more logically sound, but that’s not worth much if you’re not emotionally engaged, and Rise of Skywalker isn’t great at that, so all the logical leaps being made just become all the more glaring.

Rumor is we’re getting a sequel to Rebels after this, and possibly an animated show based on Doctor Aphra.

Wanderer_ said:
The force isn’t a magical gift giving plot device,

But that’s exactly what it is. The Force does what it needs to do for the story to go where it needs to go. It only seems to make sense within a well-written story because the people executing it are better at hiding its magical gift-giving nature.

It’s literally a “mystical energy field” - it’s not a progression tree like a video game. If “training” does anything, it’s that it teaches you to stop doubting yourself and what you can do in the Force. But if you don’t doubt yourself and what you can do, the will of the Force works through you a lot more easily.

The “rules” of Star Wars are never as concrete as we love to think they are. They shift with every movie, for the sake of getting that film’s story executed correctly, and those stories are often pretty different from movie to movie, too.

(to clarify: This is not excusing any of the many problems I have with The Rise of Skywalker - it’s simply rebutting the idea that you have to be trained up in a specific way in order to “unlock” Force abilities. That’s a video game, not a movie, and video games are often not the greatest example of storytelling. Frequently, they’re almost the diametric opposite).

I really liked that Goransson never went to the Williams scores. I thought for sure he might have been saving a motif (probably the Force theme) for the final episode for maximum impact, but he never did. And I think that’s great.

I don’t think anyone needs to be angry or aggressive about any of this here. And since here is made up of other members, and its pretty obvious everyone here wants original versions made officially available for sale - there’s probably no real reason to be angry and aggressive with anyone else on that subject since we’ve all got that as common ground here.

Getting aggressive about “the situation” isn’t going to make anyone want them more than they already want them - which is a lot. It’s probably just going to make people want to want them somewhere else.

Oh, you know what I forgot as a pretty big disappointment?

That “The Emperor” was used exclusively. I wanted someone to say “Sheev” at some point. I almost expected it to come out of some Resistance member’s mouth and cause a moment of levity as people reacted to it.

“He Sheev now?”
“He Sheev now.”

It’s happened here. It happens here. There’s no reason to say it doesn’t. I’m not arguing with you, and I’m not upset - I just thought it looked like you misunderstood what he was actually saying in your eagerness to thump the podium a little more, and tried to clarify (which he agreed was the correct read).

“Maybe don’t be so angry/aggressive” isn’t a bad suggestion, is it?

Apologies for stepping on any toes. I’ll forgo adding any statistical updates to the thread.

The Last Jedi didn’t hit single digit millions until its 19th day of release (539mil total at that point)
The Rise of Skywalker got there on its 14th day. (417mil total at that point)

Honestly, Johnson could probably adapt some of the ideas he might have had for the Looper universe at that point: Widespread acknowledgement/acceptance of telekinetic powers was a key aspect of that movie’s worldbuilding. Repurposing some of that but making it The Force could be interesting. Imagine a Star Wars universe where “everyone can tap into the Force to some degree or another” isn’t just an idealized notion, but a reality within the fiction that simultaneously complicates and normalizes the energy force and makes it a little less mystic, but no less mysterious.

Thank you so much for linking that!

DominicCobb said:

Broom Kid said:

So is that the editor admitting that Kylo Ren’s was the primary character arc for not just this movie but the trilogy?

Where is she saying that? I kind of took it to mean not just Kylo but the Rey Palpatine thing.

I started to type out “or that Rey is ‘bad’ but because she had hope and kept an open mind she was ‘good’” but decided against it and deleted that, because that’s such a myopic/misguided read of her character I didn’t think that’s what they were referencing. Rey being descended of Palpatine doesn’t make her “bad” at her core/nature, especially since her parents were also not evil.

If the main point of the movie is 1-to-1 describing Kylo Ren’s character and arc it’s hard not to think that was the primary concern going into the project. What was said was :

Basically, the message of the film is, ‘Hey you know what? You can be bad and good can come into your life. And maybe if you’re open-minded to it, extraordinary things can change your mind. And you have to believe there’s always hope.’”

The message of the film is Kylo Ren’s arc. There’s not really any other way to parse that statement, because it doesn’t really track with anyone else. Certainly not Rey, because she was never “bad” and good didn’t come into her life, she was the good that came into everyone else’s.

So is that the editor admitting that Kylo Ren’s was the primary character arc for not just this movie but the trilogy?

Because that’s…

Seriously, the inability to look at the story through any other eyes but those is a big problem.

True, and that’s a good point. I misunderstood the reason you were making the Into Darkness comparison, apologies.

Paxis had multiple sources (as did Making Star Wars) - the fact that leaks happened (leaks always happen, they’ve been happening on big movies for about 20 years now) regarding the plot of TROS doesn’t somehow lend veracity to this “leak” which has one single source and is very, very specific about a lot of details, and as such is very specific on how it contradicts itself.

This work of fan-fiction even makes sure to answer why those leaks were happening, and the answer it gave (it was studio-approved sabotage) is also ridiculous.

The Rise of Skywalker leaked because Bad Robot productions apparently are pretty leaky (you can look back and see this to be the case) and it leaked through at least 5 or 6 people, if not more. This is all coming from one person, unverified, who is telling a story so wild and contradictory and specific that it’s almost impossible to take seriously. It has an answer for everything, and those answers only make sense in a vacuum, because once you start looking at them as a whole nothing holds together. The story’s coherence depends on its reader being propelled by the feeling they get from “seeing through the lies of the Jedi” if you will.

Ironically - the story is constructed like a JJ Abrams movie. You’re so distracted by the latest example of “WTF now THIS is happening” that you don’t stop to look at the greater whole and realize that none of these stories really connect with each other at all.

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.

Oh dang, I initially had quoted ATM’s “Honestly I don’t think RJ works well with characters he didn’t create himself,” but I don’t know why you’d try to rebut my response to that statement if you didn’t on some level agree with it? I must have confused you following up on my own response with the person I was quoting.

Apologies for any misunderstanding, but I tried to be as clear as possible what I was arguing and why I was arguing it, but I did confuse you with another poster later in the conversation.

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.

There’s not going to be any “proof” there. It’s a pretty ridiculous claim for a single source to be making considering how huge it is, and how many secret/behind-the-scenes rooms this story takes place in. That one source would need to be in almost all those rooms firsthand for any of this to make sense, and making sense isn’t a huge concern considering the story opens with the notion this whole thing was an Iger-led game of 4D chess whose ultimate goal was preventing WB from competing with Marvel Studios.

act on instinct said:

I think maybe you’re misinterpreting or responding to someone other than me because my point was not to slander Rian as hard to work with, or to minimize the role of a director. But it is clear he did write TLJ and did not write Breaking Bad which was deep into its own arcs which were followed completely under his direction. The difference between those two examples is the amount of control and authorship.

No, I directly quoted you. He had control and authorship of those episodes. Those episodes were directed by Rian Johnson, and for any of this conversation to make any sense, it assumes that the director is a major part of a film’s “authorship.” Whether you meant to minimize the role of director you were inadvertently doing so and that’s what I was responding to. He was given control and authorship of The Last Jedi to a larger degree than he was on Breaking Bad, but the idea that he doesn’t work well with other people’s creations doesn’t hold a lot of water to me. If that were true I don’t think any of the three episodes he was put in charge of would have worked out as well as they did, or that he’d keep being asked back to direct them. If you’re solely looking at Star Wars and Star Wars alone, maybe I could see that argument being put forward, but I still don’t think it stands up very well considering the movie essentially played out exactly the way he wanted it to, and it only gets wobblier once you apply a larger perspective and take in the rest of his career outside of Star Wars, and see the collaborations he had were smooth and productive, and the end result was, as with every other movie he’s made, a critical and financial success.

But the director isn’t just a director on any set. He’s also partially a cinematographer, partially an editor, partially an acting coach, and yes - partially a writer. Even if they never get those credits. The idea that he doesn’t work well with characters he didn’t create doesn’t make sense considering one of the best shows on television, one he had zero hand in creating or developing, kept having him come back to direct increasingly more and more important episodes.

The idea that he doesn’t work well with people or their creations doesn’t hold a lot of water when looking at his career, a career which has never actually had a failure in it, looking at both audience, critical, and financial receptions.

Rian got what he wanted because he works well with people and those people all helped him realize his vision.

ATMachine said:

Honestly I don’t think RJ works well with characters he didn’t create himself. He’s probably a far better director without having to deal with a collaborative series of films.

The three episodes of Breaking Bad he directed are widely considered three of the best episodes that show ever produced.

Rian Johnson works well with basically everybody.