DominicCobb

pleasehello said:

This is actually an issue I do take with TLJ. The moralizing, while not central to the story is way too on the nose. First of all, the issues in question are comically black and white. We see the animal abuse and child abuse first-hand. We see the mustache twirling, vulgar rich war profiteering people of Canto Bight. It’s obvious to a person even with a low propensity for critical analysis that these things are wrong. But then, the movie goes a step further and tells the audience flat-out that these things are bad, as if we didn’t already know. It’s lacking in subtlety and I think a little insulting to the viewer.

I’m not sure this is true. This is the offending speech by Rose where she explains why Canto Bight is bad:

Look closer. My sister and I grew up in a poor mining system. The First Order stripped our ore to finance its military… then shelled us to test their weapons. They took everything we had. And who do you think these people are? There is only one business in the galaxy that’ll get you this rich. Selling weapons to the First Order. I wish… I could put my fist through this whole lousy beautiful town.

I will always support thoughtfulness in terms of the storytelling of Star Wars and its meaning, I don’t mean to suggest otherwise. But everything has their own wavelength, and so naturally there are things that would feel out of place from that wavelength. I just think what you’re suggesting is something more in the vein of Trek, where it less about grandiose myth and fairy tale and more about nitty gritty politics and and the nature of justice and such. SW has never really been about ‘justice’ in that way. Yes, the Jedi are the guardians of peace and justice, but their ethos are compassion and benevolence. Understanding and forgiveness. Retribution, revenge, punishment, these things aren’t supposed to be part of the Jedi philosophy, and, by extension, the philosophy of the series itself.

For me, Star Wars being “about” redemption is more just that redemption fits in cleanly with all the other things it’s “about.” You can’t just ignore that aspect, because they’re all connected, like a house of cards - pull one out and the whole thing tumbles (and I would argue the whole thing did tumble in TROS, but because of other areas). For me, looking at whether the good guys or the bad guys are the main characters is the wrong way of looking at it. Hero or villain is the wrong way of looking at it. Kylo Ren was designed to toe the line of that easy classification. Ever since TESB, the idea that the potential for the dark side exists within all people who use the force became a huge point of the story of the series. From then on, it wasn’t as easy as Luke being the hero who would defeat the evil and win. That evil power, that was something he had to face within himself - that was something he could become. The fight against evil is not an ‘us vs. them’ thing, it’s a universal struggle that we all must face within ourselves - right vs. wrong, selflessness vs. selfishness, etc. That’s what the dark side is, not some other, not some one dimensional space Nazi that we can so easily put into a box. This is the brilliance of TLJ, for instance. We assume things about Kylo because he’s the villain, and Luke because he’s the hero - but the truth is that it was Luke who succumbed to the dark side which was the thing that pushed Ben over the edge.

Kylo Ren is a perfect continuation of that central conflict, and that central story - not redemption, but that idea of freedom of choice, and choosing to do the right thing. To cast the character aside as just ‘bad guy’ or ‘villain,’ whose story must be defined in those terms only, is to miss the point completely.

pleasehello said:

DominicCobb said:

RogueLeader said:

Regardless of your opinions on it, I definitely think now that the trilogy is over I feel like The Last Jedi will be seen as the most important movie in the trilogy. Maybe not now or in a year from now, but as time goes on I think people will appreciate that this movie had a lot more to say than either TFA or TROS. To me it felt like JJ wanted to honor Star Wars in a very superficial way with his films, whereas Rian showed his love for Star Wars by challenging AND reaffirming its central themes. I’m not going to argue about its execution, but this thread and the interesting conversations we have here prove to me that there is a lot more depth with this film in comparison to 7 or 9 worth discussing.

I have no doubt in my mind this is true. I believe I said as much when the film came out, years down the line this will be universally regarded as one of the very best SW films.

I don’t know about universal. For people who see movies as a vehicle for artistic expression and more thoughtful thematic material, sure. People for whom movies are nothing more than thrill-rides, the quality of which is judged by the number of 'slposions in it (there are a lot of people like this), probably not.

Even still, TLJ has what I think are some of the most exciting and best directed action sequences of the series.

I just have trouble understanding you in general on this topic. Again you’re back to saying that if the villain is redeemed, suddenly that becomes the “central” and “primary” story being told. Again you seem to think the message they’re trying to send is that Kylo Ren is a Nazi. You come up with every possible explanation for why a bad guy shouldn’t live, regardless of whether the implications make sense for the style of story that Star Wars actually is. You could easily apply the same sort of interrogation for plenty of other aspects of the SW universe. It’s the same sort of thing as that argument in Clerks about killing innocent people by blowing up the Death Star. It’s irrelevant to the story as is being told. Star Wars shouldn’t be monolithic, but at some point you have to accept that you’re basically just asking it to be a different kind of thing entirely. Go watch Star Trek or something instead.

RogueLeader said:

Regardless of your opinions on it, I definitely think now that the trilogy is over I feel like The Last Jedi will be seen as the most important movie in the trilogy. Maybe not now or in a year from now, but as time goes on I think people will appreciate that this movie had a lot more to say than either TFA or TROS. To me it felt like JJ wanted to honor Star Wars in a very superficial way with his films, whereas Rian showed his love for Star Wars by challenging AND reaffirming its central themes. I’m not going to argue about its execution, but this thread and the interesting conversations we have here prove to me that there is a lot more depth with this film in comparison to 7 or 9 worth discussing.

I have no doubt in my mind this is true. I believe I said as much when the film came out, years down the line this will be universally regarded as one of the very best SW films.

I just mean in this specific case you’re unwilling to see the potential for a redemption where the villain lives.

FreezingTNT2 said:

Another very disappointing idea: Rey not being either a Skywalker or a Solo (with Skywalker blood). Seriously, why have the first six movies in the Skywalker saga be focused on the Skywalker family, then have the last three movies in the entire Skywalker saga be about a nobody who is the granddaughter of Darth Sidious and has no biological connection to the Skywalker family whatsoever?

I mean, that’s the whole point.

FreezingTNT2 said:

But the whole “don’t abuse animals” thing feels so ham-fisted and forced, and it comes across as pandering rather than organic writing.

Genuine question - in what way is this true?

I thought those sequences were both pretty good actually. Star Wars is derivative by nature.

Broom Kid said:

OutboundFlight said:

I don’t know. I think it’d be fairly easy to disguise yourself around the galaxy. Wear Mandalorian or Booush armor. In Kylo’s case, grow a beard and cut your hair. In Vader’s, no one knew what he looked like under the helmet. This would be helped with Luke/Rey claiming they are dead.

The problem with immediate death is it isn’t very interesting. Vader and Kylo never confront what they have done. Love should be used as the tipping point back over, but once on the light, it would have been nice to feel some remorse for their actions.

And I think all of this is well and good, but it’s also going back to that fundamental question of what “Star Wars is about” as if there’s a central unifying thesis behind all the storytelling decisions being made (I don’t think there really should be) as opposed to Star Wars being defined by its look and sound (which I think is the most unifying aspect, and probably should be)

Except now you’re the one placing limitations on story potential.

Thinking in realistic terms like that doesn’t really seem to be right wavelength for these films. This is a universe where most people probably wouldn’t recognize Ben Solo or know who he is, and Kylo Ren would just be the thing of myth.

Hal 9000 said:

As I was reading the Jedi beacon activating and spreading to other planes, I heard the score from Return of the King as the beacons of Gondor are lit.

Same.

StarkillerAG said:

Yeah, what was he expecting? Did he really think Disney would go with his drafts after the intense fan backlash to the prequels? Disney wanted to distance themselves from the prequels as fast as possible, and the first step to doing that was rejecting Lucas’s drafts. Of course, now that the majority of the Star Wars fanbase has grown to appreciate the prequels, that decision has backfired horribly, but Disney had no way of seeing it back then.

That’s not even it. Regardless of what Disney did or didn’t want, it’s crazy to think that once they’d brought in a new filmmaker they wouldn’t give them free reign to use or not use Lucas’s ideas, and that that filmmaker wouldn’t decide to change things. Honestly it’s kind of just Lucas’s narcissism thinking that everyone would just blindly follow what he had laid out for them without having ideas of their own.

It’s only the rabid fans who think Lucas had a brilliant 9 episode saga written out since the dawn of the franchise, and Disney steered away from it. JJ and co. likely knew that Lucas probably shat out his treatments in a couple days before he handed them over.

Well, frankly, that makes him seem pretty stupid.

Broom Kid said:

The point you made about Rey’s threat being her own insecurity and unsurety pushing her to the darkside is a great one! And I wish THAT had been made a little more concrete and was done a LOT more cleanly and effectively! And you can see how that’s sort of what they’re TRYING to do by “completing her arc” on Exogol, but it just doesn’t land because it’s all done so poorly, and it’s being sorta/kinda presented as PART of the same thing that leads to Kylo’s redemption, but the two aren’t really linked very strongly at all, and it ends up diminishing BOTH arcs in the end.

This reminds me that I saw something about a deleted moment where Ben tells Rey not to strike Palpatine down in anger on Exegol. I’m not sure how this scene worked in practice, obviously, but if true that it existed it’s a real shame it didn’t make it into the film. In my mind having Rey and Ben face essentially the same struggle seems redundant, but if there had been a moment like this, where you see Ben plead to Rey not to make the same mistakes he did, I wouldn’t have minded it as much. In a fitting way it would have been full circle for his “you need a teacher moment.” Not to mention it would potentially have resolved the issue where Rey seemingly does exactly what Palpatine wanted (killing him) and that’s a good thing somehow.

You’re absolutely right about Finn/Poe, clearly a source of untapped potential, considering their chemistry.

Finn/Rose is a weird one because even in TLJ it’s clearly a one-sided crush. I think the kiss was Rian tipping his hand a bit too much about the direction he wanted that to go in, and, honestly, as upsetting as Rose’s diminished role in TROS is, it’s not terribly odd that she and Finn aren’t together. Chemistry or not, their story in TLJ is not them falling in love.

Either way, the dumbest possible pairing is Rey/Poe. As if it wasn’t bad enough that they didn’t share the screen together until the final moments of TLJ, to shove them together as Trevorrow did, with the implication that they’ve been in love for awhile is supremely silly. It’s not the actors’ chemistry pushing the pairing, and it’s obviously not the preexisting story pushing the pairing - it’s just Trevorrow/Connelly/certain fans who want the two hot people to kiss because that’s what happens in movies.

As for Reylo, I’m not a shipping type of person, but I find it easy to see the ways in which them coming together romantically fits as a conclusion to both of their arcs. Regardless of whether they ended up together, I do think they were purposefully playing for romance in TLJ, and I felt like it was necessary for this to be acknowledged in some way in IX. Whether the way they did it was the right way to do it is another question.

pleasehello said:

I liked Luke’s increased role in this script mostly as a sort of guiding force for both Rey and Kylo except for his final confrontation with Kylo. You want to talk about Luke being out of character. His momentary lapse in TLJ when he considers killing Kylo is nothing compared to the ending of this draft in which he completely condemns Kylo, rejecting him out of hand, “you are no Skywalker” or whatever it is he says. I hated that coming from Luke. It’s made all the more useless when Kylo has a change of heart 2 minutes later anyway.

Yes, that in particular was really distasteful. The “no one’s ever really gone line” is completely ignored here, between that and Leia having completely given up on her son before the abrupt force call she makes that changes his heart.

Broom Kid said:

“Just on a basic level though, why does Kylo’s redemption have to be a part of Rey’s story?”

I don’t know how else to answer this for you! LOL. By the point his redemption becomes legitimately viable, it’s firmly her story and he’s HER villain. He’s not a supporting or secondary protagonist. I don’t understand how you possibly make his redemption NOT in service to her story under those circumstances, and those ARE the circumstances by the time his redemption is seriously on the table. It’s not a what-if or a hypothetical at that point. It’s 2 1/2 movies into a 3 movie cycle that is absolutely her story, and his place IN that story is just as firm and absolute. He’s the villain of her story. His redemption needs to be in service to that to be successful.

Well, that’s brings us to a different line of discussion. If he’s redeemed, who is she up against? That was the central question that forced JJ to bring back Palpatine, so I guess I’m starting to see your train of thought as to why this was sort of the incept point for things going wrong with TROS.

But there’s a few things to consider. First of all, the Palpatine aspect of TROS was pretty bad, but it wasn’t inherently bad - there are ways it could have been done better. Second, there were other villains who could have stepped in - you have the whole First Order, Hux, and the unused potential of the Knights of Ren to consider. Finally, Rey’s main conflict this trilogy has never been her vs. Kylo Ren. It’s always been her vs. herself and her perception of who she is and who she can be. One of the few right ideas (executed poorly) that they had for TROS was that the main threat for Rey was herself, and her own potential for the dark side. When she fights Kylo, she beats him, but it’s a failure because she’s acted out in anger. That’s smart, regardless of execution. I think there are many ways they could have followed down this path of Rey, rather than Kylo, being the villain of her own story. In my mind that’s the proper continuation of what’s been set up. To me, super powered good Rey facing off against super powered evil Kylo as the climax of the film/trilogy/saga is boring. That’s why the DOTF confrontation is so lame. These characters should be more complicated than that.

That’s why, in my mind, Kylo shouldn’t Rey’s final antagonist in IX. In TLJ for most of the film her antagonist is actually Luke, then Snoke, and only becomes Kylo again at the end. Yet, despite this, they have a now have a much more complex relationship than the typical good guy/bad guy. DOTF abandons this complexity for the worse. TROS at least attempts to continue with it, even if it’s not handled so elegantly.

Broom Kid said:

I still don’t understand why redeeming Kylo would have made it his story as much as Rey’s.

I’m not saying that. I’m saying his path to redemption needed to serve her story, ultimately, because the sequel trilogy IS REY’S STORY first and foremost. It’s not his. That’s not a logical leap. It’s not his story, it’s not structured as such, and it doesn’t play that way. It’s her story, and his role as villain is in service to that story. If you’re going to make him a good guy, it needs to happen in a way that resolves her arc just as much (preferably moreso) than his. Otherwise you’re just dividing focus and introducing confusion. This was also a big problem with the prequels, there wasn’t any unified focus to the storytelling.

The redemption of Kylo Ren is poorly done in TROS for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest is that it doesn’t really serve her story or close any of her arcs. His redemption isn’t a key want of hers as she heads into the finale, so when it happens, it’s not as meaningful as it should have been. Not only is his redemption not done very well, it’s not thematically clear who its for. If it’s for HIM, then it’s out of place because it’s not his story. If it’s for Leia, it’s really out of place because the only way that has any impact is through the audience carrying ALL of the water for Abrams via metatextual familiarity with the series. If it’s for Rey, then it needs to be the last piece that slots into her arc that reallizes it’s successful completion - but the movie tells us THAT happens on Tatooine, when she buries the sabers and takes a last name.

Just on a basic level though, why does Kylo’s redemption have to be a part of Rey’s story? Why can’t it be a story in and of itself in the way that Finn’s is? Just because he’s the villain? I don’t know if I buy that argument on paper in the general sense.

And again, regardless (and I know I’m repeating this a million times), there’s plenty of ways his redemption could have fed into Rey’s story.

I’m not going to argue that his redemption wasn’t done sloppily in TROS. But even still, you could make the argument, if you were so inclined, that it does serve Rey’s story in many respects.

So it’s a redemption that doesn’t have a clearly stated purpose, doesn’t serve a primary thematic need, and isn’t done very well on top of all of that. I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened. I’m saying the way it did happen was very unsatisfactory on a number of levels, and the idea that other possibilities were tossed out before even being explored simply because “that’s not very star wars” was probably a mistake.

Personally, I find it very hard to see a scenario where an unredeemed Kylo Ren is a fitting continuation and conclusion for the character and the themes that have been established in the previous two movies. In my mind that’s the main reason to toss the possibility out, even before you get to what is and isn’t Star Wars.

So for me, it’s more a matter of, if you’re going to do this thing - making Kylo go full evil - that is seemingly in direct contradiction of what’s been established so far in this trilogy and in the saga as a whole, you need to have a better reason for doing it than “because redeeming him wouldn’t serve Rey’s story” and “we need to do something Star Wars hasn’t done before.”

I still don’t understand why redeeming Kylo would have made it his story as much as Rey’s. That’s still a logical leap that you’re making.

Even in TROS, the film is still clearly Rey’s story, not his.

I feel like we should be past the “Lucas’s treatments got dumped” discussion at this point. We know many of his ideas were the starting point for things in TFA (and TLJ to a lesser extent). The fact that they didn’t follow his treatments to the letter shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. First of all, we don’t even know how detailed these treatments were, they could have been very vague and general. Second, it’s very rare that a film of this sort will follow an initial treatment exactly (just look at Lucas original treatment for The Star Wars). Things will obviously change and evolve, and eventually you see a domino effect where I imagine it would have been counterintuitive for someone working on Episode IX to try to go back to the treatments, now that they’re so far down a different path.

The only realistic way Lucas’s story for the trilogy could have made it to the screen was if Lucas remained involved past the treatment stage, but this is something we know he didn’t want to do.

Broom Kid said:

I still don’t buy the idea that the antagonist can’t have an arc of their own

You keep saying I’m saying this but I’m not saying this. He can have an arc of his own. Vader has an arc of his own, but it’s primarily utility is as a supplement to Luke’s. Kylo has an arc of his own in both TFA and TLJ, but that doesn’t mean he’s a main character in either film (although you can argue he’s the co-lead of Last Jedi).

Well what I mean when I say “of his own” I mean that it doesn’t have to be in service of another character, which is what you seem to be suggesting it has to be.

What we’re disagreeing on is the idea that his arc could and should be a PRIMARY storytelling engine. Ultimately, as the villain, his arc needs to be in service to the main character’s (Rey). This happens in TFA and TLJ. It doesn’t really happen the way it needs to in TROS to realize the effect Abrams is hoping to achieve with his redemption.

I don’t see why it has to be the primary storytelling engine. Again, I don’t see how he can’t have an arc separate from the main character in the same way someone like Finn does, just because he’s the antagonist. Which is to say nothing of the fact that, like I’ve already said, there are plenty of ways they could have a Bendemption that has meaning for Rey’s character as well.

I could nitpick your post, but ultimately the main thing I’m tripped up on is I still don’t buy the idea that the antagonist can’t have an arc of their own (this idea seems to be falling in the trap ‘everything must follow the OT’), to say nothing of the fact that there’s plenty of ways that they could have made Ben’s redemption matter to Rey’s story (without diminishing Rey’s story in the process).

I don’t see why Kylo/Ben’s story should matter only in respect to Rey’s. Even if you say Finn’s story in TLJ is supporting, he’s still having a story of his own with its own meaning, separate from Rey’s. These movies have never been about just one character’s story to the exclusion of another.

That said, Kylo’s story is important in respect to Rey’s. They’re supposed to compare and contrast with each other. Ultimately JJ took the mirroring too far by literally just giving them the same story in TROS -overcoming their bloodline. But it’s not supposed to be about bloodline as much as it is legacy. Rey’s story is charting her own legacy when there’s no predetermined path for her. Kylo/Ben spends the whole trilogy in the shadow of his legacy, trying to snuff out the Solo in him in TFA and the Skywalker in him in TLJ. Kylo’s struggle is overcoming the predetermined path, good or bad. His solution in TLJ is an overcorrection - destroy it all, the Jedi and the Sith. In TROS we should expect a progression for the character, a change. If we are shown in TLJ that his motto “kill the past” is wrong and leads to desolation, in TROS we should see him grow and come to understand that there is a healthy way to integrate the past into his life. To me, the natural conclusion is for him to come to terms with his legacy and accept it for what it is after running away from it for two movies.

This is where Rey comes in. If her story in TROS is supposed to be using the knowledge of the past to build something new, then the two should naturally intertwine, for real this time (their team up in TLJ being a tease of what was to come, but not a real union because ideologically they were on two different pages).

After TFA, sure I believed Kylo would be redeemed just because of the simple “because that’s Star Wars” reason. But after TLJ, I knew Kylo would be redeemed because that was the only conclusion that made sense for the character as had been developed.

idir_hh said:

Removing Coruscant and Mortis seems to have been a mandate by Disney, they probably thought the Prequel imagery would upset the “hardcore fans” which is most likely also why they canned George Lucas’ scrips. Its infuriating how short sighted they were.

This doesn’t really make sense.

First of all, Mortis isn’t from the prequels, it’s from TCW. Since the Disney acquisition, they’ve had no problem using TCW stuff in other projects (not to mention TCW literally coming back later this month). Which is to say nothing of the fact that, while Mortis is gone in the final DOTF draft, Moraband has been added. Ultimately the real reason they changed it is because Rey has a different reason for going there (to find a spire that can transmit a message).

As for Coruscant becoming Remnicore, there’s plenty of explanations possible without resorting to conspiracy theories. In my mind, if the planet still looked like Coruscant, then it’s PT iconography regardless of what it’s called. If Disney had a problem with PT iconography to that extent they wouldn’t have just asked to change the name of the planet, they would have asked for a completely different kind of planet entirely.

Tobar said:

Here’s a gallery with all of the known concept art for DOTF

Here are some highlights from the battle of Coruscant:

Now having read the script, this is kind of funny. This is art of the “capital” of the FO, and there’s this big surprise reveal that it’s actually a ship that can fly. Well, if it looked like this, no shit.

Also, I should note that the art in that gallery comes from both the draft that has leaked and the later draft that hasn’t fully leaked yet.