DrDre

yotsuya said:

DominicCobb said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

The speculation about how the film may or may not perform is a complete waste of time.

In what sense? In this case it is not just speculation, it is a prediction based on a model, that has been scientifically validated, a model which shows movies with less interest on google trends tend to have lower box office returns, whereas higher interest generally leads to higher box office returns. So, it is simply an indicator, an indicator which gets more accurate as the movie’s release date approaches.

The truth will be in the proverbial pudding. Until then you can pat your back that everyone hates Disney Star Wars as much as you do. But the fact of the matter is, when the film is released, it’ll make the company a fair bit of money either way. And ultimately, who cares? The ST is done no matter how the film performs. The idea that Star Wars is ‘dead’ or will be after the film comes out is delusional. Disney will release more Star Wars films whether you like them or not. The only possible effect a disappointing box office run might have on the future of the franchise is that they’ll give into the nebulous desire for more of “what the fans want,” which is not something anyone should be foaming at the mouth for.

This is nonsense. I don’t hate Disney Star Wars anymore than I hated the prequels. I think both trilogies are deeply flawed, but they have their merits as well. I also haven’t stated, I expect Star Wars to be ‘dead’ in the future. So, I don’t know where all these baseless statements are coming from. I thought we had moved past these sort of outbursts, but I guess not.

The fact is interest in the franchise is waning, and I’m certainly curious about what Disney is going to do about it, and how TROS is going fit into that picture, both in terms of the current interest in the franchise, and the direction TROS might give for the future.

Not meant as an outburst. Figured you might take issue with some of my word choices but I was writing quickly and they did well as shorthand for - if not your feelings specifically - the feelings of many who talk about similar concerns on the internet. No need to take things personally, it was meant as a general comment.

As for the franchise waning, it’s a fact only so far as it’s naturally coming down from the all time high (77 excluded) of the TFA revival. Anything beyond that is up for debate - like any franchise Star Wars has always had its ups and downs. When the dust settles we’ll see if this is just a natural dip in between Episodes or something more. Either way it shouldn’t affect our view of the content itself.

Star Wars fever ran high from 77 to 80. It kept going from 80 to 83. After 83 it fizzled within 2 years. I saw the same with the PT. The energy was high, toys everywhere, then ROTS came out and poof… everything dropped off.

So I expect that after TROS that things are going to drop off faster. It isn’t a matter of the love of Star Wars waning, it is just that everyone knows the trilogy is over.

And I really can’t align the stats DrDre is quoting to the stats that currently, this far out, that the TROS teaser has 75% of the views of the TFA trailer. That is a huge number of views at this point compared to a teaser trailer that came out 4 years ago. To me that indicates that something about the stats DrDre is quoting are incomplete and aren’t giving us the whole picture.

There’s a separate thread for this subject:

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Rise-of-Skywalker-box-office-results-predictions-and-expectations/id/69130

RogueLeader said:

I know it is a different medium, but I think it would be interesting to see something similar for The Mandalorian, since it is coming out in October.

I will have a look if I can make a similar comparison, and see how interest compares to popular series in the recent past, and the other Star Wars tv series.

I found an interesting article that shows the strong relation between google searches (and trailer searches), and the box office success of blockbusters:

https://tubularinsights.com/do-youtube-movie-trailer-searches-correlate-to-box-office/

The full research paper:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://ssl.gstatic.com/think/docs/quantifying-movie-magic_research-studies.pdf&chrome=true

In light of this paper I decided to do my own little analysis with google trends to see how TROS stacks up to previous Star Wars releases, and it’s not looking good for the upcoming film. I restricted myself to google searches in the US that start a year before the release date up till six months after the release date, and looked at the interest and the cumulative interest over that time frame. Here’s the outcome:

The reference point here is RO which has the highest peak interest, which is set at 100. As can be seen the cumulative interest for TFA has been the highest of all the films considered here, and the cumulative interest for Solo over the entire 18 month period has been the lowest. However, looking at the cumulative curve for episode IX/TROS after 7 months the overall interest is the lowest of all films considered including the box office flop Solo. It also seems interest in Star Wars has been on a steady decline in general since TFA’s release. There’s still some time to go before TROS will be released, so things might change, and it will be interesting to follow its progress, but it’s safe to conclude that interest for a Star Wars film four months prior to release has never been so low, and so I think the powers that be should be concerned, about what the future will hold in box office terms.

I will be updating these figures over the next few months, and will also be keeping up on the interest generated by Star Wars in general.

oojason said:

John Williams’ brother, Don: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Score Will Include ‘Every Theme That You Ever Heard’ (from IGN)

(with an inference that Episode IX runs for 135 minutes…)

 

It has been a while since I have heard Jar Jar’s theme 😉
 

Actually the scores of movies in general and Star Wars specifically are shorter than the actual runtime of the film. Having seen ANH and TESB with an orchestra, one of the first things I noticed is, that there are a number of scenes in both films, that don’t have any music at all. For example the trash compactor scene doesn’t have any score. So, if the score for TROS runs 135 min, we can expect TROS to have a runtime closer to 3 hrs.

RogueLeader said:

Yeah I think they’re fair points of discussion, but I think a lot of people who dislike the new movies try to use numerical data as evidence to prove that they’re objectively bad and justify their own opinion. So it hard to determine what discussion is sincere or what is in bad faith.

This is not just an issue for those that dislike the films, or are critical of the more recent movies. People in general try to justify their own opinions, whether it’s positive or negative. However, I think in the end no matter how good or bad you feel the movies are, this type of division in the fanbase is not benificial for the future of the franchise.

SilverWook said:

If interest is waning that’s not inherently the fault of the franchise itself. There’s a lot more stuff competing for eyeballs these days, and not just superhero movies. I feel like the first Guardians Of The Galaxy movie actually stole a little bit of thunder from Star Wars as we hadn’t had a honest to goodness space opera flick in several years at that point.

I agree multiple factors come into play, and competition is a pretty big one, but at the same time the momentum created by TFA and RO seems to have been lost, and it can’t be denied there’s a lot of turmoil in the fanbase. There’s been a lot of debate on whether the classic characters have been effectively used in the ST with 2 out of the big 3 being killed before the end of the second movie. How much of a factor have the classic characters, and the actors portraying them been in the success of Disney’s earliest releases, and how is their absence going to affect future interest in the franchise? What is Star Wars without Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, Lando, R2-D2, C-3PO, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, and Darth Vader? The message of the ST thusfar has been clear (and rumors have been circling around as to why): out with the old, in with the new. Was that a good choice on the part of Disney? Galaxy’s Edge is a great example, which focusses completely on the ST era, and seems to be heading towards a failure.

DominicCobb said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

The speculation about how the film may or may not perform is a complete waste of time.

In what sense? In this case it is not just speculation, it is a prediction based on a model, that has been scientifically validated, a model which shows movies with less interest on google trends tend to have lower box office returns, whereas higher interest generally leads to higher box office returns. So, it is simply an indicator, an indicator which gets more accurate as the movie’s release date approaches.

The truth will be in the proverbial pudding. Until then you can pat your back that everyone hates Disney Star Wars as much as you do. But the fact of the matter is, when the film is released, it’ll make the company a fair bit of money either way. And ultimately, who cares? The ST is done no matter how the film performs. The idea that Star Wars is ‘dead’ or will be after the film comes out is delusional. Disney will release more Star Wars films whether you like them or not. The only possible effect a disappointing box office run might have on the future of the franchise is that they’ll give into the nebulous desire for more of “what the fans want,” which is not something anyone should be foaming at the mouth for.

This is nonsense. I don’t hate Disney Star Wars anymore than I hated the prequels. I think both trilogies are deeply flawed, but they have their merits as well. I also haven’t stated, I expect Star Wars to be ‘dead’ in the future. So, I don’t know where all these baseless statements are coming from. I thought we had moved past these sort of outbursts, but I guess not.

The fact is interest in the franchise is waning, and I’m certainly curious about what Disney is going to do about it, and how TROS is going fit into that picture, both in terms of the current interest in the franchise, and the direction TROS might give for the future.

DominicCobb said:

The speculation about how the film may or may not perform is a complete waste of time.

In what sense? In this case it is not just speculation, it is a prediction based on a model, that has been scientifically validated, a model which shows movies with less interest on google trends tend to have lower box office returns, whereas higher interest generally leads to higher box office returns. So, it is simply an indicator, an indicator which gets more accurate as the movie’s release date approaches. As such it is not a waste of time, any more than it is a waste of time to predict the weather, a prediction which in both cases tends to be more often right than wrong.

yotsuya said:

Valheru_84 said:

If the leak in this article has any validity then it sounds like TROS will be the third ST movie to continue with the soft reboot / remake in repeating and reusing many plot points and elements from the OT, in particular ROTJ for what this article talks about which is essentially ANOTHER Death Star but as a ship this time (still thats going on four! Or FIVE if you’re just talking about the use of “Death Star tech”) that can at the least take out whole continents or possibly even up to whole planets again as it reportedly has the same power level of the first DS.

Apparently it even has a trench in its design for what would be the third trench run now, though to be mimicking ROTJ they would need to fly into the ship in order to destroy it.

https://movieweb.com/rise-of-skywalker-onager-star-destroyer-star-wars/

Well, if you really look at it, when you consider when the first Death Star was finished, it makes sense that that type of weapon can be scaled down and mounted on a ship. It makes a lot more sense than Starkiller base. Something tells me that that one is one of the pieces that came from Lucas. Just the sort of thing he would do.

But while we are talking about repeating elements, the PT had a fair share of repeating as well. It shared a lot of plot points with the OT. A lot.

And when you think about it, the hero of these films (Anakin, Luke, Rey) has yet to personally defeat the evil. Anakin did throw Palpatine over the railing, but during Luke’s time as hero. So Rey having a bigger part in Palpatine’s downfall would be an awesome way to round things out. And maybe we might see a redeemed Ben Solo live to see the end. Just hopeful guessing there.

And when it comes to graphs with Google, they are only as good as the data. If, as I am guessing, many people find the trailers via other means (such as the many social media venues) then they don’t need to use a search engine to find it. The fact that the views for the TROS teaser are at 75% of the views of TLJ indicates that people are finding the trailer other ways. So don’t take too much stock on one statistic. It might not be very accurate depending on the current links to things on the internet.

The trailers is only a small part of the article. The article mainly focusses on google search queries on movies, and how that correlates with box office results, a relationship that has been established with scientific methods. Now, you and others have argued people access information via other paths, but that isn’t relevant in light of the following:

Google Trends shows the relative popularity of a search query. In other words, relative popularity is the ratio of a query’s search volume to the sum of the search volumes of all possible queries.

In other words even if other social media venues take a significant share of the action, it wouldn’t affect the relative popularity of search queries, unless you believe only Star Wars fans seek out other paths, which doesn’t seem a very realistic premise. The fact is that a recent movie like Endgame showed a significant increase in interest on google trends compared to previous MCU entries, and subsequently became the financially most successful MCU release thusfar, highlights the validity of the relationship that has been established by the authors of the article.

RogueLeader said:

I definitely don’t feel that your criticisms are coming from a bad place, Dre. My replies yesterday were definitely not towards you directly. Even though we disagree about some stuff I do enjoy talking to you about it!

I know there are a lot of critics who are good-intentioned and trolls can make conversation rather difficult. I do think the topics can be rather complicated at times and hard to navigate, especially when the conversation turns to our inherent perceptions of gender.

I share your sentiments, and I certainly enjoy our little debates, since your arguments are always reasonable and well thought out. I think we should always remember, that when we’re on opposite sides of a debate , that there’s more that unites us than divides us. I think this is what’s been missing in the fandom in general. Most people express their devotion or criticism, because they want the franchise to flourish, not because they want to see it fail.

Jonno said:

RogueLeader said:

As far as her powers go, I’m under the impression that the Force has literally awakened in the ST. I don’t think it is a static, non-changing energy field. Every Force-user in the ST, including Rey, are capable of powers we have never seen before until now, and I think the Force itself is playing a part in it, hence The Force Awakens. Could they have made it more nuanced or something? Sure, maybe, but it doesn’t ruin the movies for me. I’m satisfied with that and have moved on.

Yes, this seems to have come about because the current filmmakers are telling two new stories (in the films) at the same time: a character whose inherent affinity with the force is stronger than we’ve seen before, and a force-using protagonist who happens to be female.

I don’t think this accurately describes the situation. What the filmmakers have done is introduce a character that no longer obeys pre-existing and well established lore by being able to perform acts that previously could only be performed by individuals who were trained in the ways of the Force. This in of itself does not have to be an issue, if the concepts behind it are well established. However, TFA gives practically no explanation for Rey’s sudden Force abilities, leading to a host of fan theories that explained her abilities by some hidden past. While TLJ only hints at an explanation with darkness rises and light to meet it, as if it was an already established concept. Meanwhile neither Luke or Yoda recognize Rey’s unique status, and just treat her as the next Jedi in line. So, we end up with a character who follows a similar trajectory as Luke or Anakin, ending up confronting the big bad in a throne room setting, while the story largely glosses over the explanation for how she is able to perform these amazing feats. In addition the fact that Rey is able to turn on God-mode at her convenience is criticized by many as detrimental to her character, and defies what many consider to be good storytelling.

Now being a critic of this aspect of the ST myself I’ve seen many analyses of Rey’s character, and rarely have I run into a critic who dislikes Rey simply because she is a female. In fact this is a line of thought that usually comes from those that wish to put critics of the ST into a bad light. The argument more often than not follows the predictable trajectory, where a ST fan argues why they disagree with some of the criticisms against Rey’s character, and thus concludes that since they see no merit in these arguments, there must be some sinister reason why others adopt this stance, and so they must be misogynist, racist, and what not. They simply cannot fathom the idea that a character they consider to be a good, can be considered bad by other reasonable people, and so they use the gender of the character to stifle what would otherwise have been considered reasonable criticism for breaking the pre-established rules, and lore of the Star Wars universe. So, while I condemn all people who reject Rey or any other characters based on gender, race, sexual orientation, I equally condemn those that weaponize gender, race, sexual orientation as a means to attack critical fans, the vast majority of which express their criticism out of love for the franchise, not because of some evil agenda.

Jay said:

DrDre said:

Touché, but it doesn’t really invalidate my argument though. This is what failure looks like:

For some reason, this makes me laugh. Hard.

The greatest teacher failure is 😉:

RogueLeader said:

Haha, I know Dre! Just couldn’t help myself!

EDIT: But I do feel like Rey did fail quite a bit in TLJ. She failed to physically bring back Luke to the fight, and she failed to turn Kylo, which were her two main goals in this movie. They ended the movie with the whole Resistance fitting on the Falcon, and hope.

The thing for me is, that failure needs to have consequences for it to have an impact. For both of the failures you discussed, it made Luke and Kylo look bad and foolish in the end, not Rey.

As far as her powers go, I’m under the impression that the Force has literally awakened in the ST. I don’t think it is a static, non-changing energy field. Every Force-user in the ST, including Rey, are capable of powers we have never seen before until now, and I think the Force itself is playing a part in it, hence The Force Awakens. Could they have made it more nuanced or something? Sure, maybe, but it doesn’t ruin the movies for me. I’m satisfied with that and have moved on.

I’m aware of the idea, I just think it should have been developed more for it to work in the context of the larger saga.

DOUBLE EDIT: Also, I don’t feel like the end of the second act of every story has to pan out the same way. Maybe it isn’t compelling to you but it still compelling to me.

It doesn’t, but one of the issues here is, that she already beat Kylo at the end of the previous installment, and so she was already too overpowered in the eyes of many. Some humility would have gone a long way to make her more relatable. In stead she ended up standing towering over Luke.

In any case, I still generally like Rey as a character, mostly because of Daisy Ridley’s endearing performance, and I think the dynamic between Rey and Kylo is what really distinguishes the ST from the OT, and is TLJ’s greatest strength. However, I think the idea that Rey is overpowered is not without merit, and so the idea, that anyone who calls Rey a Mary Sue must be misogynist, because she obviously is not overpowered, as if it’s some immovable fact, is deeply flawed. I think the issue is debatable, and most people who use the term Mary Sue simply use it as a hyperbole to express their displeasure at the character, or to antagonize the opposition, and only a very small fraction of critics use it, because they are misogynist.

RogueLeader said:

DrDre said:
she manages to escape the Supremacy without so much as a scratch

Touché, but it doesn’t really invalidate my argument though. This is what failure looks like:

Not like this:

Just to be clear, this is not about Rey not losing a limb. It’s about a relatively minor setback not being failure. Failure is being physically and mentally broken, licking your wounds, needing rescue (not being the saviour), and not coming back from it until the next installment (or not at all in the case of Mace Windu).

IsanRido said:

LordPlagueis said:

IsanRido said:

I don’t like the ST myself, but the Mary Sue argument is very silly and indicative of one’s attitude towards women. “We don’t hate women, we hate poorly written characters” doesn’t apply when a person defends the prequel trilogy over these films.

The Mary Sue argument is not indicative of a personal attitude against women. That is ridiculous. A person can think that Rey is a Mary Sue without thinking that all other strong female characters are Mary Sues.

I wasn’t talking about the argument as a whole, I was refering to it in the context of ST criticism. As it turns out, in those films there’s no proof that Rey is some kind of overpowered protagonist with no flaws. She doubts herself constantly, characters can best her physically, and the bulk of The Last Jedi consists of her and other characters failing to do things. So naturally, her being described as Mary Sue raises a few eyebrows.

In the context of the first six films she is an overpowered protagonist, as she just has all these Force powers despite not getting any training within a matter of days, and more importantly her so called failures have little consequences for her personally or for the Resistance. She fails to convince Luke to train her, but despite that her Force powers, and abilities still grow exponentially. She fails to convert Kylo, but Snoke is dead, she manages to escape the Supremacy without so much as a scratch, and despite discovering the truth about her parents, in the next scene is all smiles and giggles, and just in time to save the remaining rebels by removing a ton of rubble without even breaking a sweat (contrast this with Yoda straining as he saves Anakin and Obi-Wan from that falling debris in AOTC, and he’s the most powerful Jedi Master we have seen thusfar for crying out loud). In the end the final scene where she closes the door on Kylo feels more like a victory for her personally, not a defeat. Many fans have a problem with Rey, because it all just comes way too easy for her. Your argument to me boils down to she won the Tour the France, is a Formula 1 champion, and got the Nobel peace price, but she doubts herself, and lost a chess tournement, so she is not overpowered. That’s not very convincing to be honest.

RogueLeader said:

So I am reading it right that Rogue One had more search hits than even TFA?

At its peak yes, but overall interest for TFA remained at higher levels over a longer period of time.

oojason said:

Trailer searches? I wasn’t aware the trailer for TROS was even out yet.

(Likely soon though - along with the PR machine kicking in with adverts, promos, tie-ins and merchandising etc…)
 

The article on google search, and trailers is about movies in general, not Star Wars specifically. However, the teaser for TROS on the official channel currently stands at 33 mio views compared to 44 mio for TLJ, if that is any indication. The total views for TROS seem to have been higher compared to TFA and TLJ:

https://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-trailer-views-trending-higher-than-the-last-jedi/

The PR machine for all Disney films has followed a pretty similar trajectory, so while it’s early days, the difference in interest (as measured by google trends) thusfar is quite significant, but I will keep following its progress over the next few months.

They’ll still take our money at the cinema kiosk for TROS come December, yes?
 

Sure!

I found an interesting article that shows the strong relation between google searches (and trailer searches), and the box office success of blockbusters:

https://tubularinsights.com/do-youtube-movie-trailer-searches-correlate-to-box-office/

The full research paper:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://ssl.gstatic.com/think/docs/quantifying-movie-magic_research-studies.pdf&chrome=true

In light of this paper I decided to do my own little analysis with google trends to see how TROS stacks up to previous Star Wars releases, and it’s not looking good for the upcoming film. I restricted myself to google searches in the US that start a year before the release date up till six months after the release date, and looked at the interest and the cumulative interest over that time frame. Here’s the outcome:

The reference point here is RO which has the highest peak interest, which is set at 100. As can be seen the cumulative interest for TFA has been the highest of all the films considered here, and the cumulative interest for Solo over the entire 18 month period has been the lowest. However, looking at the cumulative curve for episode IX/TROS after 7 months the overall interest is the lowest of all films considered including the box office flop Solo. It also seems interest in Star Wars has been on a steady decline in general since TFA’s release. There’s still some time to go before TROS will be released, so things might change, and it will be interesting to follow its progress, but it’s safe to conclude that interest for a Star Wars film four months prior to release has never been so low, and so I think the powers that be should be concerned, about what the future will hold in box office terms.

Ps.

Incidentally this analysis coincides with Bloomberg’s article on the struggling Star Wars franchise:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-07/star-wars-is-struggling-to-win-over-the-marvel-generation

Tobar said:

DrDre said:

Jeez, these Star Wars covers are getting worse with each release.

I think they’re an improvement over the 2011 boxset:

I actually feel the 2011 boxset looks pretty good.

Jeez, these Star Wars covers are getting worse with each release.

MikeWW said:

DrDre said:

MikeWW said:

Mocata said:

George didn’t seem to care about how bumpy things looked, just look at the Phantom Menace features. Now it’s all fluff.

Funny thing about that is that everyone pretends that he was watching something close to final when he made the “too far in a few places” comment.

We know he did, because Ben Burt gives us a sequence of events, that closely follows the final movie, pointing out the tonal issues to Lucas, and Lucas himself admits there’s little he can do about it at that stage, because of the way the movie has been constructed.

You assume way too much though. You have no idea what Lucas did or didn’t do to “diminish the effects of it”, because they don’t show the footage.

But speaking of Ben Burtt and the TPM finale, in the commentary track when Obi Wan kills Darth Maul, Burtt talks about how they were fine tuning the editing of the climax up until basically the minute they shipped the movie out, which would have been much later than the time of the “too far in a few places” screening.

You don’t know that that cut wasn’t notably worse than what Lucas ended up with.

You don’t know the final cut was notably better, so I’m not the only one making assumptions, however, given Lucas’ own admission that he couldn’t do much to improve it, other than diminish the effects of it, it seems logical to conclude the final version isn’t too far off the one they were viewing, and the fact that they were fine tuning the editing of the climax until the movie shipped out, indicates they weren’t satisfied with the climax up till the end. The issues discussed are related to Lucas’ choice to go for a four act structure, which results in the audience being jerked around from scene to scene. The tonal differences between the scenes with Jar Jar comedic antics in one scene, and Qui-Gon Jinn’s emotional death scene in another, and other scenes surrounding them, are very much intact in the final film, and consistent with the criticisms Ben Burt leveled at cut they screened internally.

Look it’s obvious you really like the prequels, and that’s fine. I enjoy them, but also feel they are flawed on many levels. It seems you reject the “gone too far in some places” comment, because you don’t want it to be applicable to the final cut, not because there is much circumstantial evidence the final cut is markedly different, while I think if you look at it objectively (not a point of view biased by love or hate for the film), it’s logical to conclude Lucas was and is aware of some of the flaws in the film, and tried to improve it where he could, but was also aware, that at that stage in the production, they could only dull the symptoms somewhat, but not remove the cause, the four act structure, and the tonal issues that come with it.

In any case this thread is supposed to be about the 4K restorations of the OT, not about the prequels, so this will be the last I will say on the subject.

MikeWW said:

Mocata said:

George didn’t seem to care about how bumpy things looked, just look at the Phantom Menace features. Now it’s all fluff.

Funny thing about that is that everyone pretends that he was watching something close to final when he made the “too far in a few places” comment.

We know he did, because Ben Burt gives us a sequence of events, that closely follows the final movie, pointing out the tonal issues to Lucas, and Lucas himself admits there’s little he can do about it at that stage, because of the way the movie has been constructed.

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

On the other hand, to me the whole trilogy has been about how there’s no way to definitively end tyranny, and how the dark side will always come back and you have to be prepared to stop it even in the face of knowing stopping it might not be permanent. To that end, I’ll be kinda upset if they “definitively” end the war, as I don’t think that’s be a very satisfying end to this story.

I think a good story should have a beginning and an end. A new story can unfold, but imo it should not be about Empire vs rebels, or a Jedi apprentice betraying his or her master. Been there, done that…twice… If you can’t tell an original story with new characters, who are put in new situations, better not tell a story at all, I think, or risk turning the franchise into a cliché. To paraphrase Bilbo Baggins, the Skywalker Saga already feels like butter scraped over too much bread for me.

You haven’t paid attention to how many fallen Jedi apprentices there are in the EU, have you? Not just in the post ROTJ, but the KOTOR as well.

The fact that Star Wars is already known for retreading the same ground over and over, is not a good thing, as far as I’m concerned.

DominicCobb said:

On the other hand, to me the whole trilogy has been about how there’s no way to definitively end tyranny, and how the dark side will always come back and you have to be prepared to stop it even in the face of knowing stopping it might not be permanent. To that end, I’ll be kinda upset if they “definitively” end the war, as I don’t think that’s be a very satisfying end to this story.

I think a good story should have a beginning and an end. A new story can unfold, but imo it should not be about Empire vs rebels, or a Jedi apprentice betraying his or her master. Been there, done that…twice… If you can’t tell an original story with new characters, who are put in new situations, better not tell a story at all, I think, or risk turning the franchise into a cliché. To paraphrase Bilbo Baggins, the Skywalker Saga already feels like butter scraped over too much bread for me.

yotsuya said:

MikeWW said:

yotsuya said:

Shopping Maul said:

NeverarGreat said:

DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

SilverWook said:

MikeWW said:

SilverWook said:

A puppet being operated by the real villain?

But why have a dime store Palpatine if the plan all along was to use the real thing?

Because that’s how Palpatine operates. Masks, deceptions and lies. Snoke was just a more sophisticated version of wearing a hood and keeping his face in a strategically placed shadow.

That’s a nice in-universe explanation, but in reality it’s almost certain, that JJ intended for Snoke to be the big bad, and when RJ dispatched him, they had to bring back Palpatine in some form to up the ante. Had it been their intention to bring back Palpatine, they would logically have introduced him as the puppet master in a cameo at the end of TLJ. Additionally RJ clearly made TLJ with the intention to break free from what came before, whilst TROS seems to do the opposite promising a whole host of connections to the past.

I have to disagree with your interpretation of TLJ. That is the message that hermit Luke and Kylo Ren share. Both are proved wrong by the rest of the movie’s plot. The end of the movie is about embracing exactly what Luke said they didn’t need before Rey and Yoda brought him back to himself. And Kylo is trying desperately to be bad and be consumed by the dark side and yet he can’t seem to manage it. He’s trying to convince himself that he needs to destroy the past so he can be bad enough. But that is not RJ’s message in TLJ. Luke executes the very single handed battle with his lasersword against incredible odds and creates a legend, reminding Kylo and us that he will not be the last Jedi - meaning he is embracing the past and letting it carry forward. Quite the opposite of breaking free from what came before. And there is no hint that JJ is going to undo anything.

I disagree. TLJ spends most of its time deconstructing the mythology of Star Wars. It then reconstructs it in some form, but not by embracing the past. Luke’s last stand is not a reaffirmation of the reality of his legend in-universe, it is a ruse, which tells the audience, that legends and myths aren’t real, but they can serve a purpose when others choose to believe in them. This is in stark contrast to the OT, where the legend of Luke Skywalker is real in-universe. The Luke of the OT is the guy who really faces down the bad guys with his laser sword, whereas the Luke at the end of TLJ is an illusionist of sorts, intent on perpetuating a legend in-universe, while the viewer has been made aware it is all just smoke and mirrors.

This brings up the question of what Luke’s legend actually was, in universe, after the events of ROTJ.

Is Luke a Jedi and hero who can singlehandedly dispatch an AT-AT with a lightsaber and who blew up the Death Star, who defeated not only Vader but the Emperor in a single stroke? If so, I can see Luke wanting to distance himself from this story since it is rather deceptive.

Or is Luke in the minds of the people more of an aspirational figure whom they know is all-too human, and who only managed to topple an empire due to his compassion and loyalty helped by his powerful friends and family? This is a legend he would probably embrace but it isn’t as alluring to the everyday person so I would bet that most of the galaxy thinks of him as the Jedi superman.

So I think it’s very apt that Luke would act as an illusionist in embracing this admittedly false legend in TLJ. Luke doesn’t ultimately use the lightsaber to defeat his enemies, he throws it away in favor of a more compassionate, human approach. This is now lost to the galaxy in favor of his newly-affirmed legend of Jedi superman, and could be a sinister turn for his legacy and history.

Luke’s ‘in-universe’ legend post-ROTJ would have to be simply that he (supposedly) killed the bad guys. If he had let slip at the Ewok party that he had stood by and shown mercy while the Emperor and his bestie were slaughtering thousands of innocent beings, he would have been lynched. Imagine how thrilled the many victims of Palpatine/Vader’s tyranny would have been to hear that Vader was a nice guy after all and that it had been worth letting a few more Rebels die in order to facilitate Vader’s bedside conversion.

I keep harping on about it but it never ceases to bug me - Luke did not save the galaxy. At best he inadvertently (accidentally if you will) prevented Palpatine’s possible escape from the exploding Death Star. All he cared about was saving Vader’s soul and keeping his cool so he could become a guru.

Chewbacca saved the galaxy. TFA should have opened with “Chewbacca has vanished…”

The story we have on our end is not what Luke would be known for in universe. I can’t say if Vader’s part would have come out, but if it had it would have been that he came back to himself and sacrificed his life to kill the Emperor. The story we see is very compelling because we were not the Empire’s victims. The story told in universe would have to be adjusted and changed in order for it to be compelling and picked up as a legend. And they would only have Luke’s word as to what happened. The larger picture is that Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, Lando, and Wedge, worked together to bring down the shields and destroy the Death Star, Darth Vader, and the Emperor. Learning that Luke is the new Jedi would have caused the public story to emphasize him because of the stories from the past of all the Jedi exploits. People would imagine that Luke had led the troops as Obi-wan, Anakin, Mace, and Yoda once had. They would want him to do it again. While Luke did it with illusion, he really played out exactly what people in universe would imagine a Jedi doing, so he very much was embracing the past and the legends of the Old Republic Jedi and giving his sister and Rey exactly what they needed, which he earlier said was not what they needed. He did a 180 on his views thanks to Rey and then Yoda.

When TROS picks up a year later, I imagine we are going to find out that Rey has been training with Luke’s force ghost and has turned her raw talent into great skill. I’m not sure if she will be recruiting and training even more just yet, but that will be her goal.

And even with Palpatine in the PT, we still don’t have much to his backstory. We had to wait until ROTS to hear of Darth Plagueis the Wise and we didn’t learn his first name in the films. There is so much about him that was left to the tie-in media to explain. We did get a full account of how he became Emeperor, but even that many viewers missed because it wasn’t handed to them on a plate but layered in obliquely. Many of the questions about Snoke that are outstanding are still outstanding with Palpatine even after the PT. Other than he started TPM as a Senator from Naboo, we know nothing about him. Even the name drop in ROTS doesn’t reveal if that was his master or his master’s master. Those things were all left to reveal in books. What we know of him from the books is almost everything. I see Snoke the same way. We get what we need in the films (he is the head of the First Order, a group that has risen from a fragment of the Empire) and he is a master of the Dark Side of the force and has lured Ben Solo to the dark side turning him into Kylo Ren, leader of the Knights of Ren. What more do we really need to know? Star Wars doesn’t have a history of giving us the full backstory, only what we need to know who these people are. There is so much that came from books and comics that is considered fact, but it isn’t in the films. We didn’t know anything about how Han won the Falcon until Solo came out. Han was a mystery except he made a run for Jabba the Hutt that ended in him dropping the shipment. We know the most about the Skywalkers, but not much about anyone else. How did Lando become head of Cloud City? We didn’t know how Owen and Beru were related to Luke until ATOC. Some answers came in films years later, some came in books right away, some have never been answered. But most have not been answered in the trilogy we meet these people in.

Me and Dr. Dre explained why Snoke is incomparable with OT Emperor already.

And I don’t agree.

If so, what’s to stop the powers that be from pulling another dark side user with an invincible army eerily similar to the Empire and the FO from behind the curtain, who seduces Rey’s star pupil to the dark side, and destroys the New New Republic with a super weapon that can destroy entire galaxies? As with the ST no explanation is required, apparently, just the passage of time. Why should we believe TROS will really be the conclusion of the Skywalker saga? All it takes is some random bad guy without a backstory to undo it all. The heroes of today will become the failures of tomorrow, and a new trilogy is born. I don’t believe that’s how good stories are supposed to function.