Please nobody watch that thing again, what are you, crazy???!!
I think it is a fantastic conclusion and I could watch it over and over.
As someone who grew up with the prequels and can still watch and enjoy them any day of the week, I get why so many young people praise and defend them. If they were your introduction to the franchise, it makes sense that you’d have a nostalgic attachment. I do too, but I also can’t deny the many, many aspects of the films that simply do not work. They all pretty much suck to varying degrees. I wish I could say they didn’t, but they do. Like I said, I still enjoy them, but I can acknowledge that they’re simply not very good movies. And that’s okay.
I feel the same way. The prequels were my introduction to the franchise, and I feel like a lot of the good parts of those movies are being overlooked, but I also agree that they have a lot of bad parts.
I think the tide has officially turned. About ten years ago, you couldn’t find nearly anyone who’d admit to anything good at all about the prequels. Now it’s the opposite, where it seems like many people refuse to accept their poor qualities.
The kids who grew up on the PT are now grown up and expressing their opinion. I alwasys liked TPM and ROTS, even if they have flaws. I love the grandeur of the Old Republic the reveal. They also reveal its problems.
The thing I liked best about TPM is that it gave us a glimpse into the world before the Empire. It gave us the Jedi before their fall and before the Clone Wars. I think in Qui-gon Jinn we got a quintessential Jedi. For me that makes it win out over AOTC, even if it does have Jar Jar.
A Mary Sue doesn’t cease to be a Mary Sue just 'cause she has ubermensch genes.
Yeah, but it helps. I guess it comes down to what one wishes to preserve most in the canon. Like I said, I hate the genetic thing and have hated it since the ridiculous Leia retcon in ROTJ. But I dislike the ‘no training required’ thing of the ST even more, because it takes away from Luke’s arc and struggles. I’d rather roll with a version of Force genetics (I find a Sith version of this at least mysterious enough to carry some weight) to justify Rey’s power levels than go with RJ’s random ‘X-Men Force powers’ thing.
Luke’s struggles are due to lack of faith and lack of concentration. Rey had heard of the Heroes of the OT. Rey knows what a Jedi can do from those stories. Then comes face to face with it in a way Luke never did (he didn’t see Vader do anything in canon until TESB during their duel and I don’t think he saw Ben do anything either). Ben gave him one lesson on the falcon and then he is able to make the shot that takes out the death star and then later is able to levitate his lightsaber before his second lesson with Yoda. Luke had doubts. Rey didn’t. Rey had belonging and abandonment issues, Luke never seemed to. He wanted to know more about his father, but he knew who he was and that was fine. Rey has plenty of struggles and failures in the films. More than Luke actually. No one powerful in the Force seems to have any problem using it once they see it used and Rey saw it used by Kylo many time. In fact, you could say that he activated the Dyad by trying to read her mind and that he basically taught her everything he knew and she just had to concentrate to draw on it. Snoke implied that he linked them, but I don’t think he realized what he was dealing with. They stayed linked after he died. So Mary Sue? Nope. She has too many flaws and failures to be one. Sure she picks up the force quickly, but that is not the only part of her character and she rarely does it right the first time.
Just because a character has flaws and failures doesn’t mean they’re not a Mary Sue. The original Mary Sue died at the end. Mary Sues usually have two qualities:
-An insane level of power and skill, without much struggle.
-The ability to make everyone they meet instantly like them.Rey has both qualities. She flies and repairs the Falcon better than Han, despite having never flown it before. As soon as Finn meets her, he loves her more than anything in the galaxy. She uses a Jedi mind-trick successfully after seeing Kylo use it once. As soon as Kylo meets her, he wants her to become his empress. She beats Kylo in a lightsaber duel, despite having never used a weapon of that type before. As soon as Han meets her, he wants her to become his copilot. When she taps into the Force for the first time, she nearly destroys Luke’s temple. She lifts a huge pile of rocks on Crait, despite having never used the Force to lift objects before. She heals people using the Force, an ability which no Jedi has used before, and she doesn’t seem any weaker because of it. Zorri agrees to help the Resistance purely because she likes Rey. The list goes on, but you get the idea. In my opinion, Rey fits the definition of a Mary Sue almost exactly.
Then so does Luke.
People like you keep saying, “If Rey is a Mary Sue, than so is Luke!” But Luke doesn’t have any of the qualities that make Rey a Mary Sue. He struggled constantly to gain the level of power he showed in ROTJ, and the people around him didn’t like him instantly - Leia thought he was a complete idiot, Han thought he was a dumb kid who didn’t understand anything, and Yoda thought he was too hopeful and excited to become a Jedi. In order for Luke to gain the surrogate family he had in ROTJ, he needed character development - a term which the creators of the sequel trilogy don’t seem to understand.
Really? In one less he is able to deflect the remote’s shots.
Like Han said, “Good against remotes is easy. Good against the living, that’s something else.” Training with a remote doesn’t prepare you for fighting a living enemy.
Without any lessons (only Ben’s ghost voice saying to use the force) he is able to target the shaft and destroy the death star.
That wasn’t Luke making that shot. He closed his eyes and trusted his instincts, allowing the Force to take over. All the incredible things Rey does, she does by herself.
Without any lessons he can lift his light saber.
Lifting a lightsaber is easy. Anyone can do it, even Han. But Luke never had to use his lightsaber for complicated things until his duel with Vader, three years after he first used it. Rey, on the other hand, beats Kylo in a lightsaber duel, despite having never used a weapon of that type before. There’s a difference between lifting a lightsaber, and using it to defeat a Force user who was trained by both Luke Skywalker and Emperor Palpatine.
And it isn’t like Rey does everything successfully the first time. She has to try several times to get James Bond Stormtrooper to do her bidding.She tries once. The second time, she succeeds. Compare that to Luke, who only knew how to use a mind trick in ROTJ, when he was already a skilled Jedi master.
She does fail and when you actually and honestly compare how she and Luke do things, they are very similar.
Which shouldn’t be taken as a compliment. Copying a much better protagonist does not make your protagonist good.
She just doesn’t have his doubts that made him fail with the X-wing.
Which also shouldn’t be taken as a compliment. Characters who have no doubts tend not to be very interesting.
She has family issues he always seemed okay with.
That’s just a plot point, it’s not a weakness. Rey doesn’t seem to be shaken by either one of her family reveals, unlike Luke who was shocked to his core by Vader’s revelation.
We never get to see Anakin train so we have no idea how he did.
He trained for ten years straight, so we can assume he did well.
And in case you missed it, Rey had a bit of a failure at the start of TROS where she wasn’t deflecting the remotes shots like she should.
What are you talking about? Rey deflected all those lasers completely accurately.
LOL… When she first encountered the remote she does (wearing a helmet with a blast shield). Then she cuts down the red strip and after that she can’t deflect a single laser. It hits her like 5 times. She finally smashes it against a tree with a stick. Watch the movie again.
She has a tough third film where Luke is pretty composed the whole way through and only has issues when Vader threatens Leia.
Luke isn’t composed, he’s arrogant. That’s the main lesson Luke learns in ROTJ, true Jedi aren’t smug about their abilities. Compare that to Rey, who has no doubts about her abilities the entire trilogy, and she never learns a lesson from it.
Have you seen TROS. This sounds like you haven’t.
The evidence doesn’t back up Rey having it easier than Luke or being more powerful than Luke. They just have different journeys.
She doesn’t have a different journey, she has a very similar journey, which is a problem in itself. But while Luke made mistakes and learned lessons on his path to becoming a Jedi, Rey started out powerful and stayed powerful, with no opportunities for mistakes or character growth.
No opportunities for mistakes? Well, please watch TROS again and then tell me that.
Here is a truth about movie making. They end up with a ton of stuff that is never used and they often miss things they need and either have to do pickup shots or find something that they weren’t going to use that will fit it. In ANH, there are many shots of R2 from the Death Star control room (where he found out Princess Leia was being held prisoner) that were used elsewhere, particularly in the Falcon.
Ronster is coming from the angle that the cut that Ben Burtt was using for the main audio track, got edited in a few places AFTER some of the sound was laid down and is trying to uncover that cut. I can see the point to that. Star Wars Deleted Magic had several places in the film where they found that footage had been moved around and reordered things. (Ronster, if you haven’t seen that you must check it out)
And it is certain that quite a number of shots from ANH (used or unused) were reused for ROTJ inside the Death Star. Cooridor shots and the weapon firing in particular. But that also isn’t unusual.
We do know from Mark Hamill that Lucas was going for “faster and more intense” and that extended into the edit. My guess is that he was cutting stuff up to the end. My guess is that just reordering what we have will not achieve any of the previous cuts because what was cut is missing and not just moved around. One cut we know of was one of the imperial officers (sorry, I have never memorised all their names) in a longer version of his shot using the word Sith. Deleted Magic reused some footage to recreate what they saw as the original trench run. You would have to creatively reused shots (maybe in reverse) and audio and probably pull music from the full recordings to simulate what the longer cut might have looked like, but the stuff you need to recreate it authentically is not there. It was cut.
That original rough cut was in B&W and was Lucas’s worst nightmare using transnational editing techniques that Lucas wanted to abandon.
We know a lot about what he wanted from the scripts and storyboards, and we can glean more from the music recordings and how the final edit came out (obvious edits). The following films were not done quite so rushed and the last minute edits were better done. Remember how fast they worked to finish Star Wars in 77. 3 FX shots and the final end credits were not done in May 77 and were included in the wide release and international releases later.
A Mary Sue doesn’t cease to be a Mary Sue just 'cause she has ubermensch genes.
Yeah, but it helps. I guess it comes down to what one wishes to preserve most in the canon. Like I said, I hate the genetic thing and have hated it since the ridiculous Leia retcon in ROTJ. But I dislike the ‘no training required’ thing of the ST even more, because it takes away from Luke’s arc and struggles. I’d rather roll with a version of Force genetics (I find a Sith version of this at least mysterious enough to carry some weight) to justify Rey’s power levels than go with RJ’s random ‘X-Men Force powers’ thing.
Luke’s struggles are due to lack of faith and lack of concentration. Rey had heard of the Heroes of the OT. Rey knows what a Jedi can do from those stories. Then comes face to face with it in a way Luke never did (he didn’t see Vader do anything in canon until TESB during their duel and I don’t think he saw Ben do anything either). Ben gave him one lesson on the falcon and then he is able to make the shot that takes out the death star and then later is able to levitate his lightsaber before his second lesson with Yoda. Luke had doubts. Rey didn’t. Rey had belonging and abandonment issues, Luke never seemed to. He wanted to know more about his father, but he knew who he was and that was fine. Rey has plenty of struggles and failures in the films. More than Luke actually. No one powerful in the Force seems to have any problem using it once they see it used and Rey saw it used by Kylo many time. In fact, you could say that he activated the Dyad by trying to read her mind and that he basically taught her everything he knew and she just had to concentrate to draw on it. Snoke implied that he linked them, but I don’t think he realized what he was dealing with. They stayed linked after he died. So Mary Sue? Nope. She has too many flaws and failures to be one. Sure she picks up the force quickly, but that is not the only part of her character and she rarely does it right the first time.
Just because a character has flaws and failures doesn’t mean they’re not a Mary Sue. The original Mary Sue died at the end. Mary Sues usually have two qualities:
-An insane level of power and skill, without much struggle.
-The ability to make everyone they meet instantly like them.Rey has both qualities. She flies and repairs the Falcon better than Han, despite having never flown it before. As soon as Finn meets her, he loves her more than anything in the galaxy. She uses a Jedi mind-trick successfully after seeing Kylo use it once. As soon as Kylo meets her, he wants her to become his empress. She beats Kylo in a lightsaber duel, despite having never used a weapon of that type before. As soon as Han meets her, he wants her to become his copilot. When she taps into the Force for the first time, she nearly destroys Luke’s temple. She lifts a huge pile of rocks on Crait, despite having never used the Force to lift objects before. She heals people using the Force, an ability which no Jedi has used before, and she doesn’t seem any weaker because of it. Zorri agrees to help the Resistance purely because she likes Rey. The list goes on, but you get the idea. In my opinion, Rey fits the definition of a Mary Sue almost exactly.
Then so does Luke.
People like you keep saying, “If Rey is a Mary Sue, than so is Luke!” But Luke doesn’t have any of the qualities that make Rey a Mary Sue. He struggled constantly to gain the level of power he showed in ROTJ, and the people around him didn’t like him instantly - Leia thought he was a complete idiot, Han thought he was a dumb kid who didn’t understand anything, and Yoda thought he was too hopeful and excited to become a Jedi. In order for Luke to gain the surrogate family he had in ROTJ, he needed character development - a term which the creators of the sequel trilogy don’t seem to understand.
Really? In one less he is able to deflect the remote’s shots. Without any lessons (only Ben’s ghost voice saying to use the force) he is able to target the shaft and destroy the death star. Without any lessons he can lift his light saber. And it isn’t like Rey does everything successfully the first time. She has to try several times to get James Bond Stormtrooper to do her bidding. She does fail and when you actually and honestly compare how she and Luke do things, they are very similar. She just doesn’t have his doubts that made him fail with the X-wing. She has family issues he always seemed okay with. We never get to see Anakin train so we have no idea how he did. We do see Erza in Rebels and he does about the same as Luke and Rey. And in case you missed it, Rey had a bit of a failure at the start of TROS where she wasn’t deflecting the remotes shots like she should. She has a tough third film where Luke is pretty composed the whole way through and only has issues when Vader threatens Leia. The evidence doesn’t back up Rey having it easier than Luke or being more powerful than Luke. They just have different journeys.
A Mary Sue doesn’t cease to be a Mary Sue just 'cause she has ubermensch genes.
Yeah, but it helps. I guess it comes down to what one wishes to preserve most in the canon. Like I said, I hate the genetic thing and have hated it since the ridiculous Leia retcon in ROTJ. But I dislike the ‘no training required’ thing of the ST even more, because it takes away from Luke’s arc and struggles. I’d rather roll with a version of Force genetics (I find a Sith version of this at least mysterious enough to carry some weight) to justify Rey’s power levels than go with RJ’s random ‘X-Men Force powers’ thing.
Luke’s struggles are due to lack of faith and lack of concentration. Rey had heard of the Heroes of the OT. Rey knows what a Jedi can do from those stories. Then comes face to face with it in a way Luke never did (he didn’t see Vader do anything in canon until TESB during their duel and I don’t think he saw Ben do anything either). Ben gave him one lesson on the falcon and then he is able to make the shot that takes out the death star and then later is able to levitate his lightsaber before his second lesson with Yoda. Luke had doubts. Rey didn’t. Rey had belonging and abandonment issues, Luke never seemed to. He wanted to know more about his father, but he knew who he was and that was fine. Rey has plenty of struggles and failures in the films. More than Luke actually. No one powerful in the Force seems to have any problem using it once they see it used and Rey saw it used by Kylo many time. In fact, you could say that he activated the Dyad by trying to read her mind and that he basically taught her everything he knew and she just had to concentrate to draw on it. Snoke implied that he linked them, but I don’t think he realized what he was dealing with. They stayed linked after he died. So Mary Sue? Nope. She has too many flaws and failures to be one. Sure she picks up the force quickly, but that is not the only part of her character and she rarely does it right the first time.
Just because a character has flaws and failures doesn’t mean they’re not a Mary Sue. The original Mary Sue died at the end. Mary Sues usually have two qualities:
-An insane level of power and skill, without much struggle.
-The ability to make everyone they meet instantly like them.Rey has both qualities. She flies and repairs the Falcon better than Han, despite having never flown it before. As soon as Finn meets her, he loves her more than anything in the galaxy. She uses a Jedi mind-trick successfully after seeing Kylo use it once. As soon as Kylo meets her, he wants her to become his empress. She beats Kylo in a lightsaber duel, despite having never used a weapon of that type before. As soon as Han meets her, he wants her to become his copilot. When she taps into the Force for the first time, she nearly destroys Luke’s temple. She lifts a huge pile of rocks on Crait, despite having never used the Force to lift objects before. She heals people using the Force, an ability which no Jedi has used before, and she doesn’t seem any weaker because of it. Zorri agrees to help the Resistance purely because she likes Rey. The list goes on, but you get the idea. In my opinion, Rey fits the definition of a Mary Sue almost exactly.
Then so does Luke. Don’t confuse mythic hero and Mary Sue. A Mary Sue is a fan insert into a story. I’d like to know what fan Lucas and Abrams had in mind as the character was created and developed. It is a trick that most writers insert themselves into their stories in some way. Good writers do it in a way that you don’t see. Fan Fiction is often some of the first work of budding writers and is where you find the Mary Sue character - the all too obvious writer-as-character who does things too well. In the OT, Han Solo is the Lucas figure. I couldn’t say what Abrams was thinking. But it is pretty hard to have an actual Mary Sue in a mains stream production. Usually you get a point of view character or something to better relate.
And you missed about the rocks on Crait. She lifted the Anakin/Luke lightsaber in TFA. And as Yoda said, size matters not, so if you can lift a lightsaber, you can lift an X-Wing or a pile of rocks. As for the healing, as we see it drain Kylo to death, I think it is safe to say it from the most secret of Jedi texts that they did not share with just anyone. The inexperienced could easily spend themself healing and die. So not having seen it before is not really surprising. And as I said, it all started when Kylo tried to read her mind. Everything she does after that we can blame on that (for lack of a better word) mind-meld. Kylo has inadvertently been teaching her since they met. A true Mary Sue would know things only a fan would know and would inappropriately save the day… every time. Rey doesn’t do that. People who call Rey a Mary Sue don’t really know what a Mary Sue is. It is not just an overpowerd and successful character. Marvel would be full of those. We have three unlikely heroes in Star Wars, a slave boy, a farm boy, and a junk girl. Which one is the most over powered? Anakin at 9 is a pod racer, pilot, robot builder, and mechanic and saves the day with a lucky shot. He is far closer to a Mary Sue (though he isn’t one) than Rey ever was.
A Mary Sue doesn’t cease to be a Mary Sue just 'cause she has ubermensch genes.
Yeah, but it helps. I guess it comes down to what one wishes to preserve most in the canon. Like I said, I hate the genetic thing and have hated it since the ridiculous Leia retcon in ROTJ. But I dislike the ‘no training required’ thing of the ST even more, because it takes away from Luke’s arc and struggles. I’d rather roll with a version of Force genetics (I find a Sith version of this at least mysterious enough to carry some weight) to justify Rey’s power levels than go with RJ’s random ‘X-Men Force powers’ thing.
Luke’s struggles are due to lack of faith and lack of concentration. Rey had heard of the Heroes of the OT. Rey knows what a Jedi can do from those stories. Then comes face to face with it in a way Luke never did (he didn’t see Vader do anything in canon until TESB during their duel and I don’t think he saw Ben do anything either). Ben gave him one lesson on the falcon and then he is able to make the shot that takes out the death star and then later is able to levitate his lightsaber before his second lesson with Yoda. Luke had doubts. Rey didn’t. Rey had belonging and abandonment issues, Luke never seemed to. He wanted to know more about his father, but he knew who he was and that was fine. Rey has plenty of struggles and failures in the films. More than Luke actually. No one powerful in the Force seems to have any problem using it once they see it used and Rey saw it used by Kylo many time. In fact, you could say that he activated the Dyad by trying to read her mind and that he basically taught her everything he knew and she just had to concentrate to draw on it. Snoke implied that he linked them, but I don’t think he realized what he was dealing with. They stayed linked after he died. So Mary Sue? Nope. She has too many flaws and failures to be one. Sure she picks up the force quickly, but that is not the only part of her character and she rarely does it right the first time.
Am I the only one who feels Rey Palpatine is far more compelling than “Rey nobody”?
Nope. I think the same thing.
I found this to be an interesting perspective on the film …https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-most-important-thing-the-rise-of-skywalker-reinforc-1841069664
Read the article, and I gotta say that’s pretty dumb. I’ll explain how:
TLJ: Rey is nobody, just a random girl from a random planets, her parents were nobody and they don’t matter. Anyone can be a powerful Jedi.
TROS: Rey is the granddaughter of Palpatine and she’s powerful because of her bloodline. In the end she chooses to take the name Skywalker because Luke and Leia Skywalker are who trained her.
Gizmodo: See? If TROS really wanted to reject TLJ they would have made Rey an actual Skywalker and have that be why she’s so powerful!Making Rey the descendant of literally any character we know, regardless of who they are, is a rejection of TLJ. The only way to not recon TLJ is to accept that her parents are nobody and don’t matter, and to throw that mystery box away and not touch it for the rest of the trilogy.
I don’t see it that way. In fact, I see an interesting parallel to the OT. ANH: Luke, let’s kill off your only living family to make you go on this quest. TESB: Luke, well, actually, your father became Darth Vader. ROTJ: Luke, that girl you like and kissed, well, she is your sister. A lot of fans are still arguing about that one to this day. They thought the other should have been somone else, but the answer to why it is Leia is in the movie. What else would spark Luke’s rage? Vader senses his secret and threatens Leia and Luke loses it. The story required something personal enough for Luke to risk the dark side. The finale of the ST and saga required an epic villain and who better than Palpatine risen from the dead. And what better curve to throw Rey than to make her his granddaughter (I would have made her the great granddaughter). It questions every success she has had to this point and makes her doubt. It was a risky choice, but one I don’t feel negates TLJ’s message that anyone can be a Jedi. It solidified its own message with broom boy at the end. TROS has its own message, that we can overcome the faults of our ancestors. That we are not what our blood dictates. Our heroes are revealed to be a former stormtrooper, a former spice smuggler, and a Palpatine. Like Han in the OT, they overcame their past to be the heroes the galaxy needed.
- I’m sure you’ll respond with some quip about how I’m not a really fan or part of the community or whatever but I’ve never heard debates about whether or not Leia should have been Luke’s sister.
Not my style. There are a lot of things in these films to disagree on.
- No, there didn’t need to be an epic villain, and the Duel of the Fates script is evidence of that. Rian Johnson clearly was leading up for Kylo to be the antagonist in episode 9. Do something original and have the turning of the antagonist to the light be the conflict audiences care about, not just beating the same bad guy from the last 6 movies again.
I found it to be in keeping with the Flash Gordon origins of the saga. I liked it. I think ending with the the last of the Skywalkers unredeemed would have created worse backlash.
- Yes, TROS does tell a different message than TLJ, that’s my point. It shouldn’t in regards to Rey because telling a different story requires changing Rey’s backstory. It throws Rey around all over the place with clearly no plan and it greatly dimishes her growth. Yes character growth is possible with a mystery backstory but it’s much more difficult (and these movies don’t pull it off), especially when who she is in the eyes of the audience changes very much between movies. I think you give these movies too much credit
Rey in TFA: A powerful scrapper girl from a junk planet whose parents, whom we don’t know, abandoned her.
Rey in TLJ: A powerful scrapper girl from a junk planet whose parents, whom we don’t know and who don’t matter, abandoned her.
Rey in TROS: The granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine who was left on a junk planet to protect her from her grandfather.Luke in SW: A farmboy.
Luke in TESB: A farmboy-turned rebel, whose Father is Darth Vader.
Luke in ROTJ: A farmboy-turned rebel-turned Jedi, whose Father is Darth Vader, and sister is Leia.See how these changes to Luke’s character are only additions to his character and not complete changes in the nature of the character and where they are from, and the nature of their strengths and what not? Leia being Luke’s sister doesn’t change how we see Luke like how Rey being the granddaughter of the greatest Sith Lord changes how we see Rey.
I would say that a lot of things in the ST got pushed back a film. JJ decided to push Luke’s reveal to the end of the first film resulting in the story I expected (where he dies in some great fashion) got pushed back to the second film. So the reveal here for Rey that she is a Palpatine is really an echo of Luke finding out his father became Darth Vader. So the things are not in the same order or proportion, but the same vein.
Like I said, I’ve read that they used different recording formats and not all of them were limited. I think you are right that some shots were limited to 1440x818, but others weren’t. But also, as you have pointed out, it was a hybrid format that was part 1440 and part 960. Mathematically when you put those two together, you end up with a 1920 image where every pixel is distinct. And when you have a film where nearly every shot is an FX shot which was done digitally at 2k, a few shots that look a little soft are not going to impact it. Look at ANH. A great many FX shots in that film are soft and lack the crispness we expect today. So overall I don’t think the film is as low quality as you are making it out to be. but it definitely isn’t a flaw in the camera. They have continued to use it for other films and I bet with the right recording equipment and lenses, it gives a nice HD picture. You are focusing on one instance where it wasn’t as high quality as they expected. Elsewhere I have read that they used a number of different recorders and some were very advanced and others were portable. And it’s not like people involved in making a film always tell the full story. Or that interviews are fully accurate. Unless you have talked to him in person, you can’t take what he is quoted as saying as 100% accurate in all instances. Other places have reported slightly different information and they can both be correct. I will admit that if one form of tape was inferior and only did 4:3 HD recordings that one of the team would let that stick in their memory and relate it. But the camera stats and reports of multiple types of recording equipment being used leads to the conclusion that some shots are compromised and others are not. I would guess all the location work is where you will find the lower quality recordings, such as Tatooine. Portable technology is always behind bulkier studio technology.
I found this to be an interesting perspective on the film …https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-most-important-thing-the-rise-of-skywalker-reinforc-1841069664
Read the article, and I gotta say that’s pretty dumb. I’ll explain how:
TLJ: Rey is nobody, just a random girl from a random planets, her parents were nobody and they don’t matter. Anyone can be a powerful Jedi.
TROS: Rey is the granddaughter of Palpatine and she’s powerful because of her bloodline. In the end she chooses to take the name Skywalker because Luke and Leia Skywalker are who trained her.
Gizmodo: See? If TROS really wanted to reject TLJ they would have made Rey an actual Skywalker and have that be why she’s so powerful!Making Rey the descendant of literally any character we know, regardless of who they are, is a rejection of TLJ. The only way to not recon TLJ is to accept that her parents are nobody and don’t matter, and to throw that mystery box away and not touch it for the rest of the trilogy.
I don’t see it that way. In fact, I see an interesting parallel to the OT. ANH: Luke, let’s kill off your only living family to make you go on this quest. TESB: Luke, well, actually, your father became Darth Vader. ROTJ: Luke, that girl you like and kissed, well, she is your sister. A lot of fans are still arguing about that one to this day. They thought the other should have been somone else, but the answer to why it is Leia is in the movie. What else would spark Luke’s rage? Vader senses his secret and threatens Leia and Luke loses it. The story required something personal enough for Luke to risk the dark side. The finale of the ST and saga required an epic villain and who better than Palpatine risen from the dead. And what better curve to throw Rey than to make her his granddaughter (I would have made her the great granddaughter). It questions every success she has had to this point and makes her doubt. It was a risky choice, but one I don’t feel negates TLJ’s message that anyone can be a Jedi. It solidified its own message with broom boy at the end. TROS has its own message, that we can overcome the faults of our ancestors. That we are not what our blood dictates. Our heroes are revealed to be a former stormtrooper, a former spice smuggler, and a Palpatine. Like Han in the OT, they overcame their past to be the heroes the galaxy needed.
I disagree with that article completely. Rey Palpatine wasn’t done for any storytelling reason, it was just done to please people who were pissed that Rey was a nobody in TLJ. And I really don’t like Rey taking the Skywalker name without permission, just because some ghosts smiled at her. If Jeff Bezos smiled at me, would that mean I’m a billionaire? Rey’s arc in TROS makes no sense, and it devalues TLJ’s message that anyone can be a hero. It’s one of those moments that was clearly designed to be a dig at TLJ, like “Go away, Rose!” and “A Jedi’s weapon deserves more respect.”
Well, you are certainly entitled to disagree, but people take names all the time without any permission. Authors and actors adopt a professional name and they are free to pick anything they like. In one of my jobs, I encountered someone who had legally changed their name to Jean-Luc Picard. Name are not proprietary or owned. We adopt people into our families all the time and give them our name. We don’t have to get our ancestor’s permission.
And Rey’s journey in TROS is really a continuation of her journey in TLJ. TLJ was about anyone can be powerful in the force. Rey is given a curve ball in that. Her parents were nobodies (in the force - if her father had any gift his father would have been after him) but her bloodline was from the dark side. That poses a challenge when she wants to be the hero. Yes, this no longer makes her a nobody, but it questions the destiny of your blood. Anakin was a noble Jedi seduced by the dark side, but as far as we know, Palpatine was always dark. Luke overcame his bloodline to be a Jedi, but his nephew fell to the dark side. Does Rey have a choice in her destiny? The movie, and especially the final scene, makes that a clear yes. She can choose to be something other than what her bloodline would dictate. She takes the name of the family she found rather than her family by blood. And contrary to what you think, I believe that Luke, the only one with the Skywalker name, would have given her permission. After all, he trained her knowing who he grandfather was. So I felt that TROS expanded on that and hinted that Finn might be force sensitive as well. I found the real themes (not the false “let the past die” nonsense) of TLJ to be carried forward in TROS and enhanced. I don’t feel anything was thrown out, only build upon.
I found this to be an interesting perspective on the film …https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-most-important-thing-the-rise-of-skywalker-reinforc-1841069664
Great article, thanks for sharing.
Interesting. I did this with the SD version from TB and GKAR and I am about to run an enhancement on them and see if I can bring out more resolution. It has worked with TPM.
And if what you say is true…
Hi yotsuya,
I’m sorry, I don’t want to argue with you, I’m just reading and believing what ILM HD Supervisor Fred Meyers said about this matter, and I’m assuming it is true: “This chroma sub-sampling combined with spatial sub-sampling effectively reduced HD’s 1920 resolution to 1440 for luma and 960 for chroma.”
About the ideal scanning resolution, as I said before: even if the original master was shot in 6k, after going through a traditional Intermediate Positive, then to IN to release print stage in the lab, it wouldn’t go above 2K. Plus the weave and lack of pin-registration in most projectors, plus the less-than-optimum focus, you could easily wind up with well below 1080 resolution.
Believe me, I’m currently scanning The Phantom Menace in 4K: there is nothing to get more than in 2K (and Harmy seems to think the same).
I have spent years scanning photos and you always want to go higher and then reduced after the scan. A movie is just a series of 180,000 photos. The post scanning image handing tools are much more sophisticated than the scanning tools. It just pays to get more and then reduced to what you really want. It also helps during the repair process (removing dirt and scratches). I’ve had to repair a number of old photos with missing corners and enlarging them 2x, doing the repair, and then shrinking them back to the original size helps hide the signs of the repair and results in a better end product. So scanning at 4k and then fixing the dirt and scratches will give the best final product rather than scanning at 2k or HD.
As for the resolution, it appears to be a recording device limitation, not the camera. And they used a number of different recording devices. Some probably are at the resolution you are describing and the couple of frames I checked may have been done with higher end equipment. And when you consider how many scenes in many movies are made, the quality has always varied a bit depending on whether the editor/director wants to use the scene as shot or crop it for a better picture. I remember noticing in 1997 that the front shot of Luke looking at the binary sunset had more grain than the surrounding scenes indicating it was originally a wider shot. That one shot of Qui-gon Jinn in the Counsel chamber from TMP is just awful because it was digitally shot and then cropped.
So is the expectation still that it’ll settle around $500 million domestically?
It is almost there.
I could be a holo-rent-a-body. Some sort of service for those with money to gamble but who can’t make it in person. I personally loved that section because it was a new slice of the Star Wars galaxy. One we hadn’t seen and one that should be there - they have to have the monied class as well. We’ve seen the smugglers, the gangsters, the moisture farmers, the princesses, the elected officials, and the military, why not the rich. I found it delightfully appropriate that they find the guy they are looking for only to get thrown in jail and make do with someone else. It almost paid off. He didn’t turn on them until they got captured. But that slice of monied elegance really tied to the opera in ROTS. I also backs up the arms dealing that is supposedly how the Exogol fleet was constructed in TROS.
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.
I think your analysis in your last few posts nails it.
Hux is quite content to let them run out of fuel and then kill them. He is savoring the moment.
Finn was defintely on a suicide mission and he might have damaged the weapon, but not likely. Remember in Independence Day he has weapons to fire. Finn has nothing. He is trying to run into a Locomotive with a Citroen. It isn’t going to do more than scratch it. The angles they show to make it clear how small the speeder is, the parts crumpling from the power, Poe’s earlier comment about how flimsy and decrepit the speeders are (when he puts his foot through the side). It is all story telling to indicate that Finn’s run is hopeless so we are relieved when Rose stops him.
Poe acted reckless when he destroyed the Dreadnaught. That it later turned out to be the right thing to do is immaterial. They had no way of knowing that they would be tracked through lightspeed. It was the wrong thing to do from a leadership perspective and that is what Poe’s journey in TLJ is all about. You have to follow the plot in the moment and not let yourself have 20/20 hindsight interfere in what came before. You can’t do that in life and you can’t do that in fiction.
I’m not sure I totally agree about Luke, but it does make sense. But what is clear is that where Luke is at the beginning is a dark place and you really can’t take any of what he says as being indicative of the themes of the film (my biggest complaint about some opinions of the movie). Luke is suffering from his failure and mourning the dead (and Ben) and hiding from Leia and Han. What he says about the Jedi from the PT I agree with (and I feel the PT makes that very clear). But when he says the Jedi have to end, he is really saying the old Republic Jedi, not the idea of the Jedi or where they came from. He does not want to be responsible for another student falling to the dark side or being killed. When Yoda destroys the tree and forces him to face his failure, he is able to clear away all the instability and regain his own balance. Then he is able to face Kylo in the most iconic Jedi saber duel ever. He gives hope and becomes legend.
A plot hole is something that doesn’t make sense in the moment. That the film doesn’t address in ANY way. Star Wars is filled with coincidences and perfect setups because it is myth. It takes shortcuts with the plot to move the story along and keep it flowing. There are things we don’t know because it isn’t important to the moment. That has been the case since 1977. It is how Lucas created the series. He wanted iconic characters in a mythic serial. He made the characters relateable and took them on familiar journeys. Anakin faces fear, failure, and anger. Luke faces his lack of faith and his yearning for adventure. Rey faces her abandonment and her need to belong. The other characters have their own journeys. Sometimes not even shown on screen (Lando going from a pirate and smuggler to running Bespin). I think the ST has done this as well and I think RJ did the most heavy lifting at it. Rey, Finn, and Poe have the most growth in TLJ.
Just realized a plot hole that has something to do with The Rise of Skywalker:
Why would Luke Skywalker keep Leia’s lightsaber if he wanted the Jedi Order to end?
It isn’t his to destroy. He got rid of his own saber and parked his Xwing in the water and closed himself off from the force. If Leia did find him and wanted her saber back… would you really want her mad at you for that when she entrusted it to you? I wouldn’t wan Leia mad at me… scary.
@yotsuya: Again, I respectfully disagree.
AotC was definitely shot in 1440x800.I think the important part is this:
Since SW2 was to be displayed as 2.35:1, and Panavision were not able to come up with the promised Anamorphics to work with a Prism-splitter 3-CCD camera, the movie was shot letterboxed, so the master images were only 1440 x (about) 800.
Lucas didn’t plan to use a HDW-F900, but a ‘Panavised’ one (HDW-F900F). But Panavision didn’t deliver in time, so Lucas had not other choice than cropping his shots.
Furthermore, HDCAM SR tape format was not yet available, so he had to use a ‘bastardized’ HDCAM 4:2:2 (instead of 3:1:1, but not SR) limited to 1440x1080.
So the final cropped shots were in 1440x800 (which is still HD).
Some other interesting quotes:
this meant that, unfortunately as is the case with digital masters in general, 1440x1080 would remain 1440x1080 until the end of Time
According to Wikipedia :
The actual resolution of Attack of the Clones is not 2k, but just 817x1440 pixels. This is because the HDCAM format subsamples the 1920 horizontal lines to 1440. The 1080p aspect ratio of the camera only applies when the 16:9 aspect ratio is used. To produce the 2.39:1 aspect ratio, the top and bottom of the image are cropped, reducing detail. This cropping is why Spy Kids 2, (shot with the same camera) looks better then attack of the clones. Spy Kids used the native 16:9 aspect ratio and thus used all the pixels of the camera. (Anamorphic lenses could have allowed the full 1080 lines to be used, but were not available for the HDW-F900.) . --Algr (talk) 19:17, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Star_Wars:Episode_II%E2%80%93_Attack_of_the_Clones)
And the final word to ILM HD Supervisor Fred Meyers himself :
With the earlier equipment, RGB color from the camera was converted into 4:2:2 YUV format when it was recorded. This format effectively slices the color bandwidth in half because one color value represents more than one pixel. The result is fewer chroma (color) samples than luma (luminance). This chroma sub-sampling combined with spatial sub-sampling effectively reduced HD’s 1920 resolution to 1440 for luma and 960 for chroma.
JEDIT: ChewieLewis is right, most of the movie is CGI, not related to HD cameras.
IIRC, CGI was rendered in 2k (so really no need to scan AotC in 4K, which is the main question here)
The Panavision one was to compress the vertical image so the full 1080 was used. The camera is rated for 1920x1080, not 1440x1080. That was the previous camera. The Panavision lens vertically compresses that 1080 into what ATOC an ROTJ cropped down to 816 (or some sources say 818) giving 262-264 lines more vertical resolution to widescreen film. And yes, the color levels were compromised compared to what came after, but the pixel resolution was not. I did some tests on what impact it would have on each frame if the yellow was horizontally compressed (1/3 of the image) and there is more noise from compression artifacts than there is from doing that. And looking at the image of many films, the yellow layer is the lowest resolution of them (if you study how film is made, there are some interesting tricks that give us what we perceive as full color without giving each of the three colors equal clarity).
And if what you say is true, the evidence should be there in the frames. I isolated a frame that lacks any FX (not easy to do in those two films) and if what you say is true, I should be able to compress any frame to 1440x1080 and expand it back to 1920x1080 and there should be no quality loss. Well, there is quality loss. That process degrades the image in a detectable way. It is not readily apparent to the naked eye, but it is there. I ran the same process on a couple of other images (not from movies) and they show the same level of detail and the same degradation of the image if I compress them the the same way. I don’t see any evidence that the image was reduced to 1440 and expanded while I do see evidence that it wasn’t.
But regardless of the exact resolution of the image that was printed to 35 mm film, in order to get the best result when scanning the film, scanning it at 4k is best. Scanning at the exact resolution of a printed image will result in quality loss. Where if you scan at a higher resolution (and then reduce it properly if needed) it will preserve the quality.
Again, I respectfully disagree… the resolution of AotC is definitely 1440x800.
His choice of format caused many a sideways glance among those who actually understood these things at the time: It was the Sony HDW – F900; a ½” * 3-CCD EFP camera which captured 3:1 compressed 1440 x 1080 component video in “SR”, a bastardised “segmented” Tape format. That basically means each progressively scanned frame is converted into a pseudo-interlaced format, and each “field” is recorded as two separate JPEG-like images, (which does NOT give the same result as storing the whole frame as a single image).
Since SW2 was to be displayed as 2.35:1, and Panavision were not able to come up with the promised Anamorphics to work with a Prism-splitter 3-CCD camera, the movie was shot letterboxed, so the master images were only 1440 x (about) 800. At the time, Cinema video projectors were very thin on the ground, which meant the vast majority of punters wound up watching a 4th generation film print, struck from a master video image with considerably less resolution that a 4th generation film print struck from 35mm negative! And there weren’t no Arrilasers then either, just a lot of rather dodgy CRT video printers.
A few years before this epoch-marking event we’d already been told that the then-new HDW – 750 was already a “Replacement for 35mm film” and we laughed hysterically, so hence we were left wondering what had been done to the aforesaid 750 to give us the F900.
Well … apart from adding 150 and an “F” to the model number … not a lot….Well anyway, Boy George went on to produce exactly the sort of results we said he’d get, and nothing daunted, he then proceeded to sever all ties with the aforesaid Panavision and pitched woo to a new upstart startup called “Plus8 Digital” (nee “Plus 8 Video”) to equip his next instalment: SW3 “Revenge of the Sith”.
This time he used Sony HDC-F950 cameras - still 1/2” prism jobs, * but with true 1920 x 1080 recording, which produced noticeably better pictures than Episode 2, (by now the Arrilaser had become available which also helped) but still crap compared to Episode 1, which was still shot on film….
(Plus8 Digital then proceeded to go broke and were eventually bought by Panavision, ROTS apparently being the only feature of any significance to be shot on their brace of expensive new cameras…)And HD is not 2k. The 2k format is slightly higher resolution.
About 2K vs. HD, I never wrote something about HD, I just said that it wasn’t shot in 2K.
That’s why I included the brochure from the Camera that Lucas used on AOTC. It was the HDW–F900 and according to the brochure your estimate is way off. 1440x1080 is 1555200 pixels and the camera is rated at 2200000 pixels. The pickup device is listed as 3-chip 2/3-type FIT type CCD. My undertanding is that the yellow chip was indeed 1440x1080, but the other 2 were 1920x1080 resulting in an image that is almost as good as the next generation cameras. But was not 1440x1080. The final cropped image is 1920x816, exactly what we get on the Blu-rays. It does pay to investigate and read the documentation on the camera used on the film. The brochure I included the link to is copyrighted 2002, so it is not some later and updated product, but the very one used for AOTC. This topic has been discussed fully before and I remember most of the details. So the HDW–F900 was slightly inferior, but once you print it to film, as all the FX shots were going to be anyway, and make the distribution prints, viewers can’t tell the difference.
While the o-neg itself can produce nice crisp images that benefit from being scanned at very high resolution, distribution prints fall somewhere below 1080p so these digital cameras provided cutting edge digital editing and digital intermediates. And it made the whole movie match in quality. We know better today with our DLP projectors and 4k TV’s, but in 2002 they were not looking so far forward, just as many movie makers never imagined that some of the tricks they used that were obscured by the old optical printing process would be revealed by modern digital scans. We have surpassed the quality level they planned for. And until digital FX started being done higher than 1920x1080 or 2K, there wasn’t much point in the rest of the movie being at a noticeably higher resolution.
And my comment about HD is not 2k was just a general comment, not in reply to you.
It was shot with a 2/3 3-CCD EFP camera, which captured 3:1 compressed 1440 x 1080 (= 1.5K)
It is a little more complicated than that. The image that camera captures is 1920 x 1080, but part of the image (I believe the Y portion) is less. But when you examine the final image, each pixel is distinct from the others. It wasn’t until the next generation (used on ROTS) that it was true 1920 x 1080 (meaning each pixel was uniquely captured and recorded instead of the partial processing the Sony HDW-F900 used). But the key thing is that the final image was 1920 x 1080 hd, not 1440 x 1080. If you research the camera, that is very clearly stated and backed up by the resulting image. And HD is not 2k. The 2k format is slightly higher resolution. After ROTS was shot, Panavision developed a lens to compress the image so the 1080 lines didn’t need to be cropped for wider images like Lucas used for Star Wars. The resolution for both AOTC and ROTS is 1920 x 816. ROTS has more color depth.
So, this is where I have it right now.
https://vimeo.com/385077260
password: 81hdcrawl
I updated this. I changed the crawl color and added a tiny bit of blur, both to make it match the 4K77 crawl.
Chris Terrio has stated that if nothing else there are the Rose/Leia scenes that they deemed not high enough quality to include in the film.