star wars 9 spoilers and postmortem shit talk

Have at it.

tell me there’s a snoke origin story

where there's snoke there's ire

Say whatever else you will, but Jar Jar leading an Ewok army in the battle against Emperor Palpatine was certainly unexpected.

i have no skin in this game anymore but i've seen the leaks / early impressions and lol

i guess its at least interesting to make a trilogy-by-telephone where each film ignores the previous one as much as it can get away with

Sam Adams' review feels more appropriate for this thread than the other one

The Rise of Skywalker gives people what they go to Star Wars for, but that’s all it does—and worse, all it sets out to do. It’s frenzied, briefly infuriating, and eventually, grudgingly, satisfying, but it’s like being force-fed fandom: Your belly is filled, but there’s no pleasure in the meal. The movie feels like it’s part of the post–Last Jedi retrenchment, when Disney jerked the leash on Solo and killed plans for future spinoffs by insisting that filmmakers stick to the established playbook. It’s of a piece with the pointedly unambitious The Mandalorian, just good enough to get people’s attention but fundamentally terrified of rocking the boat. Rather than making a movie some people might love, Abrams tried to make a movie no one would hate, and as a result, you don’t feel much of anything at all.

https://slate.com/culture/2019/12/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-review.html

I think my relatively 'meh' position re: the new slate of sequels is starting to become clearer. They're just not that weird or idiosyncratic or personal. Say what you will about the prequels, for instance, but that shit oozes Lucas. The only truly odd moment that jumps out from the recent films is Luke blue-milking a giant teat. But even like ROTJ, which is one of my least faves...the Sarlaac! Jabba! The Max Rebo Band! Weirdness that feels legit and lived-in and which resonates decades after it dropped. So many of the new elements in the Disney films feels comparatively uninspired, like they set a bunch of fresh-faced interns to the task of adding on to the world. I don't remember really any of the new creatures, none of the characters really resonate with me as characters, even the carry-overs from the old films kinda just feel like they're going through the motions, mostly. Johnson injected a little bit of personality into the enterprise but not as much as people seem to think. There just isn't a lot here that people are going to remember fondly through the years.

Eh, should've gone in the other thread, but it'll probably maintain its relevance once I've seen this thing.

i'm guessing this thing will only make me more impressed with the last jedi

this feels like a good place for general bitching, let's let people possibly enjoy things in the other thread imo

TLJ isn't great, but its healthy disinterest in the past -- by using totems from past movies -- was refreshing.

what particularly upsets me is that a lot of the things that small contingent of shitheads complained about re: the last jedi are present in the empire strikes back

It's almost like Johnson did that on purpose!

That is, made TLJ explicitly similar to ESB in terms of theme and structure. He managed to make a movie that was both forward looking and thematically consonant with the "saga" and people shat on it.

yep!!!!

I think ppl overstate the "forward looking" aspect but it's def a better movie than TFA

Fan culture is a disease. Anyway I'll keep away from this thread until I've actually seen the thing

lol the Slate comments wonder WHY WHY COULDN'T A FAN HAVE REVIEWED IT

I love fan logic. I review the Stones once and gave them a mixed review, and someone wrote in to say "I've seen the Stones live over 50 times, if they weren't always great, then why would I pay to see them so many times?"

In the AV Club review:

(A franchise long haunted by the ghosts of the past, Star Wars now involves both dead characters played by living actors and living characters played by dead actors.)

Was it absolutely necessary to dig up Mayhew and stuff him back into the Chewie costume?

I heard it's just some random stunt guy with Warwick Davis on his shoulders.

I wonder if they'd have done this one the same way if McDiarmid had kicked it

ask the Ghosts of Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher

exhuming someone to act as your Ultimate Baddie feels....different, somehow. But yeah you're probably right.

someone post spoilers. I'm unlikely to see this for several years, but want to know what happens

you can search for "star wars spoilers reddit", that's how I found 'em. ppl might not like just having them on here already in case they click on the wrong thread and find out Kylo Ren gets force-crucified by the ghost of Mace Windu

*SPOILER* Rey is half-Gungan

xp. thanks, I'm lazy

LOBOT becomes the new emperor, wild choice

OK, re-resolving to leave this thread alone

The really sad is I read these idiotic invented spoilers, and I'm guessing they're also references to last season of GoT?

Kylo Ren gets force-crucified by the ghost of Mace Windu

― Simon H., Wednesday, December 18, 2019 10:43 AM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

put this vision on the big screen disney cowards

jedi instrumentality project when!!

As I said on the Grim Resignation thread I enjoyed this big, bloated finale. Felt the most like an old non-prequel Star Wars film to me out of the new three: weird races, weird places, silly names and epic Tolkein-y nonsense.
I'm cool with Chewie, 3PO and the remaining old characters given stuff to do as well.

sounds like there's plenty of palpy, which is good imo

I doubt I'll be watching this. Anyone cool die?

Lots of Pallpy. Even more stuff that never gets explained which is hilarous.

I doubt I'll be watching this. Anyone cool die?

― ☮ (peace, man), Wednesday, December 18, 2019 10:37 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

OBLIQUE BUT MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD

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the spoilers i read indicate that a major character (originating in this sequel trilogy) does die

snoke dies again

poopy palpy

So weird that they brought the Emperor back as a teenaged, incessantly-rapping version of himself called Palpy T. Even weirder how well it works!

Wellllll
My name is Palpy T and I'm here to say
I'll drop a Solo in your pit like my name was Weequay

I'm gettin' Palpy-tations

the dead speak!

Guys, lest we ever forget the magical moment when the world learned that Emperor Palpatine's long-hidden first name is

SHEEV

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/C5Wx5vT1npI/hqdefault.jpg

Sheev Mike

glad they finally worked an appearance from Darth Icky into the series given this was the last chance

You know Vader and Plagueis and Oppress
Sidious, Bane, Booger, Barf, Farts and Hopeless
But do you recall
A Darth even ickier than Maul?

Dammit, fucked up the meter of my stupid nerd joke song, shoot me now.

*blasts Sith lightning*

There were bits I liked in this but even with lowered expectations, it was a resounding meh. Better than TFA is a staggeringly low bar.

even the more positive takes I've seen generally allege that at least the first hour is a total mess (though a few say it recovers)

Also I saw this at the same cinema I watched TLJ, on the second opening night like I did for TLJ. Almost identical crowd - healthy proportion of dudes carrying lightsabers and wearing Vader helmets. The difference: loud applause for TLJ, dead silence this time around. Theatre full of SW nerds seemed genuinely confused.

I always thought the hate for TLJ among “fans” was overblown, this confirmed it for me.

Yeah, it's almost as if a certain kind of person cynically draped themselves in the finery of fandom as cover to express a certain kind of sentiment. No, I'm not a sewer-dwelling creep who helped drive Kelly Marie Tran off of twitter, I'm just an ardent faaaaaaan! It's just what we fans do.

this fuckin ruled

poe's "inspirational" half-time speech before the big assault the only serious misstep imo - stunk out the joint

for what it's worth I enjoyed this plenty, appreciated that TLJ hit a few unusually interesting notes but ultimately for Ep 9 of 9 I was happy enough to sit and have my star war feelings gently massaged for 2.5 hrs. watching it with kids definitely helps I think, they subject it to the level of critical scrutiny it deserves (ie not much). Daisy Ridley seemed to have remembered how to take this shit seriously (enough), wasn't really feeling her feeling it last time. new cast largely charming, old guys were fine. falcon return with "rag-tag fleet" pretty cool, "it's just... People" - very good! was pretty bored by the prospect of the emperor coming back but it worked fine I thought. Is this a baked-in problem with resurrected sf franchises, that they are unable to surpass the mythic potency of their original villains? Eg new doctor who still very reliant on daleks & other old monsters...

anyway I must write down my thoughts and ferlings now because I know I won't be able to remember a thing about it in one month's time.

even the more positive takes I've seen generally allege that at least the first hour is a total mess (though a few say it recovers)

I actually felt the opposite! The first half was great fun, second half was deflating.

Fuck it imma spoil away, there just didn’t feel like there was any stakes involved - I never felt for one moment like the heroes were ever going to be in real trouble or that Rey was going to go to the dark side or Kylo was going to die a villain. it was just so pleasantly safe.

Also, like Gwen Christie and Captain Phasma... I cant believe they cast an actress like Keri Russell and kept her under a helmet the entire time.

#justiceforgeneralhugs btw

yeah the first half of the final assault felt oddly underpowered and clunky

apart from that there were a zillion great moments

"friendship" theme firmly back in play

refreshing lack of suicides

extremely cool new ways for the force to work. lightsabre duel occurring in two different places simultaneously was amazing

CHEWIE GETS HIS MEDAL!! Right?? isn't that what that was??

girl on girl kissing after the victory! in your face fanbros!!

refreshing lack of suicides

One of the rebels (might even have been Poe, I can’t remember) making a snarky remark about Holdo’s heroic death in TLJ was unnecessarily petty though. I hated that too - the nagging feeling that this movie just wanted to shit on everything that was supposedly wrong with Ep 8.

girl on girl kissing after the victory! in your face fanbros!!

I keep hearing this is like 1.5 seconds and in the background

Loved the completely batshit quicksand > conveniently fall into cave they needed to be at >> giant hurt snake sequence. The movie is full of so much goofy "wait! what the ?" space opera shit I dig it even more as I think back.

^^^hi dere, I live in a conservative Muslim country and the gay scene was cut entirely and nothing was missed. Having actually well developed queer characters would just be way too much for this franchise.

xpost

Oscar Isaac has complained about their unwillingness to "go there" pretty openly.

Knights Of Ren... pop up for no conceivable reason and...do less than a few stormtroopers lol

“Loved the completely batshit quicksand > conveniently fall into cave they needed to be at >> giant hurt snake sequence. The movie is full of so much goofy "wait! what the ?" space opera shit I dig it even more as I think back.”

This scene was good though I agree. Loved that whole planet pretty much. And the water planet too.

Heard some folks groan loudly at the kiss. And I'm in Amsterdam!!

And I flashed back to seeing TLJ in Stamford, CT and some folks harrumphing at Finn and Rose's kiss then. People suck.

tbh it surprises me that fanboy nerd scum have difficulty appreciating images of girl-on-girl sexuality

Cloud City conveniently floating near giant battle scene

Little droid hacker modeled after Mako in "Blade Runner"?

Cloud City conveniently floating near giant battle scene

― SQUIRREL MEAT!! (Capitaine Jay Vee), 19. december 2019 20:56 (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

please tell me this is a joke

surprises me that fanboy nerd scum have difficulty appreciating images of girl-on-girl sexuality

girls are sjws

favourite character: babu lek or whoever, the black market droid tech. an actual puppet rather than cgi i think?? irresistible

after rey's last line my 11-y-o goes "wait - why are you lying??"

o yeah and while not a big fan of esoteric fan service, loved seeing Wedge at the end (albeit I had forgotten his name and had to look it up)

thought Han's last line of dialogue was both clever and moving

lol

xpost to Tracer

Wonder if Ford agreed to come back for this cameo or if it was repurposed TFA takes

This was not as fun as TFA nor as interesting as TLJ. A lot of boxes got checked but nothing really stood out for me as a good story beat or in terms of brilliant visual shots as in TLJ.

I really hoped the last shot would not be what it was either but it sums up the imagination bypass and overcautious approach many have criticised.

(three stars)

hard disagree, thought this was v v fun

last shot pretty cornball but it’s the closing chapter of a retro sci fi family thrills epic. felt v suitable

Is this a baked-in problem with resurrected sf franchises, that they are unable to surpass the mythic potency of their original villains? Eg new doctor who still very reliant on daleks & other old monsters...

^ Star Trek apparently had a half-arsed bet each way by including Khan but repeatedly lying in publicity that it wasn't Khan? Battlestar Galactica did something more intersting with the series' central conflict than the monster whose name they reused, from what I saw of it.


absolutely not to Captain Save-a-who, just thread reference for non-watchers:

in the last ten years of nu-Who, stories that rely on old monsters (so cameos aside) breaks down across 97 episodes to

5 Dalek * stories, including a 2-parter with Davros in, plus a one-off fight scene in another one
4 Cybermen ** stories, inc 2x 2-parters
(one of the 1-parters is about returning-from-the-previous-year monster James Corden, with about 3 minutes of Cyber-appearances)

1 two-ep story with a new monster from the same time period as one monster from 1970 and another from 1972, who had both returned once in 1984. neither of the old monsters are in the 2011 story but it completely nicks the premise of the 1970 story.

and the 50th Anniversary year brought back 1 old monster for the first time in 39 years, and 1 that had only appeared once, 37 years before. Each of these has reappeared once since, the latter in a two-parter.

(Three of the Cybermen stories set out to dig into previously unexamined aspects or ideas of medical malpractice, or long-term illness, or the removal of free will & agency, or collective consciousness, or individuals' control over their right to die with dignity, rather than just relying on mythic potency of the scary robot soldier design from 2006's reboot of the previous cyborg concept. Not as effectively as Last Jedi's interrogation of tradition and ritual, though.)

* regulars from 1964-67, 4 appearances in the 1970s, 3 in the '80s
** regulars from 1966-68, 1 appearance in 1975, 3 in the '80s

I think every reboot eventually gets back to the original villain, but Star Wars was kinda supposed to be different. It was supposed to be a continuation of a grand saga, but yeah, Abrams apparently was more into rebooting stuff than people understood.

this review pretty much jives with my feelings

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/dec/18/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-in-depth-fan-review-the-thrill-is-tangible

Guardian has a separate 3 star review which I guess is where I sit.

Weird bringing back both bits of Death Star AND Palps yet neither were connected like it seems we were duped to think they would be.

there was an eerie shot of his old blasted chair in the death star wreckage iirc

i still can't get over how badass the various reality-melding force moments between rey and kylo were.

oh and.. what did finn want to say to rey? is it what I'm thinking??

Yeah that can't have been intentionally left hanging.

I groaned when Rey and Kylo kissed but his immediate death just about saved it.

The transfer of various items between them was probably the best trick.

it's like when you wake up from a dream where you've just grabbed a rare coin and for a second you're hoping you've still got it in your hand. So awesome

(sic re who stats, sure but I would also include the Master/Missy, and really my argument is not overuse of old foes but the fact that no new ones have really managed to displace or even equal the iconic status of the old nasties - with possible exception of weeping angels?) (to wrench thread back to SW, I think Snoke is easily the shittest part of the new trilogy) (Snoke! even the name sucks, sounds like some sort of twee cuddle)

“I MADE SNOKE...no, for real! I grew him in a vat!” This reveal happening in the first ten minutes...lol

Anyway this often felt more like a Star Wars loaf than an actual movie, but I had a good time.

“Loved the completely batshit quicksand > conveniently fall into cave they needed to be at >> giant hurt snake sequence. The movie is full of so much goofy "wait! what the ?" space opera shit I dig it even more as I think back.”

OTM, the lean into outright “...and then this crazy thing happened!” pulpiness kinda made the shoddy construction of the whole thing less irritating. Life’s too short to get mad about this shit.

Also Driver and Ridley deserve credit for anchoring it with a semblance of emotional weight that wasn’t rooted in nostalgia.

(I wasn't trying to prove anything in any direction, either over- or under-use, with the stats! However the Weeping Angels have topped multiple Radio Times polls as the most popular monster, getting 49% of the vote in 2012 to the Daleks 17%, with the Silence (another new-series monster) at third on 12%. Again, the vast majority of IRL audiences watch Dr Who when it's on and they're home, or watch a Star War when one's in the cinema and the kids are off school. Porgs = gr8t imo.)

(But the original series never displaced the old nasties either: the Dalek design stuck with Raymond Cusick's original from 1963, the Cybermen were redesigned for their February 1967 return after the October 1966 debut. Across 26 years, the only other monster to return more than once was the Ice Warriors, who weren't a baddie the third time, and the Sontarans, who turned up as a surprise near-the-end twist for their third appearance, and on their fourth were were an Ian Levine*-led addition to an existing story that already had TWO other baddies AND two Doctors, without any of the conceptual characteristics or design or "being physically short" or "having the masks fit into the collars" of their previous appearances.)

((John Simm's Master is a different character in terms of iconography and performance and backstory from Geoffrey Beevers' or Roger Delgado's Master imo. Michelle Gomez' is the best version since Delgado but her extreme popularity is entirely down to Moffatt's writing and her performance, not because 19-year-olds have been waiting since 1973 for another funny evil mastermind in a cuffed collar, or since 1996 for the equivalent of Julia Roberts' brother to wear sunglasses so you can't see his eyes reading cue cards.))

*(superfan who pimped teenagers to the 1980s producer and his boyfriend to go "two up" on, in exchange for getting to attend tapings and offer his suggestions for old baddies to use. now boycotting the show because Dr Who is a lady)

Feel like the first half of this movie outshined the second. It got overstuffed. But i enjoyed it. It was never gonna beat Last Jedi for me but it was fun.

Some beats rang false towards the end. Hux was really stupid.

But hey...Reypatine strangely worked for me!

It was a mess but a mostly satisfying one for me. Seeing again tomorrow

I think they handled Leia's death perfectly

One of the few non-bloaty things that Abrams did right was explain Palpatine's return in a puece of throwaway dialogue. Just accept it and move on!

I was surprised at how well Leia was handled, considering the circumstances. Was dreading a Livia Soprano situation.

I half expected them to give her a Tommy Boy death where she's at someone's wedding dancing, collapses and dies

I will let people shit on this movie tho if it pisses off the lil fanfic fuckholes that shat on TLJ

nah everyone hates this one too, the only fan opinions now are all 3 suck or tlj is okay and the jj ones suck

lol the Slate comments wonder WHY WHY COULDN'T A FAN HAVE REVIEWED IT

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, December 18, 2019 10:52 AM bookmarkflaglink

Like i feel like there are many subsets.

I have friends who hate the new movies and not for stupid incel reasons, just felt too fan servicey. But some of the TLJ haters were also those that considered TFA a masterpiece. Or at least that it was "good".

Otherwise, not sure why their letdown woulda been so bad

extremely cool that Ian McDiarmid got to return to the Star Wars franchise in 2019!!!

thank goodness they brought J.J. back to steer this in the right direction

i haven't seen this but i don't like it

Thought this did the business! (Which can be a pun if you want it to be.) Not perfect of course, there are bits and beats and (non)-character development that I have plenty of issues with. I'm kinda extremely irritated that Rose Tico wasn't much more than a spear carrier this time around, for instance. One too many 'yeah that callback is a BIT much' moments but they stood out rather than being a calvacade. Yet above all else, as I was muttering on Twitter and what folks like Jay Vee are saying, as a full on space opera thrill ride that actually feels like a real tribute to the true source material of the whole thing -- 1930s serial SF films -- this was really effective. As James Blount put it over on my FB page, "the reviews seem to be part shouting at disney, part reaction against last jedi blowback, and part extremely fair (there were parts where the leads were really spinning gold from dross)." (Good example being what Tracer was saying about Poe's Henry V Crispin's Day speech; wouldn't call it gold but he did his best to sell it.) Ultimately when the film ended up my girlfriend and I looked at each other and almost simultaneously said "What the hell was with the huge negativity this week?"

Sounds terrible, thumbs down.

tbf Ned have you hated any of the post-prequel SW things

Am I supposed to have done? None have been anywhere close to perfect -- even (maybe especially, given its general rep) TLJ.

killer AO Scott close to his NYT review: not a great Star Wars film cuz there is no such thing; that's how we like it

(close paraphrase)

Context is informative! xp

a movie by cowards for cowards

The Trembling of the Fans

so this is how fan-ocracy dies

(the prequels were generally crap, but that is the only post-'83 line that has stuck with me)

xpost -- Not with a bang but with a separate T. S. Eliot adaptation.

max read formerly of this parish has gone in HARD saying it’s “unwatchable apart from its meta-textual IP stuff” which was p much exactly the opposite of what i got out of it

https://merchoidcdn-pveiw4zwh96ot9z.netdna-ssl.com/media/catalog/product/cache/e4d64343b1bc593f1c5348fe05efa4a6/s/t/star-wars-fully-armed-and-operational-death-star-pet-den.jpg

babu lick

AO Scott called Abrams "perhaps the most consistent B student in modern popular culture"

generous grader

Ah, The Gray Lady and her cadre of witty Crit- Jedi's.
Scott's idea of a fun sci fi romp is prob "Solaris" so, you know, life of the party and all that.

Scott had Fury Road as one his ten faves of the decade, so no, he's too pro-fun for me

can i just say since no one else has? the new droid? that looks like a lamp on a wheel?? the best!!! i’m not sure how he, or babu frick, or the hurt snake fit into everybody’s metatextual ip analysis or whatever - i don’t think they do? - but that little wheel guy got probably more screen time than R2D2 and i was extremely there for it

And voiced by JJ himself at that.

John Williams cameo was fun too even if it was a classic 'hi we're going to linger on this shot a beat too long so that way you get that even with the eyepiece etc. that is someone you should know there' cameo.

since this is the spoiler thread, the AV Club discusses the spoilery complaints here:

https://film.avclub.com/the-rise-of-skywalker-walks-back-the-last-jedi-s-best-d-1840513344

the butthurt, is strong with this one

when vader reveals he’s luke’s father in empire was that also a cowardly narrative cop-out? sheesh

i like how a the granddaughter of the baddest baddie is good, and the grandson of the goodest goodie is bad, they save each other’s lives, come together for a kiss, and then rey just up and chooses a new last name. family’s what you make it, family’s what makes sense, family’s malleable. pretty good message imo!

Gets two stars from me and easily the worst of the new trilogy.

Guess JJ was hurt when Rian got rid of Kylo's mask early on in TLJ.

I know it's SW but so much of this seemed to make no sense and there seemed a real disconnect between this and the previous two movies. Wonder if Abrams will do a Lucas and go back and drop some hints about Palpatine, or Luke searching for those Sith pyramid map things into TFA or TLJ

the way things have been going w/ Disney and fiddling with existing IP, I absolutely expect something like that to happen

are you saying the mask with the red lines in it wasn’t fuckin cool??

family’s what you make it, family’s what makes sense, family’s malleable

as long as it extends familiar dynasties

it is so boring that palpatine is in this movie

I still say I want Rian and JJ to have a reversion war battle where they make new sequels undoing the last

in the unlikely event Johnson actually does get to wage more star wars he should call his new villain KK Starman imo

Tbh even though I liked the movie a lot, inserting Palpatine back into things kinda shoved the First Order to the bench. At least they didn't overexplain how.

Hux is a complete afterthought. He acts pretty badly too so maybe Gleeson did that out of anger.

Rian's main heavy: JK BUTTRAMS

Then JJ introduces Darth Peeon and superimposes Rian's face onto his body deepfake style.

Then Rian drives to JJ's house and murders him and releases the snuff film ad Ep 12

I am sleep deprived

brad otm

if Palpatine aint dead, Vader reformation = FAIL

hence this film is not CANON

This was fine. It helps that I went in with low expectations.

My main complaint is that a lot of dumb stuff happens (like in most star wars). The whole thing with Chewie's "death" was particularly bad.

The Kylo and Rey characters are both good though and save this movie (and trilogy really).

Most eye-rolling part: Chewbacca getting a medal.

He didn't even get a nice ceremony with everybody applauding.

wookiees can have little a ceremony, as a treat

Assuming they must have shoehorned the Leia scenes in off the cutting room floor and wrote the plot around them as she didn't look CGI

only odd CG-ish Leia was during training w/ Luke scene

yeah, all the Leia scenes were scenes that were originally filmed for the Force Awakens. Which is why all her lines are so generic and knowing this ahead of time kind of ruined all those scenes for me.

Yea deaged Leia looked like a 1999 PlayStation character

yeah, all the Leia scenes were scenes that were originally filmed for the Force Awakens. Which is why all her lines are so generic and knowing this ahead of time kind of ruined all those scenes for me.

― silverfish, Friday, December 20, 2019 3:45 PM bookmarkflaglink

I thought it was weird when she kept talking to Han and everyone kept replying "No sweetie remember Han is dead!"

friends collectively releasing a sigh of relief at the end knowing we’re free of the Skywalkers

#justiceforgeneralhugs otm

My stifled guffaw moment was “I made Snoke” followed by a cut to a VAT OF SNOKES

Palpimandias!

vat of snokes was awesome.

undead zombie battalion of star destroyers - awesome.

hux feeling so petty and undermined that he'd help our gang - awesome. "i'm the spy!" - awesome.

the more i think about this movie the more things i love about it. i whooped about 5 or 6 times probably? more than the previous two instalments anyway. i know we all saw rey's backflip tie slice in the trailer but it was AWESOME.

was there ever any payoff to rey learning she could accidentally do force lightning? guess not.

i loved that rey, when facing palpatine, is once again faced with the paradox that confronts luke again and again in the OG series which is - how can you FIGHT somebody in a STAR WAR and WIN when they keep telling you that as soon as you hit them with your awesome lightsabre you will have turned to the dark side, so that you lose?? it would fill me with anxiety watching luke fight vader, like, fight good man, but not too good! fuck! so luke never 'wins', not like that, and here rey does, she smooshes palpatine into force particles by mirroring his destroyer-levelling lightning back onto him which i guess DOESN'T COUNT because it's his own energy, jujitsu'ed onto him, rather than originating with rey? haha which i like, so lame, but also exactly the right level of schoolyard rule that any 8 year old would have to nod sagely and be like, yep, that's right, it was your own electricity, sorry, GOT EM

which IS like i should have said

Isn't that a tip to Sidious' original demise? Vader's mechanized grasp + Force lightning turned back on him and Vader in ROTJ.

Ahhh you're right. This guy really never learns.

oh by the way anybody really wants a kid with no backstory who's got the force there's always.... broom boy. you know, the kid from your favourite movie that's so risky and interesting

I've never whooped at anything in my life, but I do love that there are people so positive and enthusiastic that they can't help it.

tracer are you JJ

the cinema had about 9 people in it at 4 in the afternoon of opening day so er... the atmosphere wasn't creating itself!

xpost no i have clear glasses

Palpatine’s appearance was fucked up because in the prequel, his lightning was blasted back at him by Mace Windu! Dumbass never learns.

I think the two most awkward bits other than the “everything at once” ending battle were the premise drop at the beginning that seemed portentous in teasers — sith temple! palpatine! — only to be rushed through, and the scene where Chewie is captured and Rey does lightning. How far away was Rey, and how much further was Ben? How did no one see the capture around the corner, and how did anyone see each other clearly? I mean, the answer is that they didn’t, but it seemed like they were all a quick jog away

The sith planet stuff was shadowy on purpose but I have no idea why there were a ton of hooded shapeless entities and you could tell me
they were ghosts or anything at all and it’d be all the same

I get why they had the “memory” of Han showing up as a non-force ghost but it didn’t gel. Pretty obviously an insert due to Carrie Fisher’s death and an inability to have her deliver exposition, but Harrison Ford looked weird too! Was that actually him? Has he been hitting the botox or was he animated into the scene

on the other hand, the bit where her body only
disappeared after Ben‘s death worked. She was walking with him, narratively

sorry for nerdist link but it covers everything I hate about the Rey Palpatine arc: https://nerdist.com/article/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-rey-reveal/

i don't even hate the idea that he returned and she has to fight him! But it was unnecessary for her to be either his granddaughter or a Skywalker. so fucking dumb.

Also Driver and Ridley deserve credit for anchoring it with a semblance of emotional weight that wasn’t rooted in nostalgia.

^^this otm, particularly Driver. Kylo Ren was basically reduced to an exposition machine and his redemption was oddly rushed (mother dies, gets killed, revived, has a conversation with dead dad, immediately realises the error of his ways. ok) but he still sold the hell out of it.

All the Reylo scenes were fantastic - physical objects being transferred through their connection was the coolest new use of force powers.

So have we addressed the fact that Palpatine had sex

^^Fixing to say.

...and that somehow Daisy Ridley is the eventual result.

Reminds me of that (iirc) Anthony Lane line re: the lack of chemistry between Christiansen & Portman in the prequals, and how Luke & Leia had to have been conceived via "Anakin in the bathroom with a Playwookie mag".

xpost explains the British accent?

I'm ignoring it lol, but other people should decide for themselves: I made a mistake of wading into a fan forum where I learned that it's apparently canon that Palpatine created Anakin/Vader either by impregnating Shri or messing with her pregnancy, so the whole Rey/Ben relationship is in fact incest in the Daenerys/Jon Snow tradition.

Tapping out

Back in

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a30273291/palpatine-darth-sidious-wife-child-granddaughter-rey-family/

The headline is much better than the link implies

sheev

Sheevy Wonder

Isn't he uglyyyyyyyyy

the canon-ish thing is that the Emperor was doing some serious dark side meditation trying to mess with the force balance and it ended up with a baby with no father — Anakin was immaculately conceived, just some woman getting pregnant because someone in the central part of the galaxy warping the force so far it created an amazingly force-aligned child

so Palpatine is Anakin’s daddy, but only in the way a war orphan is a child of the aggressor

^i lold

I enjoyed this more the second time. when you know the stuff you don't like is coming you can kinda brace yourself better I guess?

also Rey is the sweetest person alive but good lord does she have quite the body count by now.

why are you people watching this a second time when there are good movies out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cMPuByfwnY

Can someone who's seen it a second time confirm/deny that the stormtroopers observing Kylo's disciple gang walk by said "goals?" I'm hoping I just misheard that line of dialogue.

Will probably take my 9 year old to see it over the holidays although tbh he's more into the Marvel movies

I thought he said "Knights of Ren? Cool" but it was hard to make out both times

I hope it's not either those lol

Yeah I heard "Cool!" and it was very silly. They really didn't seem to justify that opinion.

they seemed like pathetic fedora guys tbh

I thought the guy said “ghouls” but “goals” is a lot funnier

You too can be a Knight of Ren!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiXTf0cyORw

otm

squad ghouls

Today I learned that there's a Stucky contingent for Star Wars, who believe that Poe and Finn are a clear queer couple and the romantic subplots for them is "a really explicit piece of intentional straight-washing"

The first bit of criticism I've seen that I haven't understood:

"I've been having some very in-depth conversations about things I'd change and a lot of them come down to wishing that Rey actually displayed some kind of emotion at any point, some kind of indication that these things are actually affecting her at all."

Xpost

Today I learned that there's a Stucky contingent for Star Wars, who believe that Poe and Finn are a clear queer couple and the romantic subplots for them is "a really explicit piece of intentional straight-washing"

I only know about this because of Oscar Isaac complaining about the straight-washing

I really enjoyed this overall.

It was very choppy & I could have done with some longer moments and a bit less exposition-dialogue, and some of the fanservice stuff was a bit too much JJ going “Eh? Remember this?”

But the story hooked me pretty much right away & the pacing really made it feel like an exciting Saturday night space adventure. Leia felt so weird in those early scenes but man the death scene gave me an unexpected gut punch, i cried so much.

Ridley & Driver were so, so great - all of the Rey & Kylo story moments really glued the whole thing together, and had so much emotional weight

Do we think that Luke misinterpreted the main skill of a Jedi to be just raising starfighter out of swamps/oceans/etc? Does it even fly that good after it’s been submerged for so long?

sat next to irl Comic Book Guy
when chewie got the medal he said loudly “Oh jesus CHRIST” and put his hands over his face in frustration, then stomped out as soon as the credits started

lol

haha that's... why would anybody be mad about that.

this made me lol

Emperor Palpatine, the Rise of Skywalker (colorized, 2019) pic.twitter.com/tfpKQ3VdnR

— Nathan Hayford (@Nathan_Hayford) December 21, 2019

The Temple of Sith is black metal as hell

sat next to irl Comic Book Guy
when chewie got the medal he said loudly “Oh jesus CHRIST” and put his hands over his face in frustration, then stomped out as soon as the credits started

lol

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, December 21, 2019 4:28 PM bookmarkflaglink

Hahaha

I do feel like this is a much more polarizing movie than The Last Jedi, even though that one had a massive amount detractors, they were so obnoxious and nasty that they made us think more of them were out there due to the noise.

But despite the polarization, I haven't seen as much gatekeeping this time around, though obviously it's always gonna be there.

Wanna piss off a Star Wars nerd, tell them Star Wars is a franchise of good "bad" movies.

I believe this may also have been the tealest movie in history. Wouldn't say it had been an issue in any of the other recent SW movies but think they really over-did that this time.

Rey just took a DNA test and turns out, she is 100% that Sith

I was so pleased with this movie. I can't imagine them sewing everything up in a better way than they did. It was all so satisfying, and felt like it had real integrity -- both with respect to what they set up in the current trilogy, as well as the "saga" as a whole.

Sure, the plot was breakneck, and there were some (enjoyably) ridiculous moments and a few "huh?" elements.. but almost everything just worked so well. Even the stuff that I had been cringing a little to anticipate (e.g., Force Ghosts) were tastefully and effectively done.

It's interesting to think back to when JJ said that this movie would tie back to the Prequel Trilogy, and we were anticipating some heavy-handed Darth Plagueis shit... instead, it circled back in a more subtle & thoughtful way. When Palpatine told Anakin that the Force could even be used "to stop people from dying," that may have largely been salesmanship -- but it turns out to be true, only it's more complicated than it sounded. We already knew that death isn't permanent for Jedi, but the finale introduced a graceful sort of economy to the idea of life & death in Star Wars.

Given all the revelations & reversals, I imagine this movie may have a lower re-watchability factor than most of the other movies (can't imagine it having nearly as much oomph once you know what's going to happen)... but I'd rate it very highly based on a theatrical viewing with an (over)excited crowd.

I literally just watched two of my friends arguing with another friend about how it was a plot hole re: how Han could have somehow appeared in a vision to Kylo. Instead of arriving at the obvious and easy conclusion that it was the cinematic version of a vision, where you talk to dead relatives in times of strife.

I feel like most nerds need training on how to watch movies.

Word. And on another level, I feel like the last movie did a good job of priming the pump for “suspension of disbelief” with respect to these surreal new Force powers... I really dug the fighting & grabbing stuff across space, occupying two places at once, etc.

I feel like most nerds need training on how to watch movies.

― Bublé in the changer, I wish I was dead (Neanderthal), Sunday, December 22, 2019 2:06 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Truer words have ne'er been spoken.

I found the pacing & tone of this incredibly annoying - felt like 95% of it was just characters yelling exposition and scene descriptions at each other. Every scene just felt like endless variations of:

A: “We need to do this thing!”
B: “Are you sure we need to do that thing?”
A: “We are doing the thing now!!”
(smash cut to different location)
C: “Wow A & B just did that thing!!”

That's Abrams for ya. I liked it but can agree with that

Musically, it was great hearing that little snippet of “Rey’s Theme”(?) at the very end, tying back to the first movie (and a mood/feeling that I had completely forgotten about).

"Anakin was immaculately conceived,"

It's as if a billion Catholics cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.

("Immaculate Conception" refers to the conception of Mary, not Jesus.)

lol even I know that and I was Methodist

repeating to my self in the mirror "Star wars is for adults" before seeing the final one & having a violent reaction like ingesting a poison

— wint (@dril) December 22, 2019

The Carrie Fisher scenes were obviously a bit odd, and took you out of the movie somewhat; as you couldn’t help but wonder “when was this filmed?,” and be conscious of how they wrote new dialogue around her existing lines. But the integration of old & new footage seemed to work well enough, and probably wouldn’t be distracting if you didn’t know the background (or on subsequent viewings).

(The younger Luke and Leia training sequence looked like a video game; but that’s ok, LOL)

Musically, it was great hearing that little snippet of “Rey’s Theme”(?) at the very end,

yes, i really loved that moment as well! Maybe my favorite part tbh? Although that could just be due to it being one of the few relatively subtle, quiet moments when it felt like i was allowed to sit back and watch a minute or two of a star wars movie, without 9 characters in 3 locations yelling in my face simultaneously

Abrams is like Zak Snyder in that he hates *beats*

(xxxpost) I agree with that; I was hyperconscious of those and scrutinizing them as I watched it and wish I wasn't. her side of the dialogue was written for other conversations but I don't know that it's really THAT obvious. I liked that fight scene, that really really did look like Mark Hammil around Jedi; but Fisher didn't really look like her at all. Oh well.

Movie was fine, dont' know what all the gripes are about. I expect to be entertained watching Star Wars and there wasn't anything not entertaining about it. The first 20 minutes seemed kind of frantic and jumbled but beyond that it chilled out. Fine with all the fanservice and cameos (the medal, etc). I just wish that we'd gotten a ghost yoda at some point.

also Bobby Frick or whatever the fuck his name is, he should be retconned into Mandalorian or something, or given his own show. Maybe he can join the Muppets.

recently somebody, i think here, posted a rant from an actor about how cinemas scrimp on their bills by deliberately using underpowered bulbs in their projectors. this was DEFINITELY the case at the stratford picturehouse. low-contrast scenes were barely visible. when sith-rey shunks out her mega-sabre for instance it literally went by without registering. i’m kind of pissed about reading that rant tbh, i’m going to notice it all the time now.

"I do feel like this is a much more polarizing movie than The Last Jedi, even though that one had a massive amount detractors, they were so obnoxious and nasty that they made us think more of them were out there due to the noise."

I like the Last Jedi but it had two cringey moments: Leia floating in a space ball, and that casino scene. I don't really think there was anything cringey in this one, so I'm surprised people are reacting to it so violently. eh fuck them.

I'm curious to know though, did Abrams plan for her to be who she is at the outset and was that something Johnson threw away; or was Johnson not even throwing that away, eveyone just assumed he had? I have to think there's some kind of general bible for these things with major plot points but maybe not.

I am going to bet the Rey as a Palpatine decision was made over mimosas at a pre-production meeting.

More than willing to bet he had planned for her to have a famous lineage but hadn't decided on who during TFA. Then after Rian killed her bloodline he said OH YOU REMEMBER THIS THING CALLED GRANDPARENTS, BITCH

Fine with all the fanservice and cameos (the medal, etc).

Totally... if there’s ever a movie where it makes sense to have a bunch of “callbacks” and moments like “who’s that? it’s Lando!” (etc.), it’s the final film in a 9-movie series. Really strange to me that ppl would complain about that.

i also didnt find that distracting and was expecting way more of that stuff than there turned out to be, based on ppls complaints

me and my partner were talking about ROTJ afterward and how we both think the whole jabbas palace sequence is a high point of the whole series, a mini movie on its own, like 30 minutes of screen time maybe? And how if they made it today theyd probably dispatch with the whole sequence in like 6 or 7 minutes. It feels as different in style from the new movies as silent films are from talkies.

I thought the Rey-velation was totally satisfying... and I didn’t need some big exposition of when Palpy had kids, etc. (any more than I needed an explanation of how he survived).

I completely understand being fatigued with the shrinking of the universe to continually revolve around old lineages.

It's why I didn't like TFA initially. I wanted new adventures and they gave me the Millennium Falcon and Empire vs Rebels part 2 within minutes.

But i grew to accept it. Some can't. I can get that.

I found it weird that so many people gasped when Kylo said "You're a Palpatine".

The force lightning was kind of an instant clue, and you know he is too old to be her father

Oh fuck they're totally gonna make the Palpatine babymaking movie aren't they

oh one aspect that was very lolsy

having the location of the wayfinder inscribed on a dagger in code (so very JJ) ....
AND
the dagger is the key to geographic location when it is used like the Goonies to find one eyed willie’s cave ie holding up to yr eye & lining up w landmarks (loooool)

Woulda been better if she went all the way into the Death Star and couldn't find it and Kylo asked what she was doing and she said she was using the dagger as a map and he said "wtf that's not how it works moron"

If they made a Palpatine romcom, what would it be called

So do they even try to square "you are nothing/your parents were nobodies" and "you're a palpatine" or nah

Yes. cos that part IS technically true

i couldn't really follow the whole point of the wayfinder or what it was for. what was the point of that? they had the dagger. or did the wayfinder point them to the planet where the death star had crashed?

the dagger told them where the Wayfinder was. the Wayfinder showed them where how to get to the uncharted Sith territory where Palpatine was hiding.

it became unnecessary for the rest of the Resistance to have it because Rey then Mapquested it for them

Yes. cos that part IS technically true

uh

"You have no place in this story. You're nothing. You come from nothing."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu_U_xFsTKA

Could anyone make sense of how taking out the main fleet of Star Destroyers somehow also crippled / destroyed other Star Destroyers around the galaxy?

considering her obsession up until that point had been remembering who her parents were and waiting for them to come back, one could easily assume he was just saying her parents were nobody. her dad was just the son of a Palpatine, not the evil Palpatine. Nobody cared what Archie Palpatine was up to, esp since he didn't follow in his father's line of work.

plus I am pretty sure Kylo gleaned that knowledge from being inside Rey's head, and that's all Rey remembered. they were nobodies. it's just her grandpa wasn't.

it's pretty clear Kylo doesn't know the grandparent connection because Palpatine says "you don't know who she really is" and he goes OOOH OOOH, TELL ME, TELL ME at the beginning.

it's really no more jarring to me than Darth Vader becoming Luke's father in Ep 5 when it was very clear this was not the plan in Ep 4, and that Lucas originally planned to make Anakin SKywalker and Darth Vader two diff people.

obv this wasn't planned either but...lol, whatcha gonna do.

oh shit sorry spoilers I know not everybody here has seen Ep 5

“I guess he must have been on a different transport!” pic.twitter.com/ZxVq8ENUFJ

— david ehrlich (@davidehrlich) December 21, 2019

entire twitter thread of jokes about that line

I'm not really talking about betraying the "facts" of the scene, I'm talking about the emotion, the being totally untethered from the existing narrative and the gut-punch that generates

idk I probably care about this too much cause I thought it was the most effective moment in either movie

it was, for sure. it was one of my favorite parts of TLJ

and a big part of me is sad that it got abandoned, but I pretty much knew Abrams was going to fuck with it from the jump so I had time to mentally prepare.

I’m still trying to figure out why Rey’s actual parents had to be the junk traders. We get an entire setup in TFA where Rey is scavenging junk and then trading or selling it to scrape by, but decides to keep a droid. What if someone like her found, idk, a baby in a tube in the imperial wreckage and decided to raise it, but couldn’t quite make it work?

xpost i was actually afraid he was going to say she was Darth Plagueis but that midichlorians cleansed her soul or some shit so I guess I was relieved he went more conventional

So we get genetic parents of unknown origin, and the people who raised her being filthy junk traders

at one point doesn’t someone say of rey’s parents that they deliberately DECIDED to become “nobodies” in order to protect her? so they’re both right

yeah, Kylo does. I guess they went off the grid, papa probably adopted a new surname (See Obi-Wan - that's how you hide someone!). I mean obviously it's a bit of a cop-out but really the only one Abrams left himself when he made that decision.

xpost yeah mh that could have worked better for sure.

insane to me that in this 9-film saga about the galactic impact of thse families who have incredible existential reality-bending force powers, the plot requires the son of the most evil being in the history of the galaxy to just be some fuckin random dude who we've never heard of before or since

the franchise is full of people who we never knew existed "until now".

apparently there are some books/comics (which are now not canon, LEGENDS lol) where Palpatine refused to get married but had a concubine that he , y'know, boinked. he was afraid of having spawn but we know how that works. also there was apparently an abandoned Lucas-fronted Star Wars tv show where Palpatine was going to have an actual girlfriend, lol

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Roganda_Ismaren

tbh though i guess my baisc problem is i just dont give a shit abt who is related to who and find it by far the least interesting thing about star wars imho, and am pretty bored that the entire series basically became about that, untangling this ridiculous web of sci fi family ties. imagining 6 year old me seeing star wars for the first time, being told "you're going to love this, you'll have so much fun gradually figuring out this family tree!"

is Sidious nude in this

alright, who is going to make the Nude Sheev sock account

Funniest moment: the stoned-sounding Stormtrooper, when Rey uses the Jedi Mind Trick (“Welcome, guys!”)

I loved the continuing aspect of our heroes making things objectively worse by going to rescue Chewbacca since Hux, being the spy, would probably have contrived to get him out of there.

the plot requires the son of the most evil being in the history of the galaxy to just be some fuckin random dude who we've never heard of before or since

Darth Vader’s son was a nobody; and probably would’ve remained a nobody, if Obi-Wan hadn’t lived nearby to keep an eye on him. Anyway, if they had made a trilogy before this one about Palpatine’s kids, we’d have the opposite complaint...

the entire star destroyer raid felt like they were replaying Luke/Han/Obi Wan rescuing Leia (Chewie is Leia)

Palpatine rolling open the ceiling to show Rey how her friends were losing had dialogue that was nearly a verbatim copy of him showing his friends losing in ROTJ

I have no idea why, or how I even feel about that!

xp what about Darth Vader’s daughter, though

hah yes I definitely felt the same way. "look at your friends dying".

only this time around, less of them were dying, as I only saw Snap get blown up

Luke tongued his sister

Sure, Vader’s daughter was a boss

(that was an xpost, btw — LOL)

I am glad Snap died, because Abrams casting Grunberg in every damn thing in a bit role is tiring and he seemingly only appears in the movie when JJ is directing

We got about five seconds of Wedge Antilles, that was nice

that's true! (re only appearing when JJ directs)

how's Oscar Isaac

I wonder if someone in casting told Abrams they were tired of seeing all these faces from his TV shows and that’s why Keri Russell was stuck in a helmet

Oscar Isaac does ok, although I regret to inform you he remains clothed and his character flirts badly

xp Oh, that was her?

yeah did i miss something? how come helmet girl gives poe the brush-off at the end? i thought she wanted to run away w him? i have to admit i was moved by that little subplot, god knows why.

wanted to run away with a friend, she wouldn't let him kiss her before he left in that scene tho

This movie and Frozen II had interestingly similar “heroine vs. stormy sea” scenes... must be something in the water here in Burbank.

Btw, I didn’t get how the wreckage of the Death Star ended up on a different moon of Endor, when it was orbiting the Forest Moon... maybe the Rebels gave it a “push” or something.

Endor is the moon the planet is... whatever... also it did blowed up real good in Jedi so

she wouldn't let him kiss her before he left

incredible willpower imo

the mask does not come off

*composes reply*

*deletes reply*

maybe the helmet is her face and it just...does that

Ah, fsr I thought Endor was the main planet (tho even blowed-up wreckage should remain in orbit)

Come to think of it, this movie had several plot similarities w/Frozen II.

the forest moon of Endor. the forest moon is Endor. it’s all true, nobody bothered to address any of that in the original movie! it’s fine.

apparently the planet at the beginning of this one, where Kylo Ren is taking down a bunch of locals before finding the wayfinder? that’s mustafar, and the macguffin was in his grandpa’s stash. this was completely opaque in the movie

we were talking about that at a party last night. none of us knew it was supposed to be Mustafar.

what else was in his stache? do Sith ahve good doobage?

Yavin IV, eg

That’s funny, I fleetingly thought it looked like Mustafar, but promptly forgot about that whole scene.

apparently the visual dictionary for the movie has an entry for those locals

those books are pretty cool imo and have some cool story crafting when it comes to aliens planets

Ugh, now I sort of want to rewatch all 9 movies (not a productive feeling)

/Darth Vader’s son was a nobody; and probably would’ve remained a nobody, if Obi-Wan hadn’t lived nearby to keep an eye on him.

I ended up re-watching Revenge Of The Sith last night and if you could just mute 90% of Anakin, Padme and Obi-Wan's lines it's not horrendous.

Can I just in general say I find it insane to think that a ninth film in a nine-film series necessarily must repeat the structure of the sixth film, and should include lots of callbacks to films four through six in general. That really does not make narrative sense to me. In general, it was always nonsense that the saga should consist of three films about the fall of the republic, three films about rebels fighting an empire, and then three films that tells the exact same story as the earlier three films, but with one side called the resistance, and the other side called the first order. In hindsight, that was never going to feel like anything else than three extra films awkwardly grafted onto an already finished tale.

OBJECTION

the third film! the THIRD film!!

Lucas didn’t use a time machine to insert episodes 1 - 3 as films into the timeline in like, 1972 or something

the callbacks to the original trilogy aren’t trying to make two last episode blocks be similar, they’re explicitly meant to call back to something supposedly more authentic from a prior era

preceding 75 years of story time.

Well he was apparently born after Ep. III, and died well before Ep. VII; so there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for him to come up in the movies... unless Palpy had said to Vader during one of their holo-chats in Empire: “Ugh, my son is such a loser...”

(Haha, the Wookiepedia entry for Rey is now titled “Rey Skywalker”... that’s very, like, Wikipedia the day a celebrity announces a name change.)

my Darth Rey theory was not far off tbh

My post-concussion Palpatine head-canon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhKaw-qIltM

i was very disappointed keri russell not only didn't take her helmet off but also didn't wear a wig, have a fake accent, and then have sex with someone then kill them.

real talk

I feel real dumb that i am just now realizing this. The Emperor not moving didn't really strike as weird cos he wasn't real ambulatory in the OG series.

I kept thinking he was sitting in a chair but didn't realize he was hooked up to what amounts to Jedi life support so he physically couldn't move at all and was probably pretty near death and only had enough left to use his power in bursts. So he needed a new vessel.

I knew he was weakened but not how much. So he figured ok guess I'll live on in Rey, but then when he used his power to force shove Rey and Kylo, he received life force due to their being a dyad in the force, and it restored a significant amount of his energy and he changed his mind and wanted to continue living in physical form and fuck everyone else. And then he got his force lightning power back.

Obv that was stated in the dialogue, but I guess I thought his powers were stronger prior to that and that he intentionally restrained himself during the final battle.

I'm hella dumb

s/Jedi/Sith

I wonder if an alternative way to get rid of him would have just been to use some lightsaber moves to disconnect him from his weird waldo rig

it did seem precarious

I was thinking maybe that would have made the sith horde come after her, but now that I think about it, they’re definitely the “if he can’t cut it, it means he’s not worthy” type by dogma

sith horde surely a pathetic rupert pupkin-esque cheering section that existed only in palpy’s mind

What an allegory.

Rey is predatory healthcare capitalism snuffing out the last breaths of an elder man with no insurance

Som... she's the baddie!

what if instead of blasting her with lightning he was just vaping bad fluid super hard at her and she's deflecting it into his face until his lungs melt

Hoist by his own pentard

I only know about this because of Oscar Isaac complaining about the straight-washing

Disney: Oscar stop it or our lawyers will be in contact

Oscar: let’s do it baby I know the lawpic.twitter.com/eFriPWp3g8

— general chloe 🌿 tros x2 (@chloeelake) December 22, 2019

lol Oscar Isaac otm

I don't care about Stucky or Finn/Poe but the attempts at introducing female love interests for any of these characters (Bucky aside) in their respective movies were so clumsy and half-hearted, the cinematic equivalents of "no homo".

Having rewatched TFA and TLJ, feel sad for Oscar Isaac, who started out playing Poe as a generous, loving person who sees the best in every man he meets and wants to have sex with him, and who ends up asking a woman in a helmet “Would you like to have a kiss like old times?”

— Angelo Muredda (@amuredda) December 23, 2019

aren't Rei, Finn, and Poe a thruple at the end though? Progress!

they've spent like 5 minutes together by the end of 3 movies

Am I the only person who thought that at the end when Maz sat down next to lonely-looking chewie and looked at him meaningfully that they were going to kiss?

She jokingly called Chewie her boyfriend in TFA so...yep.i did too

clearly what this movie needed was a post-victory celebration inspired by the end of Society

Maz was pretty pointless in this movie.

Oh btw confirmed..the line is "Knights of Ren... ghouls!"

...Although I always forget that Chewie is husband and father

This Trilogy really upped the violence a bit. Strangely, arm severing was always kosher in the OG trilogy, but anybody shot by a laser merely fell over like they were playing cops and robbers. No blood, no entry wounds.

There's blood in the first ten mins of TFA, sabers are used to impale over and over. You see entry points when lasers pierce Stormtrooper armor, there's an off-screen BEHEADING in the new one. You even see Ren's gross exposed innards briefly after Rey kills him and before restoring him.

Idk if i coulda handled that as a 9 year old. Obv that's why it's PG-13, which Revenge of the Sith started, but I feel like 98% of that rating came from the dismemberment on Mustafar, as well as Padme force choke and off-screen Youngling murders

agree with that. i could have done without any of the impalings tbh, partic han’s.

Also the scene where Rey cut off Palpatine's head, then wore it like a mask and ran around to everyone yelling "Look at meeeeee, I'm Palpatineeeeeee" was a bit much

The final scene with Rey and Kylo, kiss excluded, got me at the end on rewatch. It's the first time he's been, free of burden, free of pretense, and it shows in Driver's face

Oh btw confirmed..the line is "Knights of Ren... ghouls!"

I WAS SAYING GHOUL-URNS

Lol

Things in the film that were pretty good but not mentioned above:

The opening crawl - "The Dead Speak!" is the other end of the galaxy from "Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute."

The Valerianish skip through various worlds by the Falcon near the start - I hope it was an intentional joke that each of the worlds that we see for like 20 seconds is full of vertical gaps just large enough for the Falcon.

Also mentioned above that Palpatine's life support is properly icky, but also, as per one of the more distant shots, enormous, extending up and behind him for 100s of feet - it reminded me of GLaDOS from Portal.

The C-3PO story is a good mix of touching and solid slapstick - I think he's actually harder to get right than a lot of people think, and he did well here. Plus also a few seconds of red eyes, for fans of 0-0-0.

What i liked about the light speed skipping is that it proved Han right for being so maddeningly precise with his light speed coordinates

they've spent like 5 minutes together by the end of 3 movies

― ciderpress, Monday, December 23, 2019 8:49 AM bookmarkflaglink

Hell, Poe didn't even introduce himself to Rey until the end of TLJ!

xp i remember qui-gon and darth maul's deaths in 1 having a lot of visual impact as a kid because they were more raw than anything in the OT and now it's just standard stuff

The C-3PO story is a good mix of touching and solid slapstick - I think he's actually harder to get right than a lot of people think, and he did well here. Plus also a few seconds of red eyes, for fans of 0-0-0.

Agree with all this… Threepio wasn’t annoying in this movie! (He was noticeably a little thicker around the middle, LOL)

My favorite “callback” was Rey saying, “I care...”

ANH had those grisly scenes of Walrus Man's* arm being cut off and Owen and Beru's corpses, and there are a couple of Imperial officers left with smoking wounds after blaster shots to the chest, but after that it was all very toned down.

I have a lot of *thoughts* about this movie and want to see it again but a few things:

- I don't mind retcons, Star Wars is practically 100% composed of retcons; and I don't mind twists and surprises, but I feel like Abrams really did make two big mistakes here both in undermining one of the most challenging ideas in the SW universe regarding the Force and heroes; and by having his retcon rely on the existence of a character whose existence could not possibly have been inferred via any of the previous material. If anything, everything we've ever been shown completely contradicts the very possibility.

- That said, at least they stuck with some evidence that Finn is Force-sensitive, if not to the point that he'd ever develop "Jedi powers."

- Finn's backstory, and now Naomi Ackie's whole group being composed of former stormtroopers, SHOULD have led to some different storytelling beats, but it seemed to go nowhere. (A lot of the Discourse among a segment of the fandom really thought that that Finn was going to lead some kind of stormtrooper rebellion in this movie.)

- There's also significant discussion on Twitter that the ending of this film was changed very, very late in the game and that Ben was not supposed to die. There's evidence from interviews throughout shooting that this is probably the case, and there are a lot of very pissed off Reylos out there.

- Bless this franchise for having Warwick Davis put on an uncomfortable Ewok costume literally for 2 seconds of shooting.

- Movie needed more Artoo. EVERYTHING needs more Artoo.

- ROSE TICO GOT DONE DIRTY.

I also liked the decision for Keri Russell to not take off of her helmet. I can see why it feels like "oh come on!", but she does some really great emoting with her eyes in that scene.

Poe constantly trying to fuck her was a little off tho

undermining one of the most challenging ideas in the SW universe regarding the Force and heroes

Elaborate on this?

I didn't like what they did to Rose yeah.

I think Ren dying was the only thing that made sense. Rey killed him, then saved him with his lifeforce, he returned the favor. also he is a mass murderer so....Star Wars doesn't really do moral ambiguity other than the Methodist Christianity of "I begged forgiveness for all of my sins shortly before dying so now I'm one with the Force".

*her lifeforce

Yeah I’m glad Ben died. It was nice that he redeemed himself, but it would’ve been weird if he had gotten to live on. Also, the ending would’ve had no residence if there was another actual Skywalker still alive.

*resonance

unless we're talking about a different "rise" of Skywalker amirite

really when it comes to the universe, the only movies in this series with any sort of tight, intricate plotting is the prequels, and we know how those went.

I think this movie made more sense (even if Palpatine was completely unnecessary, and the least interesting thing about the movie) than it originally let it, it's just Abrams's predilection to not letting things breathe and throwing so much at you in a short period of time that you miss important details. that's not "being cerebral", that's "being a journeyman director who wrote that piece of shit Forever Young with Mel Gibson".

*let on, Christ I cannot type today.

undermining one of the most challenging ideas in the SW universe regarding the Force and heroes

Elaborate on this?

― The dead speak! (morrisp), Monday, December 23, 2019 1:33 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Johnson's whole thesis in TLJ was that the Force does not belong to the Jedi, that it works through everyone, that anyone can be a hero, or even just connect to the Force in ways large and small. Luke refers mockingly to the "mighty Skywalker blood," and the story makes explicit that Rey's heroism and strength stem in part from her anonymity and nobody-ness.

This movie contradicts that completely, not only by making her a Palpatine, but by her only finding the strength to defeat Palpatine once she hears the voices of all the Jedi of the past telling her, "You can do eet!"

This is cool, though:

pic.twitter.com/wVDTt9fTeL

— Lex (@lexie_labollita) December 23, 2019

Hmm, I’ll have to think about that…

For a second there, I thought Ben was gonna commit Seppuku in the scene with Han (instead, he threw the lightsaber away).

Ben Solo's shrug <3

Adam Driver is so weird looking and yet so hot, he shoudn't be allowed in a Star War, it's distracting.

(jk, Kylo Ren would never have worked with a lesser actor)

was that Johnson's thesis, or Luke's thesis? Luke says that, and makes a good point (it's a great allegory for how Christianity has tried to usurp authority over secular society, with Luke trying to promote religious tolerance), but don't we get the idea Luke is relenting a little bit by movie's end? I figure he'd still believe that the force doesn't solely "belong" to the Jedi, and that other groups may also use it to do good things, but that he's at least relented on the idea that the Jedi can't be trusted with it and actually believes the Jedi can be restored and use its power in a positive way.

Not only does he rejoin the fight, and he says emphatically that he will not be the last Jedi, implying that Rey will continue her Jedi training. That to me would at least suggest that he's gone back a LITTLE bit on his disdain. even if he wasn't completely wrong about the failures of the Jedi, clearly he had at least a partial change of heart.

Some saw his "I was wrong" in this movie as a middle finger to RJ, but I didn't think so. Luke WAS wrong; the debate between haters and supporters of TLJ wasn't whether Luke was right or wrong to go into exile, but whether it was *plausible* that he would do it. I always felt it was completely plausible that he'd lose his religion and flee - Yoda did it too! But that didn't make it honorable or "right" to do so. that's why he redeemed himself at the end.

the only reason she needed the strength of all of the Jedi to beat Palpatine was because he was supposedly using the strength of all of the Sith. it was a classic Lucas homage of a good-evil battle, so on-the-nose and over the top, Georgie probably would have came if he saw it.

Yeah, I don’t think it necessarily contradicts the idea that the Force works through anyone (and that anyone can be a hero); but it does provide an explanation for why the Force is so strong in Rey (even though her entry into the storyline was kind of “coincidental”).

Luke may have mocked the Skywalker bloodline, but it really was powerful, wasn’t it?

Like I said, I do need to see it again, but I did like it! (But I still think Rey Palpatine just ain't it. She could've remained Rey Nobody and the story would have the same effect.)

I mean, don't get me wrong, TLJ was a far better movie and it is of course disappointing that we went back to Fan Service Abrams (not that Trevorrow would have done much better - he co-wrote this script and he is responsible for those Jurassic abortions).

I didn't need her to be a Palpatine, and the whole Emperor Redux wasn't necessary and probably the least interesting bit of the film.

I'm guessing Abrams and Trevorrow couldn't find a way in their widdle minds to explain how the Resistance could build its ranks back up and provide a significant challenge to the First Order, so they came up with the Emperor to distract both sides.

as much as I enjoyed this sequel trilogy (and it's pretty obvious I did), I was always let down about how it became Empire vs Rebels part deux.

I always felt there were plenty of other angles they could have explored. Like Kylo Ren didn't have to be a Solo/Skywalker - what if he was a young Jedi that became radicalized, was shunned from his community, and became a terrorist that caused unrest within the Galaxy?

Or if you're hellbent on wanting him to be a Solo/Skywalker, why couldn't his defection and Luke's exile have been the source of the first movie? Why couldn't TFA have been about THAT?

I guess I wanted to see more of the Republic on the back foot. The Rebels are used to being the underdogs, now they've vanquished their enemy, and the good guys are the people in power. How do they rule and quell any potential uprisings?

once TFA recycled the Empire, it kind of painted the story into a corner. the books and comics did a nice job of actually detailing the birth of the First Order, but if I had a do-over, I woulda liked different scopes.

I have to say I never thought at age 12 I'd be having these conversations as a near-40 year old, lol. really did look like the sequels were never getting made.

didn't Han's kid also defect to the dark side and become a Sith in the (now Legends) books? Jacen Solo?

Or if you're hellbent on wanting him to be a Solo/Skywalker, why couldn't his defection and Luke's exile have been the source of the first movie? Why couldn't TFA have been about THAT?

This probably would have felt like Anakin/Obi-Wan redux.

Yes, and is killed by his twin sister to boot.

xp

hmm, good point. maybe it could have been about Kylo Ren being a bookmaker and he gets in over his head and takes out a loan from Goombah the Hutt

not that Trevorrow would have done much better - he co-wrote this script

lol no

the credits say Abrams and Terrio. the Writers Guild gave Trevorrow and Connolly co-writer credit as well so despite what Abrams claimed about starting from scratch, I'm willing to bet he used elements of his original treatment.

I fought with your father in the Guild wars

I liked the rescue droid. BB-8 and that thing should get their own show with Babu Frik.

Story credit with an "and" does not mean "wrote the script," and p explicitly means did not write the script. Seems most likely that they were given the credit as compensation for being fired, next most likely that their script included enough things like "Rey and Finn fight stormtroopers with lasers" and "Chewbacca flies the Millennium Falcon" that they were able to arbitrate, with "wrote the script but enough dialogue was changed that they were downgraded to story credit" a very distant third.

I didn't feel like Rose was particularly sidelined in this movie... especially considering how the story jumped around, and didn't focus much on Resistance HQ. Rose's role, and her friendship w/Finn, remained a focus (and she seemed to have more lines than, say, Lando).

But I also understand how the character took on a particular significance after the ugly side of the TLJ backlash.

xpost cool, go post about dementia spasms

I mean Rose was very specifically positioned as a love interest for Finn, and in this movie he gives her nothing more than a friendly shoulder squeeze before once again deciding to stay behind and launch one less desperate attack. To me it's dropping a narrative thread in an especially lazy (and ugly) way given the way Kelly Marie Tran was treated by alt-right creeps for two years.

Film Crit Hulk has some words: https://www.patreon.com/posts/32504876

I can see that POV; though I’m also not sure how much further their love story could’ve been developed.

I was expecting a sex scene intercut with the rest of the resistance having a rave on Endor

just watched ANH. now that Rogue One exists, it's amusing to me that it's a brutal battle of attrition to get the physical Death Star plans from Scarif, which just about kills everyone, but the security on the actual Death Star is LOL

I'm appalled some of y'all are defending this attenuated, lifeless piece of shit.

Every moving set piece is a callback to a character or scene in or from an earlier movie, like the raised TIE-fighter.

I agree w Eliza re: Rey Palpatine

her being a nobody AND a jedi was part of the excitement of this new character. undermining the aristocracy etc etc

making her a Palpatine felt very tacked-on. and kinda dumb. and ultimately not really necessary

otm

lol I pretty much figured this would be your reaction Alfred.

her being a nobody was the best move in the series but I knew Abrams was going to undo it the moment he was announced, so I had time to "make peace" with that. SW gatekeepers want everything to have connective tissue because they don't read books that aren't about Star Wars or watch TV that's not about Star Wars or watch movies that aren't about Star Wars and think The Battle of Algiers was an old battle that the Galactic Republic won. they don't know a thing about how a good story works.

and Abrams is often one of those dudes. fortunately I don't expect high art with my SW (so when I got something approximating that with TLJ, I was pleasantly surprised).

I mean the dude wrote the terrible 90s Forever Young screenplay, that should tell you his skill set.

Finn at this point is an embarrassment, the guy who yells REY! DON'T! when it's obvious she's FIGHTING FOR HER LIFE.

xp It’s not even about “gatekeepers” or JJ. This is Star Wars we’re talking about — a movie where three of the main characters were later revealed to be blood relatives, and it turned out that the bad guy built the shiny gold robot when he was a precocious kid.

I understand wishing that Rey had an unexceptional background, but it doesn’t make sense to blame the “big revelation” on Abrams or Disney.

true, but Abrams was the one who teed off that there might be a reveal in Ep 7, and then when he came back, used a bit of a loophole to get his wish.

I'm someone who enjoyed it but I woulda enjoyed it more if she hadn't been a Poopatine.

Every moving set piece is a callback to a character or scene in or from an earlier movie, like the raised TIE-fighter.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, December 24, 2019 1:25 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

X-wing GET IT RIGHT GAWDAMMIT

THANK you

sad lol

The funniest thing LFL did was bump up the release of the Mandalorian, knowing full well that if they showed the green scaly infant doing Force heal stuff the fans would love and accept it but if they saw Rey do it first they would hate it and wail and gnash their teeth.

— Matt Barbounty hunting is a complicated profession (@BarbotRobot) December 23, 2019

and, yeah, it's fairly obvious Poe and Finn wanna star in some Brokeback movie of their own but Disney said COOL IT YOU TWO

btw is McDiarmid so old that he can't move? We wondered whether he's on that cherry picker because he's immobile.

he has a boil on his ass

wow, McDiarmid is two months younger than George Lucas.

A Jedi on the streets, a Sith between the sheets

wow, McDiarmid is two months younger than George Lucas.

― Pete Swine Cave (Eliza D.), Monday, December 23, 2019 10:53 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

what a wild decision in retrospect to cast a 39-year-old dude as the wrinkled, ancient embodiment of evil.

^I know, right? I thought the same thing... it really worked out well.

but it doesn’t make sense to blame the “big revelation” on Abrams

if Johnson had free will when writing his movie in which Rey was a brave regular person and a broom kid could have the force, Abrams can take the credit for writing one in which it turns out she was horny for her cousin and Lando tries to pick up his own daughter

Horny for her cousin?

just cos she calls herself Skywalker as an adopted name does not mean she's related to Ben

the general point holds tho. Abram can be blamed, he made all of the choices regarding her lineage.

I guess, but... this is Star Wars. It always seemed pretty certain to me that Rey would turn out to come from some important lineage, it was just a question of how they’d pull it off. (But I’m also not immersed in the minutiae of the creative tug-of-war btw. Johnson and Abrams, or whatever.)

also Billy Dee Williams finally stopped pronouncing Han with a short "a" sound.

xp I watched too much YouTube about this movie the other day. One of them was going on about a line in ep3 meaning that Palpatine mystically impregnated Vader's mom... which was backed up in some canonical comic.

Re "horny for her cousin"

That would make them first cousin once removed

(I was joking about The Ineffable Gravity Of Star Wars forcing poor JJ to get as close as he could manage to Leia almost fucking her brother, I don't know anything at all about Palpatine outside of seeing the original movies as a kid. I'm not even sure if Adam Driver is Darth Vader's kid or not)

in some galaxies it's not even an issue, even when there's sex involved

I had to read a plot summary of the last movie while sitting thru trailers for this one. this is a good review crew.

I just reviewed Wookiepedia — FWIW, both the “Legends” and “Canon” sections say that the midi-chlorians “conceived” Anakin, in response to Darth(s) Plagueis & Sidious’s meddling in the Force (and to “restore balance,” etc.).

I’ve also heard the fan theory about P & S creating Anakin, but if it’s not in WOOKIEPEDIA....

have you cross-referenced with Encyclopedia Ewoktanica?

I'm convinced nobody in this universe has sex

Including the fans

episode 2 was mainly fuckin iirc

Maybe I’m just easy to please… I thought it was cool and satisfying when Ray’s parents were said to be “nobodies” (although I suspected that was misdirection); and I thought it was cool and satisfying when she was revealed to be Palpatine’s granddaughter!

you know what else is cool and satisfying:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Coca-Cola

Blue milk is my bev of choice, lol

its a shame about rey

on Tattooine, under the dust her name is still engraved

#thankyourianjohnson is trending worldwide lol this is kind of a disaster for Abrams.

me: why is JJ Abrams so keen to celebrate hereditary power & legacy?
google: he's the child of two successful Hollywood producers, and recently got his college-age son a job writing Spider-Man, the most coveted job at Marvel.
me: never mind.

— Gavia Baker-Whitelaw (@Hello_Tailor) December 24, 2019

We haven't even discussed the Fortnite angle yet!

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

#thankyoujjabrams for fixing the mistakes that were made by Rian Johnson. I am so pleased! pic.twitter.com/aQ1nLtDwpY

— ❄🎄Darth Phoenix 🎁☃️ (@PatrickDeRaaff) December 24, 2019

Remember when the first order destroyed that planet and it turned out that the only two people we cared about from there magically managed to escape?

I've had arguments with three people about JJ "fixing" shit

Did he "fix" Star Trek too?

I can see his wrench from here.

I can hear you retch from here.

http://biggerluke.wikidot.com/bigger-luke

the most vexing unresolved plot thread for sure

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EMfcxI_X0AMLc-D?format=jpg&name=medium

that's the kind of wildcard thinking that keeps you alive!

Originally Emperor wanted Rey killed and for Ren to kill him and absorb all the Sith and become the new Emperor.

He never asks Ren to bring her to him. Ren decided to do that on his own so they could both kill him.

When Ren threw his saber away, Palpatine knew he couldn't use him as a vessel anymore. He knew she was headed there and bringing the Resistance with her so he changed his plan and instead tried to turn her and have her become the new Empress, absorbing all the Sith.

Then, he accidentally steals life force from both, since they're a dyad, and his strength returns and he no longer needs life support and says "fuck it - i can be Emperor myself again"

It did take me multiple views to suss that out since Abrams did a shitty job of laying it out

It's also entirely possible that he planned it all, but that old cunt always claims things are his plan

You’ve nailed it (and I thought it was clear enough on one viewing).

Also, remember he changes his mind at the end of ROTJ, and goes from trying to convert Luke to killing him (when Luke refuses to be “turned”). It’s not like the guy can’t think on the fly.

If a senatorial candidate ran on "Preemptive infanticide for midichlorian carriers: this fuckery must end", I'd vote for them.

It did take me multiple views

why

Months ago, when star wars land first opened, somebody asked Rey her family name and she said, "I used to be Rey from nowhere... but now I'm Rey from the Resistance" what I'm saying is the ad lib from a theme park performer was better and more emotional than the real screenplay

— Jenny Nicholson (don't talk to me about star wars) (@JennyENicholson) December 25, 2019

heard u been talking shit

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EMlhcuuWoAMP3EY?format=jpg&name=large

xp Why does she think that was an ad-lib?

Also, the Resistance is (presumably) over at the end of the movie; having her choose the Skywalker name has tons of emotional resonance.

It really really does not

What would you have preferred? “I’m Rey, from the Resistance” (roll credits)?

"I'm Rey Rodriguez of Tatooine Honda."

Yeah. Rey Charles. Rey Ridley. Or anything else. Why end with her name? The name isn't the point.

Rey-An Johnson

If the point of the final scene escapes you, there’s probably no point in me trying to explain it.

If you don't see why I find it pointless, there's probably no point in me trying to explain it.

Cool!

Rey paused so long before giving her surname they should've shown the old woman had got tired of waiting and wandered off.

lmao that would have been amazing. surely this edit is possible with the footage we have??

Luke's the father she never knew. family's what you make it. seems like a pretty good message.

Thinking about it, the thing I really want to happen was her all of a sudden going blank, like when the jedis feel a disturbance in the force, and she says 'I... I think my name is Daisy Ridley...' And then there's a shot from her pov, a 360 degree pan, and it's filled with blurrs and splotches, but some of them are legible as camera and crew, and then, at the end of the pan, a smiling force ghost. George Lucas.

Cut to credits. Williams' Star Wars theme. But underwater. In a loop. Like The Caretaker.

I might not be, like, in the core audience for this film.

Rey paused so long before giving her surname they should've shown the old woman had got tired of waiting and wandered off.

― nashwan, Wednesday, December 25, 2019

same thought at the time

more than anything it's just incredible, bordering on malpractice, that Kennedy, JJ and co. didn't just sit in a writers' room for a few months after they purchased the rights and simply hashed out a coherent narrative for three movies, AKA the basic work that almost every even bog-standard narrative TV series does. the only real wrench in the production over the course of the decade was Carrie Fisher's death, and clearly they had plenty of ways around that. the reactionary film-to-film approach clearly did their box office returns no favors.

won't somebody think of the box office returns??

I'm just saying that even from a sheer corporate standpoint (the way I have to imagine all SW decisions are made) it didn't make sense!

anyway Lindsay is making the important points

#trosspoilers #spoilers given that there’s no way unnamed son is older than 35 in the flashback, Palpatine definitely fucked after he got face melted.

— FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION “BEAUTIFUL GHOSTS” (@thelindsayellis) December 25, 2019

MELTY 👏 PEOPLE 👏 FUCK 👏 TOO 👏

oh no

Melty Palpatine sex-tape be like: pic.twitter.com/miqwUfZPWC

— Bootleg NES Classic (@mercurypixel) December 25, 2019

the reactionary film-to-film approach clearly did their box office returns no favors.

hate 2 get $1.3 billion dollars at the box office

We,, yeah, I'm fairly sure Disney hates that in this case. What is your point?

There is a way you can scroll up to earlier posts in the thread

absolutely not to Captain Save-a-who, just thread reference for non-watchers:

in the last ten years of nu-Who, stories that rely on old monsters (so cameos aside) breaks down across 97 episodes to

5 Dalek * stories, including a 2-parter with Davros in, plus a one-off fight scene in another one
4 Cybermen ** stories, inc 2x 2-parters
(one of the 1-parters is about returning-from-the-previous-year monster James Corden, with about 3 minutes of Cyber-appearances)

1 two-ep story with a new monster from the same time period as one monster from 1970 and another from 1972, who had both returned once in 1984. neither of the old monsters are in the 2011 story but it completely nicks the premise of the 1970 story.

and the 50th Anniversary year brought back 1 old monster for the first time in 39 years, and 1 that had only appeared once, 37 years before. Each of these has reappeared once since, the latter in a two-parter.

(Three of the Cybermen stories set out to dig into previously unexamined aspects or ideas of medical malpractice, or long-term illness, or the removal of free will & agency, or collective consciousness, or individuals' control over their right to die with dignity, rather than just relying on mythic potency of the scary robot soldier design from 2006's reboot of the previous cyborg concept. Not as effectively as Last Jedi's interrogation of tradition and ritual, though.)

* regulars from 1964-67, 4 appearances in the 1970s, 3 in the '80s
** regulars from 1966-68, 1 appearance in 1975, 3 in the '80s

― insecurity bear (sic), 19. december 2019 23:11 (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Okay, I get it now. Thanks for the good advice, Neanderthal.

See i meant "to the post sic was quoting in his post" but I apologize for not specifying that crucial detail

You can call me Rey. Or you can call me Jay. Or you can call me Rey-Jay.

Miss Nobody if you're nasty

hate 2 get $1.3 billion dollars at the box office

https://www.slashfilm.com/rey-in-the-rise-of-skywalker/

‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ Lets Rey Down in the Most Unforgivable Way Possible
Posted on Monday, December 23rd, 2019 by Andrew Todd

i can't disagree with the general premise, tbh. still liked the film, but it was a weak decision by Abrams to take her 'nobody' status and make her a Plopatine

xp IMO, fretting that this film may be psychologically damaging to certain viewers is on about the same level as calling The Last Jedi "SJW propaganda."

I also think it's a desperately forced misread. Rey isn't alone & isolated at the end of the movie -- she's a badass Jedi with a new lightsaber, roaming the galaxy, and making a pit stop on Tatooine to pay tribute to Luke & Leia.

And she certainly doesn't need a "companion" to be happy (good grief)! The reprise of "Rey's Theme," and the shot of Rey playfully sliding into the courtyard on a piece of debris, are a reminder that she was happy and self-sufficient as a scavenger back on Jakku. She hasn't really been searching for "family" in these movies, but to solve the mystery of her provenance -- which she now has, and chosen a new "family story" for herself. The salient fact about the Skywalkers isn't that they're "all dead," but that they will live on, as an inspiration to Rey -- the first "new" Jedi after the passing of the Skywalkers, the galaxy's "last Jedi."

And this writer can go on about "cinematic language" like someone who's taken one (1) film class -- but desert planets don't represent "dead people and sand" in Star Wars... they represent a springboard to adventure, a jumping-off point. Rey's about to blast off with BB-8, and leave that rock behind!

How tenuous must someone’s love be for the character Rey that they feel she’s ruined by not having the backstory they wanted; or for not ending up with a boyfriend (of all things)? She’s maybe the most inspirational and self-actualized character in the saga; her backstory doesn’t matter, she could be a nobody or a Palpatine, and she’s still just as awesome!

morrisp thoroughly otm but it's also why the reveal that she's a Palpatine rings so false. It would have been better if she actually was a nobody but chose to take on the Skywalker name later to really hammer home the "choose your own family" message.

As it is, it just makes the SW world smaller and suggests that you can't be a powerful Jedi without being part of a familiar family. Which is a shitty takeaway that not only undoes the previous film's conclusion, but also panders to the "Rey is a Mary Sue" crowd that just couldn't accept that a scavenger girl from Jakku might actually be good at wielding weapons and using the force instinctively, even after she was shown to have survived on her own for years.

As lazy and uninspired as it was, I really didn't mind Palpatine being back. But having Rey be his granddaughter utterly ruined her arc imo.

btw what Finn wanted to tell Rey was that he was force-sensitive too - which JJ revealed at an Academy screening over the weekend instead of in his own goddamn movie. What a fucking dumbass.

roz otm

What would you have preferred? “I’m Rey, from the Resistance” (roll credits)?

How about "Solo?" The name of the man she loved and lost? (And tbh the only person actually named Skywalker treated her pretty badly when he was alive, both Solos treated her pretty well.)

(And it's worth considering that if both Luke and Leia knew who she really was -- which the story in no way supports, but whatever -- then they both gaslit the ever-loving heck out of her. And doing it for allegedly noble reasons is still pretty cruel.)

And she certainly doesn't need a "companion" to be happy (good grief)!

It has nothing to do with "need" -- it's the clearly-expressed desire of the character to be with Ben Solo. Abrams fell into the common narrative trap that male heroes can have the badass hero life AND the girl, but female heroes can have one or the other, not both. They can't desire and have the men they love and still be the hero in the end. (Hi, Black Widow!)

Why should she NOT have had Ben survive? What did it do for her, *as a character*, to give her her heart's desire for a moment then cruelly snatch it away? It has nothing to do with "this character needs a boyfriend," for pete's sake. If there's one thing the movies make clear it's that what everyone wants is for Ben to come home. It isn't even remotely subtle. Not "to return to the light and then die," but to *come home*. And the narrative leads there up until the very last second, then says, "Nah, lol."

She hasn't really been searching for "family" in these movies, but to solve the mystery of her provenance

The latter was just a means to an end -- her search for belonging has always been her motivation. Maz telling her "The belonging you seek is ahead of you," Ben repeatedly telling her she isn't alone, her anger over his killing of Han (who was shaping up to be an actual surrogate father) were all very explicit about this.

(Also not for nothing but the switch from "This lightsaber *called* to you" to "I'll earn your brother's lightsaber, some day" was some garbage.)

Wait wait wait where the fuck is "Ben Solo is her heart's desire" coming from?

Every moment from the second she arrives on the Star Destroyer in TLJ? Her saying explicitly that she wanted to take his hand? The absolute joy in her face when she grabs his face and kisses him? That last one is the happiest her character is ever shown to be in three movies.

Seems reasonable given they kissed for a few seconds. For me though it felt like a lazy by-product of having the main hero and villain across the three films be differently gendered. She's a woman he's a man so whatever else happens they eventually have to kiss. I did like how this was played with in TLJ though, don't think it needed to be punctuated as it was but appreciate Eliza's take on this.

wait why wouldn't you feel absolute joy when you have the chance to grab and kiss Adam Driver's face.

The kiss is the one moment where I said "oh come on". Because i never felt her connection to Ben was romantic. She's an optimist, she wants to turn him....and then take him to the Resistance to answer for his crimes. Then she can visit him like Sister Prejean in space jail.

How would that even work? "Hi Poe, this is my boyfriend, the guy that killed most of your friends."

Fortunately he died before I could get too worked up about it.

nashwan otm

In any case the new Safdie brothers flick is out so breaking from SW for a few

(And it's worth considering that if both Luke and Leia knew who she really was -- which the story in no way supports, but whatever -- then they both gaslit the ever-loving heck out of her. And doing it for allegedly noble reasons is still pretty cruel.)

I never thought this was the case (has it been suggested)?

I agree with others above that Rey’s connection w/Kylo (/Ben) never seemed particularly romantic (the kiss notwithstanding); and that this was actually a cool aspect of their interactions in TLJ. Obviously that potential is there whenever you have a “Sam + Diane” setup, but I think it would have rung false if they ended up “together.” I certainly (and respectfully) disagree w/Eliza that “it's the clearly-expressed desire of the character to be with Ben Solo.” She may have wanted to “take his hand,” but she’s OK without him too!

Abrams fell into the common narrative trap that male heroes can have the badass hero life AND the girl

This doesn’t happen in Star Wars, though... no one ends up together, even Han & Leia break up. FWIW, domestic happiness is never really depicted in the saga, save maybe for Anakin & Padme’s romance (which of course ends tragically)!

How about "Solo?"

I actually thought about this! :) Han is another character who had “no family name” (and instead had one thrust upon him, without getting to choose like Rey.) But she’s not “Solo”; she has a deep connection to the Skywalker family, and wants to carry on their story.

I never thought this was the case (has it been suggested)?

GhostLuke says it explicitly, that they both knew.

"The kiss is the one moment where I said "oh come on". Because i never felt her connection to Ben was romantic"

are you this bad at reading signs in real life? because if so you may have missed a lot of opportunities.

fuck you

that escalated quickly

well, you're being a dick, so

without making it personal I'd agree that their sexual tension is pretty heavily foregrounded throughout TLJ

I don't really agree with that at all. it seems grounded in them having a personal connection based on prior traumas and they find solace in talking to each other about it. people can have a strong bond without wanting to fuck.

I feel most of the sexual tension came from fans who wanted to ship the two of them together

has nobody ever held the hand of someone from the opposite sex as a show of solidarity without ripping their clothes off five minutes later?

usually a pretty good sign I'm trapped in a PG-13 sci-fi tentpole

if anything Finn and Rey seemed the ones to have *that* chemistry, but that got abandoned after TFA

Finn's real chemistry is w/Poe.

Well, but I mean they also have their final climactic fight amidst a raging sea which is often kinda symbolic.

xpost hah, touche!

xpost maybe they both had to pee?

I'm not suggesting they're strangers, they clearly have some bond and I could see that turning into a romantic one (or some people reading it as such, though Neanderthal largely OTM there). But "her heart's desire" is a singular thing, I saw no sign at all that it's The Most Important Thing in her life.

she didn't exactly mourn him afterwards

so apologies for getting heated, I don't object THAT angrily to people who disagree w/ me on that, just put off by akm's snotty post.

GhostLuke says it explicitly, that they both knew.

Huh, I missed (or forgot) this!

Agree strongly w/Neanderthal & Andrew’s take here. FYI, some weirdo in the theatre yelled “Now go make Force babies!” when they kissed.

xp when she thinks he's dead on the Death Star she is definitely instantly grieving and regretful (in part because she's also felt Leia's death, surely, but still).

Another indication a different ending may have been planned: Leia hanging around instead of disappearing into the Force instantly makes no narrative sense if she did what she had to do during the Death Star battle.

How would that even work? "Hi Poe, this is my boyfriend, the guy that killed most of your friends."

Rey aside, this is a key point for me — narratively, I think Ben had to die to “redeem himself.” As I mentioned earlier, I almost thought he was going to commit suicide in the scene w/Han (and was like, “whoa!”)... but giving his life for Rey’s was a perfect way to make it happen.

(I haven't even brought up the fact that Ben arrives on Exogol on an Empire-era TIE Fighter -- that he somehow found intact on the Death Star, I guess? -- that isn't capable of lightspeed travel.)

I swear, I did *like* the movie, but I think Abrams was just a little too Abrams-y this time around.

I haven't even brought up the fact that Ben arrives on Exogol on an Empire-era TIE Fighter

I thought this was just the same ship he's had in all three films. I think the film opening on it ship emerging from lightspeed would've been the better start rather than this coming after the open over Mustafar and swift cut away from space just to show Kylo retrieving the wayfinder from under Vader's bed or whatever it was.

Rey destroys the one ship of his on the desert planet, then steals the other one when she leaves him behind on the Death Star and burns it on Ach-To. (Unless he managed to get that ship somehow completely rebuilt in, like, a couple of hours.) (Also the wayfinder should have been in the first ship, not the second, but w/e.) When he arrives on Exogol, it's in a plain old straight winged TIE Fighter from the OT era.

I took Exogol for a hangover once, with water.

it's weird to care about any of the fake-ass characters in this bloodless collection of "story beats"

this was good! enjoyed it a lot more than the last jedi. i did feel kind of bored and disoriented by a lot of of the shoot-em-up scenes, but this is probably more my issue than the movie's -- i can't play modern video games either.

there is something a little redundant about the new trilogy, so i do kind of wonder how much anyone will care about them in a decade or two. i think rey is great but i couldn't really make myself care about any of the other new characters. i don't think any of the films compares all that well to their equivalent in the original three -- ppl criticize the corny stuff in ROTJ and they're not wrong but the faceoff there between luke and vader and palpatine feels genuinely mythic and intense in a way that the more violent showdown at the end of this movie doesn't.

It is intriguing to think what Rian Johnson might be able to do with his own trilogy (if he really ends up doing it), when he’s freed from the constraints of the Resistance/First Order conflict — which led to the weakest parts of TLJ, IMO (which is not to “let him off the hook” for the weakness of those parts!).

Sad that they recycled a bunch of Emperor lines but failed to have him scream “UNLIMITED POWER!”

movie made half a billion dollars already so despite the tepid reviews (most of which I disagree with) I doubt that anyone on the business side is considering this a disappointment.

I expected Sidious to yell UNLIMITED POWER when blasting the ships tbh

for all the time and energy that ppl have dedicated to the star wars universe, watching this movie reminded me anew that so much of the shit that happens in these movies makes no sense. when palpatine picks up the unconscious kylo ren and throws him down a cliff i kinda went, "wow, that's a hell of a way to kill that character." and of course he comes crawling back in the next scene, none the worse for wear. probably just as well they didn't even try to explain how palpatine could come back after literally exploding.

xpost: he should've said "i am the emperor of these united galaxies, clothed with immense power!"

"so much of the shit that happens in these movies makes no sense" I kept wondering why they didn't just shoot and kill our heroes multiple times.

Alfred, same!

pic.twitter.com/4cEFGEf26G

— Obi-Shawn Kenohmygodshutup (@neddamnwahs) December 26, 2019

Since I have been so contentious, I should say that:

- This movie coaxed one of Anthony Daniels's best performances in any of them, using him at least as well as Kersh did in Empire. Every word out of his mouth was gold, and if anything he pushes Poe's buttons even more than Han's.

- Chewbacca's "WHY DOES EVERYONE I LOVE DIE?!" breakdown was actually really affecting. All he's got left in his life from the last 40 years are two droids, one of which he doesn't really like very much. (Although it's weird that nobody ever acknowledges his relationship with Ben.)

- I did like the move from the very simple effect in TLJ of water droplets appearing on Kylo's glove after their one Forcetime session where Rey is in the rain; to full-on transfer of physical objects and then, essentially, bilocation.

- It took me a second viewing to realize that Rey's lightsaber at the end is made of her old staff, which is pretty cool.

reminded me of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
“this is... the weapon of a scavenger”

Yeah Chewie's little breakdown was pretty sad... isnt he supposed to be many hundreds of years old? Youd think he'd be used to all his friends dying over & over by now

I’ve always related to C-3PO: whiny, effete, barely tolerated by friends, constantly falling apart

i liked that when they completely wiped C3PO, he continued to act in the same insufferable manner, only now he didn't know who anyone was.

lol i am in the doghouse w/my niece (12)* for loudly hissing "FOR FvCK's SAKE" when ren's hand poked back up from the abyss, after he had been so casually (=satisfactorily) dispatched there by emperor p

also: woah and indeed yikes lando claiming central role in all previous victories then putting the middle-aged moves on jannah

*i asked her what the best and worst bits were, she said "worst is when you SWORE uncle, and there is no best bcz they were all as good"

kylo ren and throws him down a cliff i kinda went, "wow, that's a hell of a way to kill that character." and of course he comes crawling back in the next scene, none the worse for wear.

This was dumb, but to be fair, he died minutes later

"he's good now"

he is pretty near death at that point, which is why him transferring the life force essentially takes the last of his life away.

this is also a universe where a Darth Maul who had been bisected came back to life, and Darth Vader basically got turned into origami paper on a volcano before miraculously being turned into Robocop, so I just kind of view death as not final in this universe now as a default

lol when ren and rey kissed i was like "aren't they brother and sister?" having already decided that ren is the child of leia and luke (also borther and sister): all this goofy pharaonic shit makes sense to me in ref this franchise even tho not quite technically correct (bcz i don't really care i guess)

also they show him not getting blown over by the Falcon exhaust while his Stormtroopers are falling 700 feet back from the thrusters, so perhaps he had some weird Sith/Jedi floaty mechanism

being that the Original Trilogy was a fairly on-the-nose allegory for Christianity, having everybody related to each other and possibly fucking kinda makes sense in a way

all the films need is Aslan.

no one fucks in narnia, this is canon

except tumnus maybe

remember when Susan and Lucy wonder what Silenus does after drinking all that wine

the entire bacchus + schoolgirls drunk party scene is the weirdest shit given that CSL is alleged by some to be xtian

more like bachthatassup amirite

apparently the official lucasfilm line is that Anakin was Palpy as a father figure but that was the extent of their relationship, so Ben/Kylo has no real connection and there is definitely no royal incest angle

I still find it hard to believe anyone fucks in this franchise, except maybe the horny old lady who wants to jump Chewie

thinking back on shirtless Kylo and the wet hand, still baffled there are ppl who don't consider those scenes in TLJ horny

xp oh the midichlorians fuck

those scenes are definitely horny, as is the fighting on Death Star ruins in the water

i haven't seen this but i don't like it

― i chop up the orange and chomp on the inside of it (bizarro gazzara), Friday, 20 December 2019 09:47 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

i have seen this and i don’t like it

so perhaps he had some weird Sith/Jedi floaty mechanism

I rewatched the beginning of The Phantom Menace last night (...I know); Qui-Gon and Obi-Won do this thing I never noticed, where they scoot away from some enemy droids super fast; then they drop like 30 ft. into a hangar without a scratch (via bad CGI). So, yeah.

probably just as well they didn't even try to explain how palpatine could come back after literally exploding.

not palpy’s boat

tbf if merry had just said "some stupid sith bullshit lol" we wd be cheering the line to the echo, why don't the lore-continuity nerds know this yet?

lampshade hanging but disarmingly flimsy, is CINEMA

— martin scorsese

Palpy came back as clone(s) in the old EU. I’m glad they didn’t bother explaining his return in this movie, there’s no point.

important content imo: https://www.vulture.com/2019/12/does-j-j-abrams-know-adam-driver-is-hot-an-investigation.html

Xpost Nobody recognized him initially because he went by "Roy Hodgson" when he resurfaced

xxp Sheeev Paalpatine

I seem to have changed my display name after I had drinks yesterday. Just going to roll with it for now

protect babu frik at all costs

I have decided not to change my dn to "babu frik 'fuck a fan' contest"

babu frik fuck a fan at all costs

babu frik doodoodoodoo *to the tune of baby shark*

Btw, if we haven’t mentioned it yet, Babu is voiced by the actor on the right here:

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/PM6G7J/film-still-publicity-still-from-24-hour-party-people-steve-coogan-shirley-henderson-2002-united-artists-photo-credit-jon-shard-PM6G7J.jpg

there's a Babu on the right

huh heeeey

does Star Wars have a very low subtitle budget, btw?

because it drives me nuts how many convos are held with one person speaking English and the other person replying in whatever language they speak.

also, why does C-3PO translate what Leia-in-Disguise is saying into English instead of Jabba's native language. Obv Jabba knows English but I want my translator to accommodate me.

ooooh oooh wait do people wear like one of those Opera Supertitle screens on their chests at all times

ok, knowing that was shirley henderson’s voice is making me giggle

I don’t think there’s a single conversation in star wars with subtitles where knowing what they’re saying adds more information! I screwed up ripping a Return if the Jedi disc years ago and left the subtitles off only to realize they don’t add anything anyway

The first half of this 23-minute video — made two years ago — explores some interesting (possible) Rey/Palpatine foreshadowing in The Force Awakens: music, fighting style, etc.

that subtitle thing is especially true in Return of the Jedi since C-3P0 is translating everything anyway

ok, knowing that was shirley henderson’s voice is making me giggle

how many convos are held with one person speaking English and the other person replying in whatever language they speak.

It's funny so many presumably barely-considered decisions in A New Hope have dictated canon for 40+ years in a multi-billion dollar franchise. There's multiple books based around the whole Kessel Run parsec thing, I believe

for all the neckbeard anger over The Last Jedi, you'd have thought the camera panned *up* after the crawl

Saw this yesterday. My expectations for Disney SW were appropriately mid-barred with TFA, so this was fine and fleetingly entertaining. Although of the five movies I've seen in the last 24 hours (still at home with the fam but tbf not frittering my day any more frivolously than usual) this is probably right in the middle of the road, not quite hitting the heights of Spider-Verse or Harmony Korine's McConaughey doc but probably diverting on roughly the same level as a Clifford or a Deadfall.

The least I have enjoyed a Star Wars movie in the cinema since Phantom Menace - to be fair I skipped Solo, but even my hyped-up teenage daughters were totally disengaged and rolling eyes at the fan service.

you'd have thought the camera panned *up* after the crawl

It does this in Attack of the Clones, LOL

Ah that must be why i hate it

my friend’s son, who is in elementary school, has reviewed the movie: sad that Ben died after turning good, and there should have been more Lando

I don't think I saw this explicitly discussed upthread but: Sheev's plan was to have Rey kill him so that he and all the former Sith lords could then use her as their vessel. So I sat there wondering, huh, now how is Rey gonna put a stop to Sheev without killing him? And then, in the end...she, uh, killed him. So I mean...she's just like a massively evil Sith receptacle now, yeah?

he killed himself because her push was purely defensive? seemed pretty obvious

my first guess was that Ben was going to take him down and then immediately die from his injuries before becoming the Sith lord

xxp I think it’s the difference between “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine,” and actually killing him.

He said she had to renounce being a Jedi before killing him, and then she would absorb all of the Sith and him.

Yea, it's very thin, but he did state more than merely killing him was required.

Imagine if the film had started with an unexplained resurgence in the First Order, making everyone think Snoke was back somehow, then Rey and Ren had been in a race to try to follow the wayfinders to the source and confront Snoke, then holy shit it’s actually the Emperor! and he has a fleet ready to re-establish the Empire! Then a huge emotional struggle, Rey’s parentage reveal and temptation, Ren turns, Emperor is strengthened but then killed by selfless sacrifice. Only about 20% of the movie would have to have been different but it would have been so much more tense and urgent, and the conclusion would have felt like a shocking culmination of all 9. Instead the movie opens with “oh hai Emperor, I wonder if you will be defeated at the end” and then a plodding course to reach that point.

I kind of wondered going in if the First Order would split with some of them going "oh no, way too far" when the FINAL ORDER shows up and allying with the resistance.

I was fine with the allegiant general showing up instead, imposing discipline on those First Order knuckleheads

Withnail and Ky(lo)

Re: the post upthread about the Wayfinder, i pretty much assumed Kylo anticipated his ship being destroyed (as he said he tested her intentionally with that game of chicken), so he probably took the Wayfinder out of it before he took off. Not surprised he had another craft, resources are never a problem for the First Order.

Also the second transport is visible clear as day in that scene, but I didn't notice it the first time. I could presume Rey didn't notice he was on the other transport ad the two were side by side, she sensed it coming from that direction, and was under emotional duress.

the sight lines and sense of distance wasn't clear to me, but I'd beer

I had one friend claim he bought the visual dictionary and see it again and said it's now his second favorite.

That kinda makes me a little o_O cos in my world homework shouldn't be required or drastically enhance a movie, but ...tryin not to shit on other people's fun.

lol I just presumed that the first transport took off, got grabbed by Rey, and the other -- which was on the far side of the bluff from them - said, "I think we'll just hang on here for a few."

tbh I will probably see this again but at the minute I'm thinking about how I'd drink the Rey-themed beer again, too

Saw it again today. Still lots of fun.

I started rewatching (and fell asleep shortly into) TPM last night. About as good as I remembered visually, and with even worse dialogue than I remembered. Occasionally, I'll have thoughts like 'perhaps the hatred for Jar Jar is hyperbolic and I'm too beholden to consensus' and then I'll actually witness the thing I thought I might be judging too harshly and think 'no'. He's real bad, y'all.

Yeah, I’m about 3/4 of the way through. The political intrigue element is better than I remembered; but, man, Jar-Jar...

(I’m also reminded that Anakin’s introduction into the storyline is actually just as “coincidental” as Rey’s. The Jedi/Naboo crew just happens to land on Tatooine to repair their ship...)

The movie is a 2.5 hour screensaver

xp I watched too much YouTube about this movie the other day. One of them was going on about a line in ep3 meaning that Palpatine mystically impregnated Vader's mom... which was backed up in some canonical comic.

― maffew12, Monday, December 23, 2019

Happened to come across this in my web browsing today: https://www.cbr.com/star-wars-matt-martin-palpatine-anakin-father/

no really I enjoyed the new Star Wars trilogy, The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and The Last Jedi again

— Marie Le Conte (@youngvulgarian) December 27, 2019

Just saw this and liked it (not as much as TLJ, maybe the same as TFA).

Highlights:
- that force fight that crosses time and space! Esp liked the barrel getting slashed open
- chewie got his medal :,,,,,,,,,,,(
- Hux’s reveal as the spy and death was hilarious
- liked the 42nd anniversary shoutout
- the amount of time people in this trilogy spend talking to ghosts/voices in their heads (this might qualify as weird I feel?)
- Finn and Poe chemistry was great and the main three were charming and tons of fun to watch
- moved along at a fair pace
- Adam Driver looked hot in some scenes

Didn’t like:
- agree that you weren’t ever really feeling the danger, feels a bit sanitised
- definitely felt they were hitting all the old beats which is good but you have to offer a bit more

I don’t fuck with SW fandom but I definitely laughed at a) Reylo being made canon and then Kylo immediately dying. Plus Poe and Finn clearly should have kissed at the end, come the fuck on.

can i just say since no one else has? the new droid? that looks like a lamp on a wheel?? the best!!! i’m not sure how he, or babu frick, or the hurt snake fit into everybody’s metatextual ip analysis or whatever - i don’t think they do? - but that little wheel guy got probably more screen time than R2D2 and i was extremely there for it

The new droid exists so JJ can get cash from voice residuals when it starts racking up the views

I think they make a D-O that doubles as a drinking cup.

My friend was drinking booze out of D-O's head last week

When Fandoms Intersect

So much love for a Droid with unknown trauma who expresses healthy boundaries when folks get too close by backing away and saying “no thank you” 💕💕💕

— Brie Larson (@brielarson) December 27, 2019

When does this movie open?

I know he hasn’t been around, but I want to know if dayo liked D-0

I was sad that it wasn't Dio instead of D-O

that’s how it’s pronounced. if c3p0 can be threepio, then the little guy is dio

HOLYYYY DIVERRRRR

I have a sq-squeaky wheel

ROLLING TIIIIIIIAAAAHHHH

Lol

Glad to see I wasn't the only one thinking of Ronnie James.

I never stop thinking of him

RIP

Some article claimed the droid’s name is pronounced like “deo” and I became very angry upon reading that

of course it's "dio", I mean in the song they say "life's a never-ending wheel", open and shut