Spoilers allowed - Star Wars Episode IX

[nik-]

Originally Posted by dino7c

The movie likely passed 800M tonight...I mean, they are probably scraping by lol

Every single movie is not gonna set a new record

I mean if you can't see why the final movie in a trilogy in a franchise like Star Wars doing worse than the generally panned second installment is an indication of something not working, then I can't really help you.

[dino7c]

Originally Posted by Jason14h

Anything under a billion they have said is considered a disappointment / Failure

The movie original budget was $250 million (rumoured) and that was before extensive reshoots

Generally a movie needs to make 2.5 budget to start breaking even after taking into consideration marketing and theatres cut

Assuming 50 million for reshoots (which from what I’ve read is a very low estimate) they need to make approx 800 million to break even

For the cost of this movie it will end up being a failure for Disney

If making hundreds of millions of dollars is a failure...like I said its already made 800M and it will continue to make money through the box offence

Anyway my whole point was tons of people are going to see it, they are...in fact it was the #1 movie this holiday season

[Inglewood Jack]

Make hundreds of millions over the lucrative Christmas season and achieve #1 status competing against the mighty...Cats and Jumanji franchises? I think a name brand as big as Star Wars should aspire to a bit more than that. I'm gonna guess they wanted to do Marvel numbers from these, after having forked over 4+ billion for the rights.

Of the 5 Disney SW films, only TFA will have made something in the range of an Avengers film. All others will fall short of the least successful Age of Ultron. That's why Bob Iger's pulling the reins in on movies for a few years, to hopefully come up with a coherent strategy next time around.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Inglewood Jack

Make hundreds of millions over the lucrative Christmas season and achieve #1 status competing against the mighty...Cats and Jumanji franchises? I think a name brand as big as Star Wars should aspire to a bit more than that. I'm gonna guess they wanted to do Marvel numbers from these, after having forked over 4+ billion for the rights.

Of the 5 Disney SW films, only TFA will have made something in the range of an Avengers film. All others will fall short of the least successful Age of Ultron. That's why Bob Iger's pulling the reins in on movies for a few years, to hopefully come up with a coherent strategy next time around.

In terms of expectations you really should be comparing domestic only. World wide Star Wars was always going to lag and would have been expected by Disney. It gets 50% instead of close to 70%. So they made the highest grossing movie of all time and Last Jedi equaled The original Avengers and even TROS will out gross every Marvel move except the 3 Avengers movies and Black Panther.

I think the disappointment is that TROS didn’t bounce back like ROTS did after the worst Star Wars movie ever AOTC. This sets the bad downward trend which is what is causing the movies to be deferred. Had it recovered the Narritive would be it was just like the rest of the movies with a lagging middle trilogy.

[zukes]

Originally Posted by Buff

I still love this movie. I don't care how negative you people want to get. It was a good Star Wars movie.

I have realized what has been turning me off of the Star Wars universe. All the negative people who dump on it because it's the cool thing to do.

I wish I could thanks this multiple times.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Buff

I still love this movie. I don't care how negative you people want to get. It was a good Star Wars movie.

I have realized what has been turning me off of the Star Wars universe. All the negative people who dump on it because it's the cool thing to do.

Even many of the reviewers are giving this negative reviews.

There's a lot of things wrong with this movie. It's okay to criticize it. People aren't just criticizing it "because it's the cool thing to do".

I thought the movie was a large improvement on TLJ, but there is a long way to go to righting this ship. I can objectively see why many just wouldn't like the movie at all though.

If the goal is for people just to have a movie that is mindless and full of effects, and yet not criticized, you need to pick a different franchise for that. Pick a franchise that didn't start with 3 of the best movies of all time and without a long established and invested fanbase. Better yet, come up with a new concept.

[Hemi-Cuda]

It's really stupid that they completely threw out the expanded universe when they wrote the new trilogy, there were a lot of great storylines they could have at least partially adapted that would have given them a cohesive story for a trilogy. I'm gonna go full Captain here and make a long winded post picking pieces of the EU to make a decent story

Movie 1: Opening crawl explains the New Republic had thrived in the 30 years since the fall of the Emperor, but now there are reports of ships with imperial designs attacking outer worlds. The senate is stuck arguing over intervention as those worlds rejected republic control after the fall of the Empire.

Luke has rebuilt the Jedi temple on Yavin-4 and has just promoted his first batch of recruits (including Han and Leia's twins Ben and Jaina) to Jedi Masters. There is significant debate within the Jedi of whether or not to investigate the outer world attacks, as the Republic still hasn't made a decision. Ben Solo decides to take action on his own, and takes a group of younger Jedi and Padawans with him to the outer worlds. Upon learning this, Han and Chewie take off with the Falcon after him and are joined by a group of Republic fighters tired of waiting for the senate to take action

Through the force, Ben is drawn to a remote planet and discovers a resurgent Imperial military. He broadcasts the location, Han and company join him and cue the space and ground battles. During the fighting a Sith warrior is encountered and kills many of the young Jedi and Padawans, and is about to kill Ben when Han sacrifices himself to save his son. Enraged, Ben draws upon the dark side to kill the Sith and the rest of the Imperial forces. He then starts hearing strange whispers, which promise to grant him untold power. He finds a Sith navigation beacon and along with a few surviving Jedi recruits head to the unknown regions, end credits

[nik-]

Even the Thrawn trilogy, which honestly is really overrated, would have been a way better idea.

But yes, they had a lot of bones in the EU to pick from to construct a story, rather than basically remaking 4 and 6 and a tire spinning middle act.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Movie 2: Ben Solo discovers an ancient Sith planet with archives of their entire history. He begins his dark side training aided by an unidentified force spirit. Jaina senses Ben's turn and advises Luke, who then heads off alone (aside from R2) to save Ben and leaves Jaina in charge of the temple.

Meanwhile, after imperial ships have started attacking closer to Republic space, the senate finally agrees to intervention and a large armada heads to the outer worlds. Immediately after however a large imperial fleet appears over Coruscant and starts laying siege to the planet, headed by Admiral Thrawn. Chancellor Leia is forced to evacuate along with the senior Republic leadership, they are able to escape thanks to Admiral Ackbar throwing his own cruiser into the line of fire, where he gets an appropriate hero's death. Leia and the Republic head to Yavin-4 and the protection of the Jedi

Luke finds and confronts Ben, who now goes by Darth Ren. Luke battles him and his Knights of Ren, but senses that he cannot win and pulls an Obi-Wan to "become more powerful than they could ever imagine". Leia and Jaina are both hit hard by Luke's "death", the Republic is in shambles, and it appears a new era of darkness is at hand. End credits

[Hemi-Cuda]

Movie 3: Darth Ren proclaims himself the new Emperor, and vows to lead a new Empire and destroy the Republic once and for all. Internal power struggles with Thrawn ensue. Core worlds are ravaged by Imperial attacks, slowly what's left of the Republic fleet gathers at Yavin-4

Leia and Jaina are visited by spirit Luke, and he explains that the Sith planet is actually an ancient Star Forge, a planet sized factory responsible for creating the new Imperial fleet. Destroying it will be the only way to stop a new Empire from taking over the galaxy, and he just so happened to stash some blueprints for it on R2 before sending him back to Yavin-4

Jaina and Leia join Chewie on the Falcon, and they with what's left of the Jedi and Republic fleet head to the Star Forge for the final battle. Big space battle, Jedi fighting the Knights of Ren, and Jaina confronts Ben. They fight an epic battle, wounding each other gravely. As they both lie on the ground near death, Leia fights her way to them and transfers her essence to them through the force, healing them both and freeing Ben from the dark side. Leia then ghosts away, leaving Jaina and Ben to destroy the Star Forge

Star Forge blows up, crippling all Imperial destroyers in the immediate area. Thrawn manages to escape and heads back into the unknown regions with the few surviving Imperial ships. Cue celebrations back on liberated Coruscant with Ben and Jaina now leading the new Jedi Order

[rayne008]

Will echo the last few comments. I'm pretty neutral with the last movie, and really disappointed with the whole trilogy.

They had so much potential and they went with "So it's a bigger Death Star" in Star Killer Base in TFA, and then followed it up with dumb prank calls, illogical bombing raids and slow speed space chases in TLJ.

TROS tried to clean up some of this, but the hyperspace planet slipping and having hundreds of Imperial Star Destroyers laying around in ice for years? So the good guys destroy them all, each with what 20,000 people in them? Yikes.

Hemi's 2 movie plots above would have been a much better direction imo.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by rayne008

Hemi's 2 movie plots above would have been a much better direction imo.

I'm sure someone could do a much better job than me, that's just the result of spitballing in my head for the last hour picking stuff from the EU that I remember, and taking some of the decent ideas from the new trilogy. It just baffles my mind that Disney didn't have anyone do that for the new trilogy, instead giving each directory free reign without any core story to adhere to

[CaptainCrunch]

I actually like you're story line. You could even borrow deeper from the EU to make Ben a really intriguing character while doing some fan service.


It the first movie, Ben goes to confront the new Empire. He see's endless ships and troops. Maybe they did find the Star Forge and the new Empire bought back cloning. Ben has a vision of a galaxy in constant chaos and a permanent state of war, he realizes that he doesn't have the power to bring peace under the new Jedi Way. In fact while he loves Luke, he starts seeing him as a detriment to peace, because there has only ever been one force user that has bought the Galaxy under what could be argued is as a sustainable period of mostly peace. With that Ben decides to learn the greater mysteries of the Force (Taken from the EU). He begins to collect Sith holcrons. Meanwhile he openly breaks with Luke's Jedi teachings and half of the students decide to follow Ben to bring peace and order to the galaxy. Ben eventually finds the Sith Wayfinder and follows it to Korriban, there he and his nights of Ren find a holocron, Ben opens it, its the Sidious Holocron. It teaches Ben immense power and sells him on a galaxy at peace, and it corrupts him. Now on the Force Level we have Ben now Darth Ren, or one of my favorite Sith names Darth Occulus and his nights against Luke and the new Jedi Order.



Ben slowly becomes more and more brutal as he's corrupted, he brings the Imperial Remnants together into the First Order that he rules, he pushes more ships and clones out. Eventually Solo and Leia confront him in the foolish notion that they can turn him. Ben realizes he must sacrifice what he loves to bring about his vision and save the galaxy. So he executes his parents. Luke and his Padawan a powerful Force user named Rey decide that they can't redeem Occulus and that they are going to have to kill him if the New Republic is to survive. Meanwhile Ben who was close to Rey in their training as Jedi has been keeping an eye on her career with great interest.

[nik-]

ooooooooh shieeeeeeeet.

We got a fanfic battle y'all.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Just because they made the EU no longer canon doesn’t mean they “threw it out”. There was way too much stuff built up over the last 40 years, they had to start fresh.

That being said, just because it’s no longer canon doesn’t mean they couldn’t use ideas or adapt from there.

It is surprising that after 40 years they still struggled to come up with a cohesive trilogy. Even with the fact that the principle 3 stars could no longer carry a movie.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

Movie 3: Darth Ren proclaims himself the new Emperor, and vows to lead a new Empire and destroy the Republic once and for all. Internal power struggles with Thrawn ensue. Core worlds are ravaged by Imperial attacks, slowly what's left of the Republic fleet gathers at Yavin-4

These are all great.

The main problem with the new trilogy is that the writers clearly don't have a grasp of the original movies, let alone the expanded materials. Not to beat a dead horse, but the decision to allow 2 totally different writers in a trilogy was baffling, especially when one of those writers makes it his mission to destroy the previous movies plot and "subvert" everyone's expectations.

The Mandalorian is what you get when a writer actually familiar with the content writes a story. Rogue One, similarly, had John Knoll as the primary writer. He'd not only worked on the prequel trilogy, but had been working in sci-fi since the 1980s.

When you have a pre-established franchise. You need to get people familiar with the previous material writing.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by blankall

These are all great.

The main problem with the new trilogy is that the writers clearly don't have a grasp of the original movies, let alone the expanded materials. Not to beat a dead horse, but the decision to allow 2 totally different writers in a trilogy was baffling, especially when one of those writers makes it his mission to destroy the previous movies plot and "subvert" everyone's expectations.

The Mandalorian is what you get when a writer actually familiar with the content writes a story. Rogue One, similarly, had John Knoll as the primary writer. He'd not only worked on the prequel trilogy, but had been working in sci-fi since the 1980s.

When you have a pre-established franchise. You need to get people familiar with the previous material writing.

Well....that and people who actually give a crap and are interested in telling a decent story over the course of a Trilogy.

TFA could have been written by a monkey, pretty much everyone understands exactly what that movie was and for what it was it was pretty good.

Introduce new characters, new situations, new circumstances and more or less an entirely new Galaxy while trodding along the familiar.

Fair enough.

But then to have a film given to Rian Johnson who wanted to reinvent Star Wars in one movie within the constraints of a sequential trilogy with conflicts and characters baked in that he wanted to also be controversial was just....'poor planning' seems like an understatement.

And finally, frankly, your middle film really needs to be the meat and potatoes.

You introduce in the first movie. Check. You establish the conflict and pattern the circumstances in the second movie. Giant swing and a miss. And then finally the third movie wraps everything up.

It all just crumbled into a barely coherent mess.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by blankall

These are all great.

The main problem with the new trilogy is that the writers clearly don't have a grasp of the original movies, let alone the expanded materials. Not to beat a dead horse, but the decision to allow 2 totally different writers in a trilogy was baffling, especially when one of those writers makes it his mission to destroy the previous movies plot and "subvert" everyone's expectations.

The Mandalorian is what you get when a writer actually familiar with the content writes a story. Rogue One, similarly, had John Knoll as the primary writer. He'd not only worked on the prequel trilogy, but had been working in sci-fi since the 1980s.

When you have a pre-established franchise. You need to get people familiar with the previous material writing.

Rogue one and The Mandalorian, had really simple story lines. With the movies, in the first 6 there's fairly complex themes in them, and pretty well thought out justifications, especially when you combine with the EU material.


The thing that wrecked Kylo Ren/Ben for me is that it comes across as such a silly reason for his fall. He simply wants power, that alone should have condemned him to a light saber rammed through his chest. While Anakin was a whiny teenager, in the first two movies, Kylo was a pouty spastic teenager. On top of that, he just never came across as all that powerful of a Force user at all.



The ST just never had a story theme to it, instead they borrowed from the OT trilogy and then did a spinal tap by dialing it up to 11.



I mean with the Palpatine storyline, it made the whole series feel like the rise and fall of the Sith, The Skywalker story didn't really leave all that powerful of a resonance in the last movie.



I haven't said much about the movie, but if it was a standalone trilogy, I could live with it, as usually it was beautifully shot and a technical masterpiece. Everything looked good and cool, the music was great. As a way to draw to a close a 42 year old story of the Skywalker clan, I felt that I could almost do without the trilogy and it would have been better to end the story with ROTJ. Instead the greatest fear is that this trilogy literally meant that Anakin's story and Luke's fight to redeem his father was meaningless.



The way that they bought Palpatine back into the story was entirely rushed, and the whole, I made Snoke puppets actually annoyed me quite a bit. After seeing the movie I had no doubt that Palpatine was a ticket selling tactic. I mean Luke should feel foolish about throwing away his light saber when all it takes is two lightsabers to defeat the most powerful Sith Lord in history.



I'll probably watch ROS again when it comes out on the Disney Service, while it was ok as a movie, I don't feel like spending money to see it twice.


And that whole Kiss between Ren and Kylo, I was like WTF, why are they redefining the relationship at the last minute? There were so many script weirdness moments in this trilogy.


I mean they basically destroyed Hux in the second movie and then made him a throwaway betrayer in the third movie.


They totally Jar Jar'd Rose.


The emotion of Leia's death was awesome. Wedge returning was a cool bit of fan service.



The new Sith Star Destroyers were only missing a shoot here its the vulnerable spot.



It wasn't a great trilogy, I think given time there will be more positive viewings of the trilogy, but it wasn't the right trilogy to end the Star Wars/Skywalker saga.

[Larry David]

#ReleaseTheJJCut is trending on Twitter because of this Reddit post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthan...a_source_that/

Basically the post is a second hand account from an alleged source who worked on The Rise of Skywalker. The poster claims that Disney kiboshed some of JJ's plans for both Force Awakens but details in the post are for Rise of Skywalker in particular. The JJ early November cut of the film is supposedly 3 hours 2 minutes long. A lot of what he wanted in the film was cut, and or altered. JJ was apparently gutted over the final version of the film. There is a lot in there for anyone interested in reading.

[CaptainCrunch]

Why do people keep doing this, For all we know JJ cut an hour and x minutes with scenes of Jar Jar Binks flying a X Wing, and Kylo dancing to Miley Cyrus.


Usually the unedited films are even worse. People should remember that the ROTS cut scenes were pretty horrible.



The only movie that I can think of that was really improvement was the Donner cut of Superman.


Any plot holes like Palps return etc will be addressed in books and comics.