Star Wars

[Hemi-Cuda]

I don't fault Rian Johnson for Last Jedi being terrible, I fault Kathleen Kennedy for not having a goddamn plan in place prior to filming. You spend billions of dollars on the Star Wars franchise, get the original cast back, throw out the old extended universe canon, and you can't even be bothered to write a coherent story for all 3 movies? There are lots of talented directors who are big Star Wars fans who could have taken the reigns for the whole trilogy and probably produced something awesome, but instead she picked two "big" names who didn't seem to give a #### about the franchise and let them do whatever they wanted without even coordinating between each other. It was doomed from the start

[SuperMatt18]

Last Jedi was fine even if it wasn’t what the fanbase wanted

Issue was they over corrected in The Rise of Skywalker to just go straight into fan service.

But the point in Kathleen Kennedy stands. How Disney is responsible for Marvel which was coherent for like 22 movies up until EndGame, and then didn’t seem to have a plan for just 3 Star Wars movies is crazy to me.

[djsFlames]

TLJ had no big star wars moments that bring a smile to your face, like many films before it had. Even TFA had a couple of them.

It barely rewarded the viewer for sitting through its runtime. Maybe yoda's force ghost.. maybe. 1 minute duel with inferior enemies? Wasn't really what people signed up for.

Neither was killing off the big bad prematurely. You don't do third movie things in the middle movie.

And the big bomb... rey's parentage. Psych! She's nobody. (Until ep.9 went into fix mode)

Think of what snoke could've been if they let him live long enough for us to develop some disdain for him.

[CaptainCrunch]

I can just imagine the meeting after the LJ was made and they bought back JJ

JJ - "So he killed off the main villain like a punk?"

Frightened executives - "Yes sir"

JJ - "And he said Rae's parents were alcholic bums who sold her into child slavery"

FE - "Yes . . . yes he did"

JJ - "And he had Luke drinking alien cow milk"

FE - "Yup, any ideas on a sequel to this"

JJ - "We'll we need a major piece of fanservice to apologize to the fans who are pissed about the movie. And really I ripped off TFA from a New Hope, so I was reading this comic book series called Dark Empire where they bought Palpatine back from the dead as a clone as a major piece of fan service, so lets steal that"

[CroFlames]

I still don't know who the main villain is/was across the three movies.

Kylo Ren is just an angsty horny teenager, I guess subservient to a 20-year old general?

Snoke exists for half the first movie and half the second movie. Turns out he's a nobody.

Palpatine is is only in the last half of the last movie.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

I still don't know who the main villain is/was across the three movies.

The movies dealt with a short card right from the start. I mean Vader was an awesome villain through at least the first two movies. He was all menace and evil. He was a mass murderer (Alderaan with Tarkin). He killed his own guys. And he was powerful (Bespin dinner scene). Palpatine was a cackling evil mastermind that could throw lightning.

Lets not shuffle all the blame of Kylo to Rian. But they really needed him to be a complete and more powerful villain. I mean he needed to be the anti-Luke. Instead they made him an anti-hero more then a villain. They gave him the epic kill of Han Solo and JJ should have gone on to have him literally kick the crap out of Rey and Fin who were both untrained. Those two should have barely escaped with their life with Rey being tempted by Kylo's dark side speech.

Then Rian goes out and makes him even more angsty and teenage rage. Even when he killed off Snoke and took over, the attack scene and fight with Luke ghost made him look weak. By the time the third movie came around he wasn't a villain to be feared at all.

Snoke could have been awesome, there were so many questions. Is he Plagueis, is he Palpatine reborn. He must have been really powerful to bring a Skywalker to his side, and reform the Empire into something worse. Then Rian might as well have played a keystone cops theme when he was cut in half. So literally poor JJ went into the third movie with no real key villain.

Hux in the first movie, came across as ruthless, conniving and competant. Within the first five minutes of the second movie he established him as the butt of jokes by the heros, and a prat falling fool. Rian destroyed him so much that JJ made him a "Spy" for the Rebellion and gave him a completely inconsequential death just to get rid of him.

So no matter what people say to me, Palpatine was never meant to come back in this movie, this was supposed to be a new Star Wars with new stories and characters and villains. Instead JJ saw the back lash and panicked and retold the Dark Empire comic.

Originally Posted by CroFlames

Kylo Ren is just an angsty horny teenager, I guess subservient to a 20-year old general?

At the very least a poorly trained teenager, who was never committed to the darkside for long, and Rian made it worse with the whole connection between Rey and him that lead to the ridiculous invention of the Force Diade or however you spell it.

Originally Posted by CroFlames

Snoke exists for half the first movie and half the second movie. Turns out he's a nobody.

The portrayal in the first movie was well done. He was the distant villain pulling the string. In the second movie, I don't know what he was, but when he was dragging Hux around the bridge while yelling angrily, I was thinking Palpatine would have killed Hux from across the galaxy. I even had hope in the throne room scene until he was cut in half and then Rian played his death for a big joke as Hux stared at his body and then slowly watched the body fall apart. Then in the third movie, yeah he was a test tube baby.

Originally Posted by CroFlames

Palpatine is is only in the last half of the last movie.

Palpatine was never met to come back, I'm convinced of it. It was a panic move to placate fans of Star Wars that were pissed at the train wreck of the second movie after a ok retelling of a New Hope in the first movie.

But in rushing back Palpatine it was an aweful portrayal. First of all physically having a decrepit Palpatine with basically a pole up his butt was awful to watch and the make up effects looked awful as they borrowed from the walking dead.

Then JJ took 30 years of Sith Lore in both the EU and in the Prequels tossed it away. again out of panic he had to cram him into what was poor story telling.

Sith don't sacrifice. Their biggest fear is a loss of power and death is the ultimate loss of power. Combine that with the whole premise of the rule of two. The Sith didn't have some cult of thousands. They subvert and use guile and are patience.

But Palpatine going on and on about Rey making the sacrifice, was cringe worthy at best. And even Palpatines rambling speeches were more movie of the week then the Palpatine from ROTJ and the PT. JJ also borrowed the worst parts of the original EU in making Palpatine this uber powerful guy creating force storms.

And then they killed him by having Rey cross swords. I mean it was the silliest death of a villain ever.

Also bringing back Palpatine entirely threw dirt on the two prior trilogies and apparently poor Anakin didn't actually bring balance to the Force.

I really wanted to like the sequels, I did. I liked the Force awakens though it wasn't that creative, but it was a decent establishing movie.

The second movie was a train wreck with a lot of whoos and a severely over powered Rey and bad villains and a ridiculous slow speed chase.

In the end, really the First Order was shattered, the Resistance was devestated. They ended it with the kid using the force and holding up a broom to indicate maybe a return of the light side of the Force and did absolutely nothing with it.

Then the third movie just reeked of two things. Panic, because of that to me the whole story line was a mess, where JJ went with more of a wow them with visuals and hope they ignored the poor scripts. So we had force storms and horses on star ships. And fleets of thousands, and bigger Star Destroyers with planet cracking super lasers that probably shoot bees out of their other cannons. . And the second point is when you watch it you can see that most of the cast members knew this was bad and were checked out, and you see that now when the cast members are intereviewed about Star Wars. The sad thing is that you can's say that the main casts acting was a problem in the ST. They and especially Daisy were very good.

And don't start me on Captain Phasma as a villain. Ugh

Oh and the other fan service, lets bring back Lando and Wedge etc just so the fans could go. There's Wedge and Lando, and I'll just ignore that it feels like he's creeping on a young girl.

Rian directed a bad movie with a WTF script. JJ just wanted it done and proceeded to a fan service and visuals fan film.

The only good thing I guess, is it forcibly closed off the Skywalker story line and opened the way for other stories as nobody is going to touch that story line for a long time because of the bad tastes left in the fans mouth.

At least until they bring back Rian to do a recreation of the Kol and Cade Skywalker vs Darth Krayt comics in a decade.

[CroFlames]

I can't remember now, was the First Order the established government of a defacto Empire 2.0, or were they just a faction planning to topple the New Republic?

If they were a faction, was The Resistance only resisting the First Order, or a corrupt New Republic government?

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

I can't remember now, was the First Order the established government of a defacto Empire 2.0, or were they just a faction planning to topple the New Republic?

If they were a faction, was The Resistance only resisting the First Order, or a corrupt New Republic government?

If I remember my new EU (I don't read it much because the books that I've read are really bad.

After the Empires defeat the Empire basically retreated from Endor to re consolidate. At that time the dead Emperor initiated the Contigency. Which was based around if the Emperor couldn't be protected by the Empire, the Empire didn't deserve to live.

At that point the Empire started attacking its own worlds etc. What they didn't know was that Palpatine was putting in the first steps of the first order, which was designed to cull the weak and incompetent and rebuild a new Empire.

This lead to the battle of Jakku, where the majority of the Imperial Military met the New Republic. The Emperors plan involved the use of one of his observatories to destroy the planet and pretty much both fleets. Again the Culling of the Empire. It partially worked as the Republic spanked the ever loving crap out of the Empire. Meanwhile the competant favored Imperials departed for the unknown regions where Palpatine had tucked away ships and weapons. These were the die hard imperials, that were militant. They formed the first order ruling council. With Hux's father, grand admiral Rae Sloan, eventually Captain Phasma and several other.

The First Order was to rebuild the Empire and get it right. What it became was a purified version of the Empire under its most die hard believers, not in Palpatine, but in a First Order that could bring order to the galaxy as they believed that the New Republic would result in lawlessness and chaos which it did as the New Republic utterly failed. The First Order allied with rich industrialists and the criminal underworld. They never had a home planet, their capital was basically Snoke's ship which combined a war ship with a seat of government and manufacturing.

The remnants of the Empire that wasn't part of the First Order realized that they were weak and surrendered, disarmed and were allowed to join the New Republic.

While the New Republic eventually learned that the First Order was out there ignored the problems figuring that these space nazi's weren't a threat. The former renmant leaders were allowed to represent their worlds in the New Republic Senate.

Eventually the First Order gathered their strength, they also found and annoited Snoke as their supreme leader.

The Cold War where the Republic scoffed at a strengthening First Order ended when the First Order launched their attack easily taking over the outer rim. A lot of Republic Worlds eagerly joined the first order because the New Republic had failed in the outer ring. The former Imperials that had joined the New Republic, suddenly changed sides to the First Order, and helped them attack the inner rim, and put the New Republic on the ropes. Princess Leia saw this all coming and left the New Republic in disgust over their weakness and formed the resistance.

What nobody knew was that the First Order was a shell game, even the first order didn't know that Palpatine was building his strength in the unknown region by building the Final Order a massive collection of ships, super weapons and Troopers that were die hard Sith worshippers.

With the New Republic shattered and the Resistant weak. Palpatine intended to present the Final Order fleet to Kylo Ren, they would sweep out and the First Order would swear loyalty to Palpatine and they would finalize the conquest of the galaxy.

The theory of the First Order came from a late night discussion between JJ and the writers. What would happen if the worst of the worst of the Nazi's after Hitlers death had managed to flee to South America, stayed hidden and rebuild themselves based around being the pure and most competent Nazi's that were worth saving. Meanwhile the Empire was really what was left of Germany after the death of Hitler and only the complete boobs and morons were left there to face the consequences.

[CroFlames]

OK, that makes some sense and is a palatable story. The mass manufacturing in secret of the greatest fleet of all time is dumb though.

The dumb part is that Palpatine survived.

[Sr. Mints]

It was such a bummer when Disney announced they were throwing EU canon out the window. Thrawn would have made a terrific villain to prop up the last trilogy. So much groundwork was laid out for them, but instead they pulled ... whatever this story was out of their ass.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

I don't fault Rian Johnson for Last Jedi being terrible, I fault Kathleen Kennedy for not having a goddamn plan in place prior to filming. You spend billions of dollars on the Star Wars franchise, get the original cast back, throw out the old extended universe canon, and you can't even be bothered to write a coherent story for all 3 movies? There are lots of talented directors who are big Star Wars fans who could have taken the reigns for the whole trilogy and probably produced something awesome, but instead she picked two "big" names who didn't seem to give a #### about the franchise and let them do whatever they wanted without even coordinating between each other. It was doomed from the start

I consider Rian Johnson pretty at fault. The guy obviously thinks he's super clever and hilarious. He's not.

[#-3]

In isolation TLJ was a perfectly good movie, as a followup to TFA it was incomplete but had potential which is just fine for a part 2 of 3. The biggest mistake made in the Disney trilogy was reading their own reviews. Show business has 1 rule, don't read the reviews, they broke it. They responded to a bunch of nonsensical complaints from random people on the internet and produced the steaming pile of garbage that was TRoS, which was only reviled by RotS in it's horrendousness but still managed to be somehow worse. Where RotS it was clearly a bad movie just because the writers and actors had complete checked out realizing that they weren't repeating the critical claim of the originals, TRoS actually managed to be so bad that it made the prior two movies worse just by association.

But beyond that, I agree if you are trying to tell a 3 episode contained story over the course of 4 years, then at the very least have an outline for where all of your foreshadowing is going. If you are going to pose the mystery of who Reys family is to the audience, you'd better not have 4 factions in your production team fighting for four different answers, there needs to be a settled direction or there needs to not be mystery/foreshadowing. If you're going to have your big villain stand at the edge of redemption and turn his back, than just don't go straight back the redemption arc in the next instalment.

[djsFlames]

Originally Posted by Sr. Mints

It was such a bummer when Disney announced they were throwing EU canon out the window. Thrawn would have made a terrific villain to prop up the last trilogy. So much groundwork was laid out for them, but instead they pulled ... whatever this story was out of their ass.

That's called having no respect for the universe you acquired and just treating it like a cash cow.

Basically was exactly how they approached it.

Rejected GL's treatments, threw out the EU.

The amount of movies they promised to people after TFA confirms this.

They thought people would line up for anything they'd put on screen with that name attached. Didn't even bother to establish a 3 movie arc. It became episode to episode improv.

What a joke. Those abominations of lens flares should truly be decanonized.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Sr. Mints

It was such a bummer when Disney announced they were throwing EU canon out the window. Thrawn would have made a terrific villain to prop up the last trilogy. So much groundwork was laid out for them, but instead they pulled ... whatever this story was out of their ass.

The original EU took a while to hit stride, but they drew in some amazing writers and built some amazing characters and storylines.

I mean there were some really bad storys and books, I'm looking at you Waru. Oh and some parts of the NJO were unreadable. But at the same time, the old republic stuff with Bane and Revan were amazing.

Then they dumped it and bought in a whole new set of writers and new storylines, and they are like several steps lower in quality, I read aftermath and a couple of others, and threw it out. They for the most part didn't do a good job with existing characters.

[CaptainCrunch]

I always thought that one of the biggest problems with the ST was that JJ and Disney really wanted a safe sequel.

Hence the first movie being a New Hope all over again. Yeah, killing off Han was a shocker moment, but it was pretty safe. The second movie was just a terribly written and directed mess, and the third movie failed because they had no 3 movie arch planned out and nobody told Rian that his ideas were dumb and sequel shattering.

They could have done some cool stuff. Of been really into Risk.

Palpatine was a great planner. What if he had a plan in case he needed to replace Vader. He's still want an incredibly powerful Force user and there were none left. So what if Rey was created with Anakin's DNA, a peerless force user trained by Palpatine with Vader's hunger for power. Then Rey was tucked away in suspended animation in the observatory in Jakku and somehow it failed and she emerged, not knowing that in fact she was literally the anti-Leia and artificially created daughter of Vader.

I mean when she fought Kylo, she used a lot of the same moves that we saw Anakin use in the revenge of the Sith duel against Dooku, and we also saw some direct steals from Palpatine vs Mace.

I mean what if after establishing Rey as a hero in the second movie with her friends in jeopardy she falls into the same trap as Anakin? You have one of her friends like Fin, killed and she fails to save him and in her hunger for revenge she goes after Kylo and she falls becoming a new version of Vader.

Disney wouldn't do it, lunch box sales and all.

What if they admitted that Snoke was actually a clone of Palpatine. That he had learned to defeat death.

Then you could have the double turn of Rey and Palpatine on one side, and Kylo on a redemption journey on the other.

The other thought I had was why not after the galaxy has gone to crap despite his best efforts and his students killed. Luke literally becomes the phantam menace. We get a late in movie two reveal that Luke has fallen and been manipulating his way to becoming the Emperor because he believes that only he can save the galaxy from itself and that he has to rule to do it. Luke wipes out Palpatine and Rey takes her place at Skywalkers side.

There was so much that they could do to shake up the franchise. But they didn't instead we got the same beats as the original trilogy, but wrecked by the guy who made the middle film.

[CaptainCrunch]

I got done watching the Football game and was flipping around and caught the last 45 minutes of Rise of Skywalker, and yup, it was still awful story telling.

But at the end I said, you know what would have made the movie awesome.

Final scene on Tattooine. Rey buries the light sabres and goes to light her new one when she sees the old lady.

Old lady - "Its been so long since anyone has been here. Who are you?"

Rey faces the old lady - "I'm Rey". Rey then notices something in the distance and sees a ghostly Palpatine. but not the wrinkled prune face not Sidious from this movie. But the younger prequel Palpatine from ROTS. He smiles gently as Rey turns to the old lady.

Rey "Rey Palpatine".

She thumbs her new lightsabre and a crimson blade erupts from the hilt, Rey's eyes turn yellow and she raises her light sabre and steps off camera and we hear the old lady scream. Then the credits role to the Imperial March.

[CaptainCrunch]

The Obi-Wan documentary was outstanding and it was great to see Hayden and Ewan reunited.

[getbak]

"If I had a dollar for every time someone has told me I had the high ground..."

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by getbak

"If I had a dollar for every time someone has told me I had the high ground..."

The best line was when Ewan saw Darth Vader coming up the street for the first time and his 9 year old self screamed in fear.

Also seeing Zach Braff doing the voice over work was just weird to watch.

[getbak]

Ezra on Ahsoka has been cast: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv...di-1235129369/


The Lucasfilm panel at D23 is tomorrow morning. Rumour is there will not be any announcement regarding Rogue Squadron or any other theatrical releases, so it will be all D+ shows.

Could we get a sneak peek at Ahsoka or the next season of Mando? Announcements of second seasons for Boba or Obi-Wan? How about a series focused on The Path?