Ball Dropped

It's interesting but in a spin off Rose Tico book, it's described that the First Order recruited people by offering them better jobs and wages than the Republic, or words to that effect. I really wish they hadn't left so much interesting info in supplementary material.

 

I agree. For example, Palpatine’s “contingency” plan ended up being central to the ST, and yet it was never even mentioned until after all three movies were finished.

This might sound a bit cynical, but in my opinion, GL had such a great story that he just had to make some movies. Disney had such a great desire to make some movies that they just had to come up with a story.

 

I think most of the mistakes were because of KK.

--- Double Post Merged, Apr 11, 2022, Original Post Date: Apr 11, 2022 ---

I would have rather they left out the OT hero’s rather than making the ST about killing them off except maybe an old Jedi that survived to train Rey. I’d rather Luke simply have disappeared or died and we never see Han and Leia in the ST.

woulda been better to let Rey, Poe and Fin just do their own thing. No Palpatine yet either. Just let Snoke be the big bad and make him interesting, ancient etc…

even Darth Plaguis would have been better to return than Palpatine. They diminished Luke and Anakin by bringing Sidious back.

So much so wrong lol.

 

Palpatine's return was possibly one of the worst ideas they could have had.
I personally would have liked it if they had 'flipped' the roles from the OT.....instead of 'bad Empire, good Rebels', we had the New Republic versus an underground 'Saw Guerrera' kind of rebellion, and where no one was 100% good, or 100% bad.

And you are absolutely correct that bringing back Sidious made Anakin's sacrifice pointless.....while killing off the Skywalkers so a Palpatine could survive will never be a 'hopeful and satisfying' ending....not to this fan, sorry. All it is, is just downright depressing.

 

Yeah ... I'm not so sure Disney "handed" the franchise to JJ Abrahms ... although I've criticized JJ many times (and I think he played a bigger role in dooming the sequels than Johnson) I still believe he was tasked with an impossible job without the full control on the project.
Star Wars was once George Lucas' vision, and you may or may not like his visions, especially when he "went too far" with the prequels, but he was the only one who could make the final decision (although many, many, many times he changed his original ideas). With the sequel, no one took the responsibility of making the final decision, they handled the franchise poorly because maybe they weren't so sure the films could be successful.
Star Wars is the greatest sci-fi franchise of all time, but the prequels have been hated by almost everyone ... how can you predict how fans will react to the new films set in a different era with different characters?
They probably thought, given that Star Wars is a well-known franchise, they could have treated the movies like Marvel's, put the named on it and tried to figure out the story along the way (they didn't plan on introducing Thanos when they released the first Ironman movie).

But there is a big difference between Marvel and Star Wars ... Feige didn't uncanonize all the previous Marvel comics, he didn't need to invent new characters and new stories, instead he used existing characters (some unknown) to create a "movie" version of them. JJ Abrahms instead had to create new and different characters and stories but they too had to be familiar and related to the previous one. The problem with sequels (apart from the inconsistency of the story arc) is that Disney wants to have both ways, to be new and old at the same time, innovative and nostalgic ... and it almost never works.

You're right, but for a brief moment it seems like you think Rey and Snoke are real people that Disney didn't know so well.

I think they had some idea about who Rey and Snoke were... but htey failed to chosen one. As I said I think the movies were rushed, I think Disney had very big concern about how they movie would be received. And when the fandom response positive to the trailer (or the overall idea of the Sequel) decided they don't need to put much more effort in it because the fan were already "buying it" (I call that a "Warcraft Reforged's move", if you recall the reference... I'm sorry for you)
But ... I don't blame Disney, Disney made a "corporate" decision because it's a ####### corporation, its goal is to make money, everything else is just business ... wait, everything it's just business.
This does not mean that I see Disney as the big evil company described by so many people. I don't think Star Wars by controlled Disney is necessarily a bad thing, I didn't like all the Sequels but I liked Star Wars: Rebels and have been a huge fan of Dave Feloni's works ever since. Despite all our dreams and hopes, Lucas couldn't continue the Star Wars franchise (and probably didn't want to) Disney didn't ruin Star Wars ... in a way he saved it ... I don't know how many people will still talk about Star Wars if the Sequels didn't happen ... I think it's a good thing Star Wars is still on top of conversations.

I understand that one of the problems with TFA isn't Luke appearing at the end ... it's Luke making fun of the whole movie, it's the anticipation not the payoff. Also due to the fact that Disney wanted to have both, they wanted to introduce new characters but also to rely on the hype for the old ones. The movie is a reimagining of "Waiting for Godot", everyone is looking for Luke, because Luke is the key, Luke is important ... and then you realize with the second film that Luke is not that important, and maybe he shouldn't be if you want to focus on the new characters. I think their biggest mistake was creating a misleading hype for the old characters while clearly caring more for the new ones. It is not "subverting expectations", it is a "failure of anticipations".
Personally I don't care if the trio didn't reunited, maybe it's sad, but life is sad.
I'm fine with Luke didn't have the opportunity to say goodbye to Han for the last time, it makes Han's death more tragic and impactful. I'm a little pissed that Luke got the news off-screen, I thought it was a lazy way to handle the dramatic reaction Luke would have... but, ultimately... I didn't miss a scene with the Trio reunited, I don't believe was necessary.

 

There is a deleted scene where he reacted to Han's loss.

I might be in the minority here, but I loved Luke's character arc in TLJ. Hamill also gave the finest performance of his career, he was incredible. I liked his story so much because he reminded me a lot of me (so did Kylo, but that's another story). I was full of ideals in my youth but by the time I'd reached my 50s I was a lot more cynical and disillusioned. I think a lot of Luke's fans saw him through starry eyes, but what was perhaps the best thing about him was he was a flawed human being, who made mistakes, like all of us are. And he was always like that, including in the OT.

 

The major problem was having three different writers with different visions...Johnson carried on where Abrams left off, but Terrio went in a completely different direction, it worked for some but not for me or a lot of others.

A lot of people think Finn was under used as a character...and some think this was Rian's fault for pushing 'reylo'....but Finn didn't need to be Rey's boyfriend to be an interesting character. If anything damaged his character, it was the survival of Poe. Pre TFA, there were a number of promotional pics of Rey, Finn and Kylo all with their masks on...and notice in TFA our first glimpses of them they were masked, and one by one, the masks came off to show vulnerable human beings. I think that if they were intending to introduce a new 'trio' it was meant to be Rey, Finn and Kylo - and they weren't so much a 'trio of friends' such as we had in the OT, but Protagonist, Antagonist and Deuteronogist.

The survival of the Poe character meant that by TROS he moved to the front and as a result, Finn lost much of his story. I really think that they should have had him replace Leia as general in TROS and spend his time at the base running the Resistance, and then let the story focus on Rey, Kylo and Finn and their stories.
Double post sorry.

 

A lot of people think Finn was under used as a character...and some think this was Rian's fault for pushing 'reylo'....but Finn didn't need to be Rey's boyfriend to be an interesting character.

Perhaps. But I certainly didn't need "Reylo" either. Certainly not in that contrived fashion.

 

Well, we all are entitled to our personal views.

 

There is no Reylo in the movies. Reylo is a fan thing and it can stay that way. Nothing wrong with fans wanting something. But the movies aren't just there to give instant gratification and vindication of people's voluntary preferences. I wish that the rest of us weren't made miserable listening to complaints about it for years afterwards.

 

Are you sure about that?


Reylo just means that these two characters have romantic feelings for each other- compassion, (sexual) tension etc. And yes, that's canon.

 

You know, maybe I'm wrong but I'm absolutely sure Abrams was setting Kylo Ren up to be hated, so we, the audience, would accept Rey as a 'worthy' substitute. This was why he chose to have him kill Han Solo, who was one of the most popular characters in the OT (my favourite).

If you watch TROS, he's practically screaming for us to embrace Rey as 'the hero', even to the extent of downplaying all the other characters. Which begs the question - why did he want to make the last descendent of the legacy characters the villain?

I really am baffled with his choices, and why he wanted to end the Skywalkers on such a depressing note...I'm also convinced that if he'd written the entire trilogy Kylo would never have been redeemed.

 

If that's all it meant to certain people then there would not be the same kind of discussions that "shippers" want to have about it years later.

There are moments in the ST that prompt Reylo shippers to enhance the stature and perceived likelihood of their desired outcomes. But those outcomes are not in the movie.

I'm not saying this because I reject the idea of Reylo. I'm saying it because people want to constantly impose their own neuroses and insecurity about their favoured characters onto the movies and their creators. About things that never happened.

--- Double Post Merged, Jun 6, 2022, Original Post Date: Jun 6, 2022 ---

It's only a small section of the fans that are anxious about and constantly trying to assess which character the filmmakers want you to exalt and at which characters expense. And thankfully, if you take that number of fans and multiply it by zero, that's the number of fimmakers who chose to have that mindset.

 

The only thing Reylo shippers didn't really get was an on-going relationship after IX. Everything else kinda was in the movies. We even got a "sex" scene and yes, Rian Johnson confirmed that's the closest to a sex scene we will ever get in SW.

You may dislike it, but you simply cannot deny the fact that Reylo was a thing and not only a fanfiction. Even the creators say so.

 

I think Johnson was jokingly referring to Star Wars rather chaste history. The idea that two people who aren't on the same planet as each other almost touching one another's finger tips is the closest thing we'll get to a sex scene in a saga which had Luke and Leia kiss each other twice (one of those times was a french!) and Leia and Han kiss each other passionately FOUR times is ludicrous. And I think Rian knew that. He was throwing a bone to a section of the audience he knew would find that the most impressive part of his movie.

It's a thing. But not in the films. If you took the script for the scenes involving Rey and Kylo and handed it to a Reylo shipper saying this is Reylo fan fiction they would laugh you out the door. "Reylo" is just the subtext that shippers perceive in and create around their scenes on screen. And then go off and expand on it with unambiguous passages of romantic prose about Rey and Kylo's inner thoughts and desires where the movies themselves constantly equivocates. (Just basic logic: If Reylo was an actual thing in the movies, then people wouldn't need to write fan fiction.)

And that's fine. Totally valid. But subtext isn't actually IN movies. No matter how attractive it is. I like the subtext that Yoda is mainly responsible for the Jedi's downfall because, as Palpatine put it, "those that have power fear losing it". But it's not actually in the movies that Yoda is jealous of anyone or that he abuses power in order for him and the order to retain it. But then if the Jedi were not in a position of power that they were preoccupied with maintaining, even with nominally good intentions and motives, then they might not have been such a target, and the Republic might not have been so corruptible. The Jedi did fail after all. And not just because of outside agents. Subconsciously, Yoda's desire to hold on to everything the Jedi had achieved meant the Jedi held on to nothing in the end. It's perfectly valid to think that.

It is not perfectly valid for me to complain that, in spite of all those thoughts I had, the saga then rewards Yoda by having him show up and save the day in AOTC. And then to survive all the other dead Jedi in ROTS and then receive new powers of being able to communicate with the dead and enjoy a form of mortality himself.

As for ROTS. Rey makes it clear that ReyLo was never going to be a thing. ReyBen might have been a thing. Even when they kiss at the end. Sure it's romantic (at least by default since it's the last thing they do, and they never actually speak to each other as Ben and Rey). As romantic as any kiss before dying is. It's not really hugely more climactic and earth moving as when Poe and Finn embraced each other when they were reunited in TFA after assuming that the other one was dead after their crash landing on Jakku. If you are a ReyLo shipper then I am quite happy if the conclusion of ROTS vindicates your support for them getting together, for a few seconds before one of them dies. (But I gather that Ben dying the instant after their chaste consummation makes it impossible for some to get any gratification from it. Partly because it somewhat prohibits them from writing any what-happened-next fan fiction without just ignoring canon, Which inherently devalues it.)

But consider this. At the end, they are two Jedi. They are supposed to love each other. They should be willing to kill in the name of love. Not only that, they are each supposed to be willing to kill the other one for the sake of universal love (which one of them kind of does). Also. Romantic love is a catastrophe. Ones actions and thoughts are practically dominated by one thing in the context of blossoming romantic love. That is not what is really depicted in ROTS or in the trilogy as a whole. Is it?

I am happy for any shippers that take gratification for their own head canon wherever they feel they can see it in the subtext of the ST. But I think that beyond that, all talk of shoulda/coulda/woulda and what successive writers/directors tried to "do" to the characters in order to spite certain sections of the audience, should really be restricted to ReyLo blogs and forums dedicated simply to that topic.

 

Sorry @Martoto, but I can't keep this argument going because you're simply denying the facts. Yes, you can argue against me, but not against the intentions of the creators.

Everyone involved said Reylo, Reyben or whatever you want to call it is canon- JJ, Rian, Daisy Ridley, Mark Hamil and Lucasfilm kept telling people about Kylo's and Rey's (naughty) romance.

Then there's official licensed merch (shirts, bags etc.) featuring Kylo and Rey with loving hearts and stuff like that.

Even on the official SW website Ben and Rey are paired as a couple.

Now you say it's not in the movies, maybe YOU just didn't see it. I know you are guy who likes to be always in the right, and yes, you most often have good points. But being wrong sometimes isn't bad either. Ever thought about that?

 

If the filmmakers need to be asked to verify it in interviews, and cartoon print shirts made up to emphasize something that didn't happen on screen. Then by definition it isn't really confirmed in the movies. is it?

No I'm a guy that does the unremarkable thing of challenging arguments that are presented as intuitive and passed off as basic wisdom but are in fact undermined by a lot of pertinent and contradictory factors, where I see them.

A person who has to be right all the time doesn't invite you to "consider this".

 

Nowadays everything has to been explained and spoon-fed to the audience. Because the subtext was in the movies.

 

I blame it on Marvel. Hahaha! Just kidding but yeah, people are getting more and more stupid nowadays.

Everything has to be explained or confirmed, it doesn't matter whether it's obvious or ambiguous. A lot people aren't able to read between the lines anymore.

 

idk why I want to torture myself by entering Reylo discourse in the year of our lord 2022, but here goes:

There's a difference between a creative on a project doing a retcon and adding a totally new context to a project when the film either doesn't acknowledge it or even blatantly contradicts it (Dumbledore's sexuality being perhaps the most famous example) and a similar creative simply discussing something that was in fact in the movie.

There's definitely a middle ground for Reylo. Personally, I think it's kinda silly to say they were "dating", or to try to view their relationship as anything resembling normalcy. There's something to be said about simply letting a fanfic community be and enjoy their own content, though. You don't want to be "that guy", at the party.

But regarding what was actually in the movies... if someone managed to watch the sequel trilogy and not see the intimacy between them... I mean, did they even watch these things? There was definitely tension, they clearly were connected... heck, in TROS the writers even introduced the idea of a "dyad in the force" to literally hit the audience on the head with how these two are entwined by fate. And later in that movie, one saves the life of the other, and they kiss.

I'm sorry if you expected a record scratch, freeze frame, the beginning of The Who's Baba O'Riley to start playing, and for George Lucas and J.J. Abrams to personally walk into the theater to give the "So you're probably wondering how I got here..." speech and completely spell out each individual detail of Reylo, but I'm happy to report that film does not have to be that blatant. And just because something is not read out verbatim does not mean that it's "only relegated to interviews", or requires intuition. The language of film is not restricted to dialogue alone, and I'm oh so very sorry for you if you feel that way, because you might as well just be listening to audio recordings of screenplays read by Microsoft Sam if that's the case.