RUMOR Another report of what Colin Trevorrow's IX would have been like.

We'll just have to agree to disagree. I will just close by saying this though:

Here's a quote I found regarding the definition of what a character driven story is:

A character-driven story is one focused on studying the characters that make up your story. Character-driven stories can deal with inner transformation or the relationships between the characters.

Whereas plot-driven stories focus on a set of choices that a character must make, a character-driven story focuses on how the character arrives at a particular choice. When you zoom into the internal conflicts, you tend to focus less on the external conflicts. The plot in a character-driven story is usually simple and often hyper-focused on the internal or interpersonal struggle of the character(s).
https://nybookeditors.com/2017/02/character-driven-vs-plot-driven-best/


The bulk, not all. of TROS story revolves around Rey, and the choices she makes, her internal struggle with her past. That's what makes the film a character driven film.


And to reiterate what I said above regarding the video. It's hard to take it seriously when he proclaims from the start his dislike of the director and cherry picks points from TROS conveniently ignoring main plot points or even context. That's not exactly an objective assessment in my view.

 

It's awesome that you love and enjoy the film. I'm really glad about that! And I too don't agree with everything in the video posted, yet throwing it all out because you don't agree with all of it isn't how this should work. You should be able to expand and confirm with what you agree with and have discourse over what you don't. That's how we develop nuanced views after all!

But I have to agree with other posters about whether or not this is a character driven film. To me it very much isn't. TFA is a good blend of the two: we see how Finn's decision drives the plot forward; we see how Rey's desire to go back to Jakku conflicts with her newfound desire for freedom and to play a role in this grand story. But it's balanced by finding Luke Skywalker. We see how Han arrived at his decision to confront his son, and we see how Kylo arrived at his decision to kill Han.

TLJ is even MORE character driven: Rey's desire to find her place in this story, Luke's desire to NOT teach Rey about the ways of the Jedi, Finn's desire to run, Poe's desire to save the fleet, and Kylo's desire to forge his own path.

I...don't see that in TROS. We don't see what drives Kylo to hunt down anything about Palpatine, we're just told. And then, after a movie and a year in-world of independence, he regresses? Why? The hunt for the Wayfinder/Sith Dagger isn't out of a personal conviction for anyone on the heroic side. It's because the plot demands it. The only character driven choices I remember Rey making are saving Ben and running to Ach-To. Poe has some character driven moments on Kijimi, but that's it. So I guess more accurately, I'd say that I don't see a majority of TROS as character-driven.

I saw the movie twice and followed it as well as I think most people did, and I still think it's a mess. Not unlikable, just a mess. Finn needs to tell Rey something. It's brought up three times, and it's NEVER mentioned to Rey in the movie. Why? I'm sure they have that on the cutting room floor, but if you're going to mention it three times - the two big ones being in life and death situations - it seems pretty sloppy to not follow up on it. And one can't even say "it's obvious he was talking about the Force," because Finn doesn't mention the Force until DS2 wreckage, and I completely understood that sub arc.

To me, asking a question and not answering it is fine in the first act, but this is the movie that's supposed to answer and wrap up everything, we shouldn't have dangling threads.

That's left pretty clear, but I think people can be forgiven for not remembering the beautiful forests on their volcanic planets.

I'm pretty sure most of those people checked out after TLJ. But this happens with EVERY IP. Look at Avatar: The Last Airbender. Look at Naruto. Look at Voltron: Legendary Defender (...actually...do yourself a favor and DON'T. Those people are CRAZY). Look at Harry Potter. Don't blame this complaint on TROS, because this was taking place before TROS. One could even say it started when Disney relegated on the EU stuff to Legends. This argument is a non-factor.

Boring, debatably. Then again, there's that SaveBenSolo hashtag going around Twitter today...

That's more a complaint leveled at the ST as a whole, rather than just this movie. Maybe this movie confirmed that belief for those people, but it's not exclusive to this film.

Luke...never really accepted her though. He tolerated her for a time, but that's about it from what we're shown. Han was explicitly the father she never had in her mind according to TFA, and Leia was the closest thing to a mentor and mother. Why didn't she take the name Solo or Organa? Wouldn't that be more character driven? Taking the Skywalker name kinda sounds like she's taking the name to be a big shot (which doesn't fit with her character)...or it's for the fans (which fits JJ's M.O. to a T, and is explicitly discussed in the video).

You mean like...finding the Sith Wayfinder and Sith Dagger...?

But those only come into play when she learns about her past, which she doesn't until Kijimi. Until then, she's off chasing the Wayfinder or Sith Dagger.

He's taking examples to prove a point. Like when students write essays and need quotes. And I don't think his points about TROS are wrong, either.
Just Write never says he dislikes Abrams - he says "I've never loved a movie by JJ Abrams, which is weird because he's an insanely talented director in a lot of ways," and then goes on to list some of those ways. And THAT IS TOTALLY FAIR.
I felt the same about TLJ - I saw Looper and I wasn't impressed; I saw TLJ and had and still have a lot of gripes with it. But even then I still admired and respected Rian Johnson. I loved his enthusiasm, his creativity, and his boldness. But I didn't like his movies overall. And that was totally fine, this doesn't have to be a binary.

Overall, again, I love that you love this movie. But I don't think it's fair to call it character-driven.

 

Yes, absolutely, Tros is not character-driven.

 

It's definitely not character driven. The entire plot is just a big fetch quest. It's just like a video game and video game are usually not character driven. Yes, there are exceptions, but they are very rare and special.
In TROS none of those 'find and fetch quests' are driven by anything other than the desire to beat the final boss, the emperor.

 

And this isn't even to say plot driven movies are inherently bad.
Some are done INCREDIBLY well. Some classics are plot driven.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is more or less plot driven.
A New Hope might be the most plot driven Star War (other than Rogue One).

But they don't feel like fetch quests. We have to get A so we can get B so we can slay the dragon!

 

Thanks for your response. A little light (ie. courtesy) as opposed to heat goes a long way to seeing things more clearly. . Your points are well made, even if I don't agree with all of them. I guess as the old saying goes, art hits the consumer differently.
I actually found your summation and the themes from TFA & TLJ much, much different from what you laid out. So we will just have to agree to disagree.


As to the video (sorry I am breaking my word again). I am not going to go back to it. The guy is clearly just cherry picking and ignoring clearly laid out plots point that are in the film make his arguments, and his admitting to not liking Abrams or his work clearly shows that he is not giving an objective opinion.

 

It's interesting to get a glimpse at how much different Episode IX might've turned out if Colin had stayed attached. Looks like it would've been a darker and more original film for sure. Not to automatically say that I think it would've been better; as others have pointed out, it's not really fair to compare a script outline to a finished film. But at some level, I do wonder what the film would've been like if they'd filmed this script instead.

 

I appreciate the information and it's nice to learn more about Trevorrow's movie - but I have to say, DOTF sounds, well, awful.

Maybe TROS wasn't character driven per se, but it still made a lot of effort to bring the character development that was sorely lacking in 7 and 8. DOTF sounds like it was mostly just another explosionfest. With Ben never redeemed and Rey still a nobody, that basically means that the Skywalker line is ultimately the villain in the story, and the real protagonist was basically just a Marie Sue. Essentially, they are saying, "I know you've spent eight movies following a family and wondering about their ultimate legacy, but actually you should have been rooting for some random deus ex machina who just showed up out of nowhere." It also seems to lack a backstory for Snoke.

TROS made a really good effort at the virtually impossible task of tying all 9 movies together. DOTF sounds like it was just trying to be the biggest and fanciest bus in the procession of directors trying to throw their predecessors under buses.

I don't even like the title. Maybe "The Rise of Skywalker" is not the best title ever, but recycling the name of a musical theme from TPM just doesn't make sense to me.

Just to clarify, I think "Duel of the Fates" is a great piece of music with a perfect title. I just don't agree with repurposing it into an episode title.

 

Coming up to breath for a quick moment before diving back into (the deepest part of) my work since I saw this thread was active again, I just wanted to share this video. It's by Implicitly Pretentious and goes over Trevorrow's Episode in comparison with TROS. It gets supremely cynical at the very end, but I think it's worth checking out if you have the time, even if you don't agree with it - Lord knows I don't. If you want to skip the narrative reading and go straight to the analysis I suggest you skip from 3:00 to about 23:30.

 

Interesting video, but I disagree with his assessments.

I agree that there should have had been more 'meat' on the plot of TROS. But I preferred what we got character wise with Rey, Finn and Kylo. We didn't need to have some heavy 'Down with the Man!' Calvary charge from Rey and Finn. Also TROS we get to see the maturation of the characters and how they come into their own. It's not just hand waved in. TROS is a more subtel and nuanced and thoughtful film. DOTF is just an empty action flick.

 

Okay, a lot to unpack here.
TROS made no effort for character development. It just gave characters things people wanted.
You wanted Finn to be force sensitive? Congrats. Now he is.
You wanted Rey to have special genetics? Congrats. Now she's a Skywalker.
You wanted Kylo Ren saved? Congrats. Now he is for reasons.
You wanted Poe to be explicitly hetero? Congrats. Now he simply exists solely to make sure people know he is. Because that's all we get from him in TROS.

This right here is proof people don't know what Mary Sue is or means. Rey being a Skywalker wouldn't absolve her from being a Mary Sue. (She isn't so point is moot anyways.) Her last name has nothing to do with Mary Sue status it just means you wanted the smaller answer of her being of a special lineage more than anything else. That's it.

Actually what they are saying is, the fight is never over and the next generation will always have to pick up the fight to carry on where the previous generation left off. Yoda explicitly states this in TLJ. Bringing back Palpatine is literally undoing Anakin's redemptive act and taking down the work of the OT. Snoke doesn't need a backstory. It isn't his trilogy. Why are people still not getting this?

DOTF would likely not be the final title. It's likely a production title to highlight the theme of the film rather than the finalized title.

 

I agree with you that bringing back Palpatine undoes Anakin’s sacrifice and that this is a very bad thing. But the entire ST seems to be based on undoing ROTJ, and frankly it was too late to fix that problem.

I don’t understand why you would even say Rey has Skywalker genetics, because that isn’t what happened.

Before TROS, Rey was just Rey, Snoke was just Snoke, and Finn was just Finn. TROS really made a strong effort to address that and connect all the movies. Even if you disagree with the character development in TROS, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have character development. The whole point is that adding backstories in the final chapter was always going to be impossible, but I admire TROS for making a strong effort instead of just avoiding our questions altogether (which it sounds like DOTF would have done).

I never said anything about Poe’s sexual orientation, and I don’t see how that is even relevant.

 

Nothing else in the ST undoes ROTJ except the explicit return of Palpatine.
The Empire is dead and a new one rose up as the Rebellion couldn't form a coherent governance in time.
Until the Emperor came back and it wasn't the FO it was just the Empire again. Same leader.

You know damn well what I mean. She's a Palpatine and a Skywalker. She has the special genetics and the special name.

THOSE AREN'T CHARACTER DEVELOPMENTS. They're just plot contrivances put in to get people to shut up about "Why isn't she special? Who is Snoke!"
Yes it literally means they don't have character development in TROS. Finn doesn't change. He just chases Rey around. He has no purpose other than to chase Rey in the movie. Rey doesn't have any purpose other than to fetch quest. Poe just tags along for the ride.

It's not about tying it in. It's about it existing as a trilogy on it's own that can work as an end for this saga...for now. In trying to to tie in, they made everything else worse.

You say it yourself, adding backstories in the final chapter was going to be impossible? So why do it? No one in the story needed it. It was pure fan service bantha poodoo of the highest order. Star Wars in a nutshell right now. Story be damned. Go for the nostalgia.

It's relevant in terms of how no character outside of Kylo Ren had anything even remotely showing growth as a character. Or "character development"
They all more or less just re-hash their arcs from TLJ in less compelling ways and fetch quest.

 

I think the advantage of comparing Trevorrow's script with the Rise of Skywalker, is that Trevorrow' had a number of years to prep that script, Abrams and a number of weeks. Trevorrow's Dual of the fates on paper therefore feels a lot more fleshed out. Whether that would have translated to the screen I don't know.

 

Being hired years in advance does not mean you spend all that time thinking about or working on a script; he only spent months on it. You seem to have forgotten he was still writing and directing other films throughout those years. In the end Trevorrow only submitted two drafts, and failed to think up one that minimised Leia's role.

Abrams had months to work on his script too, around the same amount of time he had for TFA. Abrams' film being less fleshed out is more to do with his lack of imagination than prep time.

 

To be honest, we have absolutely no idea how long Trevorrow spent on the script, he could have knocked it out over 2 days or he could have worked on it a bit every day for 2 years, we just don't know. We know he certainly had a lot longer to formerly prep his idea than Abrams, we even know that development got so far that ships were designed, as one of them is now at Galaxy's Edge( the Tie echelon). We also know a lot of ar work was done at this time ready for the production. So we know that Trevorrow's prep time was significant and at an advanced stage. I don't know how many scripts Trevorrow handed in, the last I read was multiple, but if you say it was 2 I will take your word for it. Obviously, there were issues during this period, I've heard the same rumours that Trevorrow couldn't come up with a satisfactory way to handle Leia after Carie Fisher's passing. There are also the rumours that the critical panning of the Book of Henery made Disney/Lucasfilm concerned with trusting Trevorrow to end the saga. again this is all rumour though. Really all we know for 100% sure Trevorrow had just over 2 years between being announced as being hired and being announced as being fired and it that time he at least produced this script and the preproduction got to a fairly advanced stage.

I suppose you could argue that Abrams had even longer than Trevorrow in some respect and he was involved in the start of the trilogy. But then we know that Abrams rarely works out a full story, he generally works by coming up with a load of idea's and have are a number idea of what it could all mean. Like he did with Lost and Alias, and like we know he did with Star Wars, going back and forth between Rey being a Kenobi or Palpatine, not knowing who or what Snoke was.... Also as he wasn't really involved in The Last Jedi its likely that even ideas he did have would have changed as the story had progressed. So it's unlikely that Abrams had any firm plans, but we don't know.

Abrams has said that one of the challenges he liked and attracted him back to finish the trilogy was it was basically 2 years from being hired to the film needing to be almost complete. To put it in perspective Patty Jenkins has 3 years between being announced and Rogue Squadron being in cinemas. So Abrams was 100% working to a tight timescale. He basically had the same length of time that Trevorrow was in place as director, of course, Trevorrow had other projects in that time, but lets not also forget Abrams also runs a production company and produces a lot of projects so is a fairly busy man even when not directing. So Trevorrow had a significant advantage in producing a script over Abrams.

How much the quality of the Rise of Skywalkers suffered because of the tight timescale again we don't know. Lots of elements within the film could be interpreted as rushed, but then the storytelling consists of Abrams previous works. He generally likes to tell stories that go a million miles an hour, pose loads of mysterious and be really exciting and jam-packed, but is generally not as interested in the what, where, why & how elements.

So we all have to make our own decisions a bit. I find Rise of Skywalker quite fun, but personally, I think it could have done with a bit longer in preproduction. But that's generally my feeling about the whole trilogy, it was as a whole fun but feels like it would have been a lot better if they had spent a bit more time at the start nailing down the story.

And when I compare the Duel of the Fates script and the Rise of Skywalker movie for me Duel of the Fates read from a story point of view like it has had the benefit of significantly more time been spent on it which is reflected in the timescales involved. This is, of course, a personal opinion, it could also be influenced by the fact I am aware of the timescales. It also not comparing like for like as I have never read the Rise of Skywalker as a script. So the opinion has its flaws which I fully accept.

 

When I heard that JJ was coming back, my heart sank more than a bit, I loved TLJ and I thought that if anything we were going to get another film like TFA (which I frankly found a chore to watch) if anything to quiet the vocal whiners.

But I was pleasantly surprised when I saw it. Yes there was a lot of action but there was also a lot of heart.

Apparently he and Terrio watched the TLJ and thought that the most interesting parts of the film were the quiet moments and the exchanges between Ren and Rey and they seemed to have gone with that. Which is why there is so much character work in TROS. You can see the growth and an organic transition from TLJ to TROS. Trevorrow's treatment of Ren and (especially) Rey just makes my skin crawl.
I was watching a trailer for Battlefront II and I actually thought that scene would have worked in lieu of Passana desert scene. You could have kept the same context but just have made the scenery different.

 

I like TRoS for the most part, but there is a part of me that would still enjoy seeing them film a version of the Duel of the Fates story. Even if much of it would be incompatible with the Episode IX that we already got, DotF has some interesting ideas that would be cool to see reincorporated into the storyline... somehow. Not sure how practical it would be at this point, but my head-canon thinks it could be pretty interesting.

 

Rey got force pregnant by Kylo.

 

The reason they needed to take on the insurmountable task of adding backstories is simple: This is a sequel trilogy.

After 7 and 8, the ST was basically just a “soft reboot” of Star Wars - sort of like the last season of Scrubs. The premise is so popular that they may as well just throw in random newbies to the same format, with occasional cameos from the original trilogy. In my opinion this is still true even after TROS, but at least they tried to connect it to the existing story. If you are going to add a new story to an existing universe, backstories are essentially mandatory.

I don’t agree with your claim that the ST didn’t already have a problem with undoing ROTJ. Do you seriously believe that the First Order is different from the Empire? It uses the same ships and the same stormtroopers, it is run by a creepy old shrivelly Dark Side guy, and the second in command is a fallen Skywalker. The only backstory we are ever given onscreen for the First Order is simply that it “rose from the ashes of the Empire.” I seriously can’t find a single difference between the Empire and the First Order, other than renaming some stuff.

The only even remotely new thing I can think of in the First Order is a high-ranking female officer, which I guess is a good thing, but we barely even got to know Phazzy before she plummeted out of existence.