The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker

For me the most traumatic scene was Kylo telling Rey: 'You're a Palpatine.'

 

I would’ve been totally fine with this reveal if it happened in the throne room scene of TLJ. The idea that the hero needs to overcome a troublesome family history? Obviously classic Star Wars.

but having Kylo deliver this line in TROS felt so out of the blue and retconny. Like “Oops wait uh I checked again and uh you’re actually Palpatine?”

 

Same. The problem isn't the twist, but when the twist happens. After a certain point, a twist like this does more harm than good, as I feel it did wth Rey and her arcs.

I also think that for the Palpatine Twist to work in TLJ, Rey's characterization and arc would need a little modifying, though. The "nobody" twist works because Rey is looking for someone to understand her, for a place in the story. That can still work with the Palpatine Twist, but I think her characterization would also need to lean a little more into Rey thinking that she is the hero in this story, and then for Kylo to rip that away and then give it right back by stating "you're a Palpatine, you'll always be a villain to them, but we can be heroes of our own story together" or "heroes, villains, good guys, bad guys, who cares? We'll tear this world down and create something better," or something else along those lines.

 

Add to that...'Somehow, Palpatine has returned' (Poe), and 'The dead speak! (opening crawl) and it practically screams that his return from the grave was a last minute add on - they couldn't even dream up a credible reason as to why he was back. The fact that Adam Driver had to record those lines as a last addition in his own closet proves that!

I thought, on hearing they were bringing him back, it would be as a creepy Force ghost, which could have worked, but the reasons as to how he'd come back were as confusing as a bad fanfiction...and making Rey a Palpatine actually gave the entire saga a nihilistic ending; heroes all gone, their bloodline gone, the villain's descendant lives on...yes, I know a lot of people argue that 'blood doesn't matter' which is fine in principal but...SW was all about blood and family.

ROTJ makes a point of that, with Luke telling Obi Wan outright that he 'couldn't kill his own father', and Vader's blood link to his son being the reason he disobeyed his master, saved his son, and ultimately, saved himself. Even TFA had a scene where Lor San Tekka tells Kylo 'you cannot deny the truth that is your family'.

And I'm sorry....but the idea that Rey's parents were good people that sold her to protect her is frankly absolutely ridiculous. There were a dozen things they could have done to protect her, such as taking her to Luke's academy, rather than condemn her to a life of slavery.

 

They obviously got cold feet after the reveal in TLJ, and it is quite a shame. I loved TLJ and how that reveal fits with Rey's arc and the themes of the movie. Rey figuring out her place in the story removed from the classic family-trees and legacy characters is so much more interesting than what TRoS ended up doing in my opinion.

I still think her arc works out decent enough, since it ends up being about her rejecting that familial connection and being with her chosen family, but a part of me will always be a little bummed out that we never got to see the promise of TLJ's setups fulfilled. (For the record, I am a big fan of both movies on their own, and my criticism comes from a place of love and admiration for the ST in general).

 

If you change a few lines in TROS, and don't mention the family connection between Rey and Palpatine. It's still the same film. Just have Rey devastated that her family are dead, they were nobodies, she was abandoned. She needs give no loyalty to anyone and therefore she might as well become Empress if fate has given her such talent and so on and so on. Really, there is nothing that would need materially changed except some looped dialogue, if the family connection was eliminated.

So how does Rey being a nobody guarantee a better film? And what if we took Palpatine out too? So it's just the FO and Kylo the big bads. What happens then? He and Rey fight. One of them is mortally wounded, the other saves them. One of them dies the other one brings them back. And then they themselves die. ...... I dunno. Doesn't sound like making Rey nobody and/or removing Palpatine is the key that unlocks a much better film from episode IX.

I can't think of one way there would be an instant material improvement made or at least made possible by changing or ditching the story elements that people like to claim are the smoking gun, the dropped ball, the missed opportunity etc.

 

Johnson ended the film with the potential for storylines going forward for all of the main characters.
Poe...stepping into Leia's shoes as General and leading the Resistance, from the beginning. Following Carrie's sad passing they could simply have had her die before TROS, and start the film with a dignified memorial to her.
Finn...now a true rebel, going undercover and recruiting stormtroopers...the First Order falling apart from within.
Kylo....finding that being Supreme Leader isn't much fun on his own, and Hux preparing to oust him. Throughout both TFA and TLJ Kylo showed how mentally unstable he was, despite his powers, I'm pretty sure Hux could easily have found a way to get rid of him. The EU comics actually had a pretty good story where a group of Imperial officers tried to assassinate Vader because they were sick of his habit of killing them off when they failed....and they almost succeeded.
Rey....finding out that maybe she didn't belong with the Resistance, especially if Poe turned out to be a more aggressive kind of leader - not a villain of course, but more Saw Guerrera than Mon Mothma.

TROS retconned the lot and produced a half baked mess which didn't know where it was going. And didn't even bother with a decent plot - 'somehow, Palpatine has returned', 'I will earn your brother's sabre' 'you're a Palpatine', Chewie seemingly killed by Rey's Force lightning and then magically surviving because apparently there was another transport ship, Threepio losing his memories then returning to normal after a simple reboot.....on and on and on. I couldn't believe it. The whole film seemed as if the makers just wanted to hurry up and get the whole thing over with. I still find it hard to believe even now.

 

That's all speculation about a personal wish-list. I'm asking why Rey being nobody and/or Sidious not returning is supposedly inherently better or guarantees a better movie.

 

Actually, it was based on the final scenes of TLJ.
Rey being a Palpatine is seen as ridiculous by so many because the familial link was clearly added on at the last minute - with the OT, it was half way through the trilogy that Vader revealed himself as Luke's father, and all they had to do with ROTJ was confirm it, or reveal it as false, if that was the intent. They also showed little hints throughout ESB that Vader wasn't keen on killing Luke, once he knew his name....leaving the audience wondering if this reluctance actually proved he was telling the truth about being his father.
TROS seemed like a completely different film to the others, but most of all, it seemed as if it started in the middle - Palpatine had simply 'appeared' out of thin air; we had no idea just who Kylo Ren was fighting in the opening sequences, and in the later parts of the film Palpatine kept changing his ultimate goal so often it was ...bizarre, to say the least. The whole thing was a Frankenstein's mismatch of other films, from Rey's 'I am all the Jedi' ('I am IronMan') to the final scenes....which were a complete rehash of ROTJ.
They even changed the ending at the last moment; the silhouette of Rey on Tattooine with BB was photoshopped from another earlier scene, from TFA.

 

And exactly this shows how badly written this movie is and this whole family legacy thing was added quite late. A reveal like this SHOULD defintely change the movie and drive the plot in a different direction.

It doesn't, but so does Rey Palpatine. And that's the point. As you mentioned before, it would be still the same movie.

By removing the Palaptine legacy and Palpatine himself one thing actually changes though. We win screen time for something else. Maybe something better ; )

People actually thought the ending was edited from the Pasaana scene, which was debunked.

 

I think both films have their flaws and both have their good points.

Over time, my opinion of TROS goes down, and my opinion of TLJ gets more complicated. The things in TLJ that work for me just get better. The parts that don’t just get worse.

I think these movies have a really complicated relationship.

I respect TLJ for taking chances, but I think it left the third movie in a nearly impossible position. TLJ just doesn’t tee up the next movie.

Whatever you think about speculation and fan theories, you can’t say that TFA didn’t do an incredible job launching us into the next movie. Fans (even super casual fans) spent two years asking “Who is Rey? Who is Snoke? Why did Luke leave?” It literally created two years of conversation to fill the gap between movies, and we HAD to see the next one. It gave TLJ questions to answer.

And TLJ answers all those questions. But it doesn’t raise any new questions. We don’t even have a basic plot question left, like “How do we save Han from Jabba?” We just have this big, vague new status quo with no specific questions or cliffhangers.

There was just nothing to talk about between TLJ and TROS. There was nothing to propel us into the next film. There were no questions for TROS to answer.

Which left TROS in the impossible position of being a standalone film, setting up all its own conflict and resolution, while also somehow tying up the entire nine film saga.

I’m not saying TROS couldn’t have done it better. I think Trevorrow’s take WAS better. But I also think no film could have really accomplished all that with nothing to work with going in.

Rian Johnson makes excellent standalone films that use genre storytelling to explore deeper themes. With TLJ, he made an excellent standalone film that uses genre storytelling to explore deeper themes. But he didn’t make the middle film of a trilogy.

And Abrams did his best to scrape together a saga-concluding event film from what was left. Bringing back Palpatine was his way of trying, somehow, to make this saga feel like one complete thing with a solid conclusion.

 

No that's not I'm saying. You replace Palpatine, you got get another bid badn to vanquish. Change Rey Palpatine to Rey nobody, she's still responding/reacting to or overcoming a significant revelation about her heritage. You're just swapping skins. I'm referring to the criticism which is all about these two key aspects as if it is chiefly those aspects that guaranteed a poor film. I'm pointing out that you can swap the two supposed smoking guns for something else and it would likely still be the same film. Of course if you think TROS is a poor film then of course you think it's poorly written. That's not going to change.

So not a guaranteed better film. Just maybe. But a lot of people are fine with the Palpatine Legacy. I don't recall anyone complaining in 19883 or in 2005 that they were fed up with the Palpatine legacy or that it was a handicap to the saga.

 

I certainly haven’t read every post in every thread on this forum, but is that really the argument? That the movie’s framework is perfectly fine and it was only these key elements that were bringing it down? That’s not really what I’ve personally been observing here.

Palpatine’s return is the inciting incident to the story. It’s the principle driver - the reason why anyone is doing anything. You take that out and you fundamentally change everyone’s motivations. You make it a totally different story. It isn’t supplemental. It’s the spine of the narrative.

 

Well it's certainly is repeated often enough that "Rey nobody" was an opportunity for something good passed up. And that bringing Palpatine back is like the cancer at the heart of the movie. They are clearly identified as the key choices that either prevented the movie from being good or ensured its failure.

 

I feel like this stems from a desire to see the narrative more narrowly focused on the relationship between the Kylo and Rey characters after the events of TLJ. With Snoke dead and Rey’s parents sorted, the two characters aren’t hampered by their respective inherited obligations and free to define for themselves their own opposing perspectives. And that’s more where the conflict would center. Palpatine, in a way, puts them both back into that previous position of working out that sense of self.

Kylo is again having to work his way out from under a controlling authority figure. Rey is again having to come to grips with an unpleasant parentage reveal. It’s a kind of regression in development, but with the volume turned way up. It’s the same basic thing, but bigger and louder. That’s not how I personally interpret the story, but I appreciate the perspective.

I’m not sure if anyone is arguing the position that this alternate path would guarantee anyone a better story, but maybe a more distinctive one from what was already told. Or . . . I’m way off.

 

It just means Sith come in two’s. Does not mean there are not other sets of Sith.

--- Double Post Merged, Apr 12, 2022, Original Post Date: Apr 12, 2022 ---

All

future trilogy should have single director.

 

That's partially why I love TLJ - it's not a binary movie to me. It's a movie where I can like, love, hate, and respect different things about it all at the same time, and they coexist. No other Star Wars movie really does that for me, and that's what makes TLJ special.

Definitely agree. I feel this was the case because RJ was trying to leave the story in a way HE would have liked to have gained it. RJ came into TLJ with all of these built-in expectations, questions, and cliff-hangers he had to answer. I personally get the feeling he didn't care for many of them, and so he answered several of them in a way that fit his philosophy while still telling the story he wanted to tell. So, for the next director, he gave them a clean slate so they could do whatever they wanted, no longer hampered down by tradition, expectation, or the past. No more Maniacal Big Bad, we have Ben Solo. No more mystical Jedi or bloodline to save the day, we only have ourselves. It's the gift and curse of the unknown...something JJ seemingly didn't want to deal with.

Eh...I agree that JJ did the best he knew how to do, but therein lies the problem. JJ, as much as I love most of his films, has a standard toolbox that he uses for nearly all of the ones that I've seen. Nostalgia with flashy lights, kinetic and high paced scenes, and refusing to linger on one emotion too long. These make for fun fast-paced movies, but not for good finales, or at least certainly not my cup of tea for a finale.

 

It's ironic, as Abrams apparently said he had 'no idea' where the story was going post TLJ, and it was 'up to whoever took over' after he left.

 

That's one of the things I like about TLJ

 

I actually feel sorry for Rian Johnson, he took the loose ends left by Abrams and did a pretty good job of continuing the story. But I still can't get over how disjointed TROS is plotwise...there are so many elements that hint they kept changing their minds as they went along.
Chewie's death....when Rey accidentally blew up the transport that was a genuinely shocking moment. It would have added a completely new dimension to her character if she had had to accept she was responsible for his death, and forced her to accept the 'dark' in her, but five minutes later they announce 'oh, he's alive after all', thanks to a mysterious new transport ship that appears out of nowhere. The only conclusion I can get from this is that they decided that they didn't want to 'burden' shiny 'all the Jedi Rey' with something as powerful as that - despite it being something totally unexpected, and would have given Daisy some serious material as an actress.
Threepio's memory loss....would have added a truly poignant touch, but once again, it was retconned five minutes later.
Palpatine's goal....which changed every time we saw him.
The Wayfinder....when Kylo destroyed it, that was a truly powerful scene, especially when he told Rey that 'she would only get to Exegol with him.'
It would have been a terrific twist if Rey, Finn and Poe were forced to work with Kylo Ren, lord, just imagine the tension!

And then...they pull another wayfinder out of - sorry, can't say that.

It seemed that every time the story was going to go in an interesting, 'never saw that coming' direction....they pulled back, and changed their minds.