star wars 9 spoilers and postmortem shit talk

I mean let's not elevate them too much. The Prequels were just filling in the blanks of a story we already knew the ending of, in broad strokes

I just saw this, and I have a lot the same complaints people have mentioned here, like the fact that it reversed almost all the fresh ideas TLJ brought to the story, and that it playing it safe by imitating the original trilogy, just like TFA did... And the imitation wasn't limited to just revealing the protagonist to be related to the bad guy, the finale played almost exactly like the finale of RotJ: the good guys' fleet is trying to bring down the planet-destroying superweapon(s), it seems like they have a chance, but then Palpatine pulls a suprise move and all hope seems lost... But then Palpatine's plan is defeated because the protagonist doesn't succumb to the Dark Side, and because the other main bad guy has reformed. (The only main difference here is that it's the protagonist, instead of the reformed villain, who kills Palpy.) The reformed bad guy saves the protagonist and gives up his life in the process. The heroic fleet is now able to destroy the superweapon(s), there's a big victory party, and the movie ends with a funeral ceremony for the fallen hero(es). The fact that there was even a shot of Ewoks after the climax only served to hammer in the very obvious similarity between the ending of the original trilogy and the ending of this one.

Besides those gripes, my main problem with the movie was the same thing Dr. Casino mentioned upthread:

think it's a mix of how nakedly fetch-questy and forced the adventure itself is

Like, the first two thirds of the story literally play out like a multi-part video game fetch quest: the good guys go on a dangerous mission to retrieve information on a spy. -> The information tells them Palpatine has returned and resides on a secret planet called Exegol. -> They go on another mission to find an alleged clue about the location of the secret planet. -> They find the clue inscribed on a dagger hidden on a remote planet... But wait! 3PO can't translate it! -> They go on a another planet to get the translation. -> The translation leads them to another planet where they can find the clue that actually leads them to Palpy's secret planet (this bit felt like the most fetch questy element to me, the fact that the inscription on the dagger itself wasn't the location of the planet, rather than the location of another clue that would lead them to Exegol). -> They finally get to Exegol, at which point most of the movie was over.

I get it that this Star Wars, and one of the main appeals of the franchise is to show different kinds of planets and the weird aliens who live on them, and that's cool! But it was kinda boring that all this was achieved bt putting the protagonists through a multi-part scavenger hunt, instead of coming up with some less contrived reason for having them visit different planets.

"all this was achieved by putting"

It keeps the cast together, but the inter-cast interactions of the main three are terrible: they find out that Poe used to be a spice-smuggler, which is a big deal for 3 1/2 seconds, Rey is completely Kylo-focussed, and Finn is completely Rey-focused but channels it into just shouting "Rey!" a lot, including a big hands-megaphone bit while she's in an actual sword fight (him being force-thrown 10 feet here might be his most significant character moment)

I had the same complaint with Force Awakens and the weird missing map piece that would show the way to Luke. So many maps in this new trilogy, as if it was a pirate story

if the expanse has taught us anything unexpected it's that spacemaps are potentially interesting as on-screen business (insofar as they're very *unlike* land- and sea-maps) and hence can be made plotwise needful if ppl are actually thinking abt plot (which literally no one was in this film)

Abrams has not got good ideas.

I could totally take TFA being a beat-for-beat relaunch - it was like a hi-res fairground ride version of A New Hope, and that was OK because it was re-establishing stuff, getting us in the mood, making us excited about Star Wars again after the prequels ruined it.

But - especially after TLJ - the culination needed to go somewhere different, and it didn't. And the worst thing is that I suspect Abrams thinks it did because "we've never been to Exegol before!" but that's totally not what anyone means by "go somewhere different".

And TLJ had several beats that landed the same as Empire - Crait was similar to Hoth in many ways, the heroes got beaten, bruised, chased, and separated, everything looked dark at the end - but there were so many new ideas and concepts (arms dealers, force sensitive stable kids), planets that weren't like places we'd been before (Canto Bight!), the main protagonist really not being from any significant lineage, that it lef tme thinking the last film could be awesome if it took those ideas and ran with it.

And actually it ended up just being another fairground ride. I have no questions at the end of it (other than 'why'), and no real closure either. Unlike the other two I won't go and see it a second time in the cinema.

The kid who moves the broom at the end of TLJ should have been a jumping off point for where to go next. Hope lies with the proles!

so many new ideas and concepts (arms dealers, force sensitive stable kids), planets that weren't like places we'd been before (Canto Bight!)

tbf these new things were pretty much all terrible at best

RONG

exegol: what if an entire planet based on what it looks and feels like in the gaps behind and underneath yr stove

also when palp dies doesn't the giant monolith just drop to the ground trapping rey in the underfloor area FOREVAH

(lol i am on major deadline today let's talk shit abt star wars 9 all morning)

one thing that really bugs me about palpatine's death scene is that all his sith cultists get vaporised before our eyes

obviously the rebels committing acts of genocide is just part of star wars (see: all the various death stars blowing up while packed to the gunnels with stormtroopers) but seeing it depicted onscreen really seemed... off

I thought they were all ghosts? Aren't there supposed to be only two siths at any one time?

Fucking hate this movie, lol

i dunno, it's never explained!

The kid who moves the broom at the end of TLJ should have been a jumping off point for where to go next. Hope lies with the proles!

one natural continuation of this is hinted at in ep 9 with the group of former stormtroopers who chose not to fight

it's frustrating that finn seems only vaguely concerned that the first order is largely made up of abducted kids exactly like him - an effort to coordinate a rebellion of troopers and bring down the first order from within could be a great story imo

The movie was really unclear what the robed figures were supposed to be: because the whole throne room was so abstractly staged, and because the figures don't actually interact with anyone and only serve as a sort of a Greek chorus, I assumed they were purely symbolic, either ghosts of previous Sith followers or just incorporeal embodiments of the Dark Side. But some people seem to have interpreted them to be the actual members of Palpatine's cult, i.e. the people who actually built his ships. Which makes sense, I guess, because there must've been a whole lot of people involved in constructing such a massive fleet.

maybe they were all snoke clones, i dunno

when disney buys the moomin franchise they can make sw xix: COUNTER-APOTHEOSIS OF THE REBEL HEGEMONY: SNOKES UNDER THE STOVE

STOP READING THIS THREAD MARK S

where there's snoke, there's fire (on the hob)

little darth my

A bit of criticism (not so far present on this thread AFAIK) that I don't agree with is insisting that Jannah, the head retired stormtrooper, is being set up as a love interest for Finn - I just didn't get that feeling off them, and as far as I can tell most of where that's coming from is a) seeking something to complain about the straight-washing of FinnPoe and/or b) the section of fandom which is always insisting that any bond is always horny. I mean, Finn is def. always horny, but it's entirely for Rey!

Also from that revised script but not (if I remember correctly) in the actual film is that one of the things Lando did after settling down was having a kid which was then kidnapped by the First Order, making the final scene with him and Jannah simultaneously much less and much more creepy.

I mean, Finn is def. always horny, but it's entirely for Rey!

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FuO52T892DPpEk%2Fgiphy.gif&f=1&nofb=1

finn family hornytroll

I gathered that Palpatine's horde was meant to be the Ghosts of Sith-mas Past, who were all going to occupy Rey's body alongside Palpy for eternity. Seems like we could've seen at least one identifiable dark side force ghost among the throng (any Darth would do) to help establish their collective identity.

https://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2014/07/Eddie.jpg?w=980&q=75

fair point - I mean in this movie.

I mean, Finn is def. always horny, but it's entirely for Rey!

I gathered that Palpatine's horde was meant to be the Ghosts of Sith-mas Past, who were all going to occupy Rey's body alongside Palpy for eternity. Seems like we could've seen at least one identifiable dark side force ghost among the throng (any Darth would do) to help establish their collective identity.

That's because Maul survived being cut to half and moved on from Sith nonsense, as seen in Clone Wars/Rebels and Solo.

it's p funny that palpatine is able to conjure up the most terrifying fleet ever seen just by hanging out on a sith planet as a corpse for years. why didn't he just do that before? makes all his long-term machinations in the prequels seem a little silly and unnecessarily risky.

re: Janna - cool character concept with tons of potential, but her introduction and the way the film immediately pairs her off with Finn felt weird after the way it very forcefully sidelined Rose, the new friend he made in the *last* movie. i've heard it interpreted as Abrams not having any ideas for Rose, but being afraid of looking like he was capitulating to the racist anti-Rose faction, so, tada, a new woman of color for Finn to be friends with! which just ends up smacking of reactionary hollywood "black character has to end up with other black character" thinking, no matter what pairings you were previously shipping.

but maybe it's a little of that, and a little of this being a rushed and cluttered film with numerous other underdeveloped elements that smack of things that would have to have been at least seeded in TLJ to work here - e.g. Poe getting halfway paired off with a combination ex-girlfriend and Lando-type character.

I barely remember clone wars so I didn’t know that. Sidious then? Is Vader too conflicted to be there?

And none of the other Sith would be reconisable to the average moviegoer... Presumably for the same reason they had voices of several Jedis from Clone Wars/Rebels speaking to Rey instead of showing them as Force Ghosts, as people not familiar with the spin-offs would probably be like, huh, are we supposed to recognise all those people?

(xxpost)

I barely remember clone wars so I didn’t know that. Sidious then? Is Vader too conflicted to be there?

Sidious is Palpatine, and Vader/Anakin was among the voices Rey heard.

I meant Dooku, ffs self

Yeah, good point about the racism. (xp to gyac, but DC also OTM there)

might have had trouble with christopher lee's estate? xp

which one of the sith ghosts is darth plagueis the wise

it's p funny that palpatine is able to conjure up the most terrifying fleet ever seen just by hanging out on a sith planet as a corpse for years. why didn't he just do that before? makes all his long-term machinations in the prequels seem a little silly and unnecessarily risky.

Or another way to look at it is: J.J. Abrams is such a hack that he's unable to trump the plotline of the widely-reviled prequels.

it's p funny that palpatine is able to conjure up the most terrifying fleet ever seen just by hanging out on a sith planet as a corpse for years. why didn't he just do that before? makes all his long-term machinations in the prequels seem a little silly and unnecessarily risky.

Yeah, I recognise this is fantasy, but all this was still too much to believe. We see the construction of the first Death Star beginning in Episode III, and it's only finished by Episode IV, which actually feels realistic... So with the entire Empire at his disposal, it still took 20 years to build one planet-destroying weapon, and roughly 4 years to get the next one almost finished, but then in the 30 years between Episodes VI and IX he managed to build hundreds of planet-destroying ships with only the help of some random cultists.

thinking about count dooku has reminded me how extremely weird it is that darth sidious replaced the limber, physically intimidating darth maul with a new apprentice who was a full 80 years old when he was recruited

guys i hate to say this but I've seen a lot of movies and there are parts of the new Stars Wars movie that are very unrealistic

As mentioned in the non-spoiler thread, I watched the first two prequels and the first half of Clone Wars season 1 over the weekend, and if there's one thing that's become abundantly clear at this point it's that there was never any agreement about what the force is capable of or what its limits are. Its employment seems to morph depending upon the needs of a given scene. It's kinda hella frustrating.

We see the construction of the first Death Star beginning in Episode III, and it's only finished by Episode IV, which actually feels realistic... So with the entire Empire at his disposal, it still took 20 years to build one planet-destroying weapon, and roughly 4 years to get the next one almost finished

The funniest (most unintentionally?) thing Lucas ever said in his DVD commentary for one of the movies addressed how long it took to finish the first Death Star: "Well, you know, even the Empire had union problems."

Also the Death Star plans first show up in episode 2 so there was a long-ass lead time on that thing.

cool to see george taking the side of the empire re: union relations

thinking about count dooku has reminded me how extremely weird it is that darth sidious replaced the limber, physically intimidating darth maul with a new apprentice who was a full 80 years old when he was recruited

The Cohen-Giuliani Effect

that limber, physically intimidating michael cohen in full

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.DhT4QhcsJogonU_EOqnLNgHaE6%26pid%3DApi&f=1

the subtext of the prequels is ALL old rich guy griping about bureaucracy, with the senate and the trade federation standing in for procedure and regulation and red tape. tbf tho, the secondary bad guys are basically the chamber of commerce, not the unions, and overall these are underdog stories where the primary bad guys are the right-wing state...