Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Visual Guide as well as official wiki.

Edit: And, I guess I should also mention, the film itself (for crying out loud).

insaniak wrote:At the end of the day, when something doesn't seem to quite fit, I'd rather assume there's an explanation that we just haven't been given yet and get on with enjoying the movie than to fixate on the details. YMMV, obviously.

That's fair enough. For me, when something doesn't fit, depending on how egregiously, I assume it's a mistake or error, but am happy to call it canon if it's later explained/reinforced.

That's why I'm not as bothered about Snoke as I was, but I'm very bothered about their treatment of lightspeed.

insaniak wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:

- Weirdly petty toward TLJ.. .

How so?

As other have said:
Luke catching the lightsaber ("a Jedi weapon deserves more respect" - yet he tosses it over his shoulder in the film prior)
Rose being sidelined and replaced with characters who spring out from nowhere (I like Dominic, but we already have Rose. Unfortunately, I have a suspicion that she was cut out largely because of her character being hated because of RJ's terrible writing choices re. Canto Bight and "not by destroying what we hate, but saving what we love", which is disgusting on Disney's part).
Kylo's helmet being reforged, for no real reason beyond "it's iconic". (I thought he'd abandoned the whole "trying to be the new Vader" thing?)

It is a lot like if you found out that Darth Vader was Luke's father (a twist that was controversial at the time, remember) and then the next movie they were like "Nah just kidding!"

Nobody needs to nitpick these movies to criticize them. They are nightmare level disasters on the macro scale, including their very structure. I accept that people can enjoy terrible movies, I do too. I don’t try to gaslight the people who point out that they’re terrible.

I agree with that. What is sad is that obviously a lot of care and attention goes into the visuals, and I think the actors are trying pretty hard. But the people making the film just don't seem to think basics like plot and script are that important, resulting in structural collapse of these otherwise carefully made and well acted films.

It is baffling. The guy that co-wrote this also apparently co-wrote Batman Vs. Superman and Justice League. I mean, why would Disney give this film to someone with a track record of failure so recent? And how could they make a purchase worth billions and then have no real idea of what they were going to do with it other than a release schedule and some bullet points?

I mean, now that I think about it, most managers and senior executive types I have ever worked with have been incompetents who have failed upward, but it really stands out with these films.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Rose being sidelined and replaced with characters who spring out from nowhere (I like Dominic, but we already have Rose. Unfortunately, I have a suspicion that she was cut out largely because of her character being hated because of RJ's terrible writing choices re. Canto Bight and "not by destroying what we hate, but saving what we love", which is disgusting on Disney's part).

I thought that too, but there was an article the other day from an interview with the writers and apparently they actually had a bunch of Rose scenes filmed and a whole arc back at the base with Rose & Leia, but the GFX they used to create new Leia scenes wasn't turning out that great and they chose to chop out those scenes instead of pour more resources into getting it to look OK.

As for Holdo Maneuver, they should have just said it had something to do with the hyperspace tracking, which also wasn't a thing before TLJ. In fact they made it out to be such a big deal in TLJ that it strikes me as the obvious McGuffin for a writer to use to handwave away why hyperspace ramming can't otherwise be used. They wouldn't have even needed to really explain it if TLJ, just had one extra line about it linking the ships together or somesuch.

It reminds me of all the arguments about warp speed ramming in Star Trek, which has wisely never done it for all the exact reasons SW fans are arguing over the Holdo Maneuver now. There's a bunch of technical essays written (mostly by fans) on why warp speed ramming can't be a thing, but it's mostly just reasoning out why Trek has never done it. Holdo Maneuver was an AWSOME scene, but it's one of those fundamental setting shifts that it needs a reason (even a crappy handwavium reason) that it can't be used often or reliably, and at least JJ realized that enough to throw in a the "1 in a million" line when Rian Johnson SHOULD have recognized it and dealt with it in TLJ.

You know what, I think the reason I think SW movies are GOOD movies is because I don't critique them as MOVIES but rather modern mythologies.
The plots of Greek Mythologies and Arthurian Legends aren't exactly what the best either. But they stood the test of time for so long because they spoke of the human condition.
Those tales also "starred" Heroes of noble or divine birth.

Viewed with this lens, it's really hard for me to fault SW movies for having silly plot holes or inconsistencies, because in the end, those aren't the point.
Star Wars is awesome, even the prequels (and we don't talk about non-SW movies like the holiday special and Ewok movies)

 reds8n wrote:

they undid the Rey is no one scene

TBF I reckoned this was always something of a planned change/reveal -- much like how Luke and Vader's relationship was altered in the original trilogy.

Yeah, her name is REY. Rey is Spanish for King. Who's the closest thing to a king in SW?
It would have to be a coincidence for that not to be a callback to Darth Vader = Dark Father

-

They don’t scan as mythological to me. More like, consumer products of such immense scale that they went off the rails because of a failure to manufacture them in a context of commercial or even artistic accountability.

 Kalamadea wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Rose being sidelined and replaced with characters who spring out from nowhere (I like Dominic, but we already have Rose. Unfortunately, I have a suspicion that she was cut out largely because of her character being hated because of RJ's terrible writing choices re. Canto Bight and "not by destroying what we hate, but saving what we love", which is disgusting on Disney's part).

I thought that too, but there was an article the other day from an interview with the writers and apparently they actually had a bunch of Rose scenes filmed and a whole arc back at the base with Rose & Leia, but the GFX they used to create new Leia scenes wasn't turning out that great and they chose to chop out those scenes instead of pour more resources into getting it to look OK.

I see - I still honestly question why they introduced Dominic's character, instead of just having Rose do all of his lines instead. It's the same with Pryde - realistically, Hux should just just do everything Pryde does.

I wasn't keen on Rose's character in TLJ by any stretch, but that doesn't mean she needed to be sidelined as much as she was.

As for Holdo Maneuver, they should have just said it had something to do with the hyperspace tracking, which also wasn't a thing before TLJ. In fact they made it out to be such a big deal in TLJ that it strikes me as the obvious McGuffin for a writer to use to handwave away why hyperspace ramming can't otherwise be used. They wouldn't have even needed to really explain it if TLJ, just had one extra line about it linking the ships together or somesuch.

They could've, but they didn't, and that's my main point, which you seem to support. It's not that they did it in the first place - it's that they had other options, and they still could have made it better simply by explaining why it can't just be done all the time!

Seriously, one line of dialogue explaining it, instead of "it's one in a million", and I'm fine with it. Was that too much to ask for?

It reminds me of all the arguments about warp speed ramming in Star Trek, which has wisely never done it for all the exact reasons SW fans are arguing over the Holdo Maneuver now. There's a bunch of technical essays written (mostly by fans) on why warp speed ramming can't be a thing, but it's mostly just reasoning out why Trek has never done it. Holdo Maneuver was an AWSOME scene, but it's one of those fundamental setting shifts that it needs a reason (even a crappy handwavium reason) that it can't be used often or reliably, and at least JJ realized that enough to throw in a the "1 in a million" line when Rian Johnson SHOULD have recognized it and dealt with it in TLJ.

Agreed. I *love* the visuals of that scene. Gorgeous, stunning silence. But at least throw in a line why we couldn't have had that any other time, eh?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galef wrote:
You know what, I think the reason I think SW movies are GOOD movies is because I don't critique them as MOVIES but rather modern mythologies.
The plots of Greek Mythologies and Arthurian Legends aren't exactly what the best either. But they stood the test of time for so long because they spoke of the human condition.
Those tales also "starred" Heroes of noble or divine birth.

Viewed with this lens, it's really hard for me to fault SW movies for having silly plot holes or inconsistencies, because in the end, those aren't the point.
Star Wars is awesome, even the prequels (and we don't talk about non-SW movies like the holiday special and Ewok movies)

I treat the MCU movies as modern legends and mythologies, and I've never had the same hangups about plot holes and inconsistencies* about them as I have with these sequels. Being a modern legend isn't an excuse to throw consistency and coherent narratives out of the window, IMO.

*That's not to say they don't have them, but there's clearly degrees of inconsistency here.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Luke catching the lightsaber ("a Jedi weapon deserves more respect" - yet he tosses it over his shoulder in the film prior)

Luke was in a very dark place at the start of TLJ. Now he isn't. It was a tongue in cheek dig at himself, not a meta-criticism of the previous movie.

Kylo's helmet being reforged, for no real reason beyond "it's iconic". (I thought he'd abandoned the whole "trying to be the new Vader" thing?)

He destroyed the helmet when Snoke ridiculed it. Once he killed Snoke, there was no reason to not re-adopt it, if only to thumb his nose at his former 'not-Dad'...





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galef wrote:

It would have to be a coincidence for that not to be a callback to Darth Vader = Dark Father

-

The 'Dark Father' thing is a myth. He wasn't anyone's father until the second draft of ESB.

Indeed, Sgt_Smudge, we are of the same opinion on this. My point is that you could basically have the movies exactly as they are, but with a simple extra line of dialogue fix the ENTIRE problem that the Holdo Maneuver.

That's actually my problem with the new trilogy, the movies ALMSOT work out great, but the details are all wrong. I'm convinced that If Disney had the scripts for 3 movies as they exist right now but before they filmed any of them, you could do a final once-over edit and with very few changes turn the 3 movies from mediocre into amazing. All the main story beats are there, they just need to be polished, a little more setup and foreshadowing added here and there, change some character lines around and add some better reasoning behind it. Nix a few unnecessary plotlines and use that time to give the characters a bit of downtime to interact and process what's happening.

You can both "subvert expectations" and also give old fans an occasional wink and a nod without going full fanservice, TLJ went too subversive while RoS went too fanservicey, you need a better mix of old and new than either movie gave us, but the overall story could have worked out just fine with a little more unified vision

 Da Boss wrote:


It is baffling. The guy that co-wrote this also apparently co-wrote Batman Vs. Superman and Justice League. I mean, why would Disney give this film to someone with a track record of failure so recent? And how could they make a purchase worth billions and then have no real idea of what they were going to do with it other than a release schedule and some bullet points?

Chris Terrio won an Academy award for Argo as well as other various awards.

For Dawn of Justice and Justice League, Chris rewrote the scripts for both films - which is a situation of damage control, and seems to be the case for not only those two movies, but for Rise of Skywalker as well. The loss of a leading actor is not a small script problem to overcome - especially at the tail end of a trilogy. According to LucasFilm itself, Carrie originally had a much larger role. Also, he might not have had all his edits approved if he was a co-writer on any of these three movies.

Compare this to Argo where he wrote it from start to finish. He got an Academy award. He probably took on editing the two DC scripts due to having a previous working relationship with Ben Affleck - helping out a friend and all. It seems those producing Rise of Skywalker appreciates that kind of person - like Ron Howard with Solo, or Tony Gilroy on Rogue One.

Also, what is in the script is not always what we get on screen. A director can choose to ignore or edit scenes, and on top of that the producer and suits can in turn dismiss even the director in the editing stage.

Just reading now, Chris says that Rose was originally penned to be with Leia back at the rebel base and had a larger role, but due to Carrie's death they ultimately couldn't do those scenes for obvious reasons.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

That's why I'm not as bothered about Snoke as I was, but I'm very bothered about their treatment of lightspeed.

I'm honestly confused as to why.

How lightspeed works has never been explained in the movies. The closest we've come was Han pointing out in the first one that it's possible (and not a good idea) to fly through a star while in Hyperspace. Anything beyond that is left up in the air. The fact that specific maneouvres haven't been shown in previous movies doesn't mean that previous background is being ignored... when you only have a handful of movies as your source material, there's an awful lot of possibilities that have never been explored.


If the Holdo maneouvre does show up again in ROS (and I obviously missed it if so) I still don't see a problem... Once you've seen something done, there's always the chance to recreate it (that '1' in a million is still 1 chance, after all). The odds are too remote to use it as a reliable tactic, but it's still something that can happen... and may well have happened in the past, without having been mentioned in the previous movies, but discarded by military forces as a tactic for that same reason.


I dunno, maybe I'm just more forgiving of continuity issues than most. I've certainly read enough Star Trek novels (which are almost all treated as non-canon, and are often contradictory) to develop a tolerance for plot holes and contradictions... And the old EU did its own share of creating as many continuity issues as it plugged. While it can be irritating, I've never let it get in the way of enjoying the story.

 insaniak wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

That's why I'm not as bothered about Snoke as I was, but I'm very bothered about their treatment of lightspeed.

I'm honestly confused as to why.

How lightspeed works has never been explained in the movies. The closest we've come was Han pointing out in the first one that it's possible (and not a good idea) to fly through a star while in Hyperspace. Anything beyond that is left up in the air. The fact that specific maneouvres haven't been shown in previous movies doesn't mean that previous background is being ignored... when you only have a handful of movies as your source material, there's an awful lot of possibilities that have never been explored.

Just because we're not told exactly how it works doesn't mean we can't make inferences.

When things like the Holdo Maneuver aren't being pulled off where it would be completely sensible to do so (Death Stars 1 and 2), and things like blockades are used (even though ships should just be able to "lightspeed skip" past them, it doesn't really make sense within the fiction we're being asked to believe.

It's not just a case of "if we don't see it, it can't happen". It's more along the lines of "if they can now do this, why didn't they do it earlier?"

If the Holdo maneouvre does show up again in ROS (and I obviously missed it if so) I still don't see a problem... Once you've seen something done, there's always the chance to recreate it (that '1' in a million is still 1 chance, after all). The odds are too remote to use it as a reliable tactic, but it's still something that can happen... and may well have happened in the past, without having been mentioned in the previous movies, but discarded by military forces as a tactic for that same reason.

But why is it a one-in-a-million? What was unique about the situation in both TLJ and ROS to allow for it to happen?* Why, if it's been used by people beforehand, is it called the Holdo Maneuver?

*especially the one in ROS, which I believe takes place over the Forest Moon of Endor, with Ewoks watching: if it can be done in orbit over Endor, why couldn't they do it to the Death Star II?

I dunno, maybe I'm just more forgiving of continuity issues than most. I've certainly read enough Star Trek novels (which are almost all treated as non-canon, and are often contradictory) to develop a tolerance for plot holes and contradictions... And the old EU did its own share of creating as many continuity issues as it plugged. While it can be irritating, I've never let it get in the way of enjoying the story.

I'm normally very good for ignoring plot holes in favour of rule of cool. As I see it, who cares if I drive over a few cracks and lumps in the road to have a good experience?

Unfortunately, the sequels were asking me to drive over gaping cracks and chasms, and they heavily tarnished the experience for me, personally.

I'm not going to be the kind of person who says "if you enjoyed it, then your tastes are bad and you should feel bad!" though - as I said with my girlfriend (who actually did enjoy it), I'm honestly happy for you if you did like it. I just didn't.

I think what seeing the Holdo Maneuver again at the end of TROS tells us is that Finn’s explanation of it being a one-in-a-million shot is simply unreliable. Why would he know anything about it anyway?

 Da Boss wrote:
Really? I would have thought this was obvious!Well, they pretty much went out of their way to undo everything from that movie in a really blatant way. Rose was sidelined, they reversed the throwing the lightsaber away scene, they undid the Rey is no one scene and so on. I felt it was quite obviously a bit of a slap down to Rian Johnson, and okay I suppose, Rian Johnsons movie was basically saying "All these mystery box things are stupid, lets resolve them!", leaving Abrams in a difficult position.

I am just surprised that Disney, of all corporations, let two creatives get into a pissing contest in a multibillion dollar franchise like this. Seems really really badly organised from an outsiders point of view, I would have thought they would have had a broad strokes plan sketched out from the start, particularly if the idea was to have each film directed and written by a different person.

I've seen the film now. I don't think it was a p*ssing contest exactly. More like a natural result of directors trying to find their way to do what they were hired to do within the parameters they were given.

As I said earlier in the thread, JJ's TFA didn't deliver what ANH did or even TPM did. Those films set the table for their respective trilogies but didn't dictate what came next. TFA delivered about 12 suitcases of baggage to RJ - characters in exile, others in comas, a big bad with an mysterious background, a protagonist with a mysterious background, bunches of tertiary characters with mysterious backgrounds and no real importance to the story, an entire galaxy with a murky political situation, a cliffhanger ending, and 'memberberries raining down from the sky.

Seems clear enough that this wasn't a Marvel situation, with a studio in control and hiring directors to work like episode directors in TV. There was no detailed master plan in place. That can still work, but it requires each director to 'play nice' and tidy up after themselves. Instead, TFA was kind of a big gak sandwich for RJ and Trevorrow, who probably thought that they were hired to do their thing...not clean up JJ's 'memberberry juice. So RJ took a axe to a lot of JJ's stuff. People didn't like how that went, and yeah, there did seem to be a lot of commentary on TFA within TLJ. Personally, I think that RJ's instincts were largely right about who the big bad should be and what the central concepts and conflict should be. If you want to argue about the execution, fine...but I think RJ did identify lots of the problems with TFA.

Trevorrow -- or lots of other directors -- might have taken that baton and run with it. Hell, when RJ started writing it, doing Trevorrow a solid was probably a main goal. But -- likely in an act of desperation on Kennedy's part -- the job went back to JJ after Trevorrow left. And he didn't know how to run with it. TFA suggests he either had only one locked-in idea how everything should go, or (more likely) absolutely no idea how things should conclude. So the third film was another course change, back to something resembling the heading of TFA and more in JJ's comfort zone. Which ended up illustrating some of the problems with the course he set in the first place with TFA.

If JJ wanted to run the whole thing, then he should have demanded that from the beginning. If he didn't know how to wrap things up, then he shouldn't have said yes to Ep. 9. And obviously the studio needed a coherent, workable plan. I know nerds wanna blame RJ for everything, but that dude ended up in a bad, bad spot created by JJ and the studio.

 gorgon wrote:
As I said earlier in the thread, JJ's TFA didn't deliver what ANH did or even TPM did. Those films set the table for their respective trilogies but didn't dictate what came next. TFA delivered about 12 suitcases of baggage to RJ - characters in exile, others in comas, a big bad with an mysterious background, a protagonist with a mysterious background, bunches of tertiary characters with mysterious backgrounds and no real importance to the story, an entire galaxy with a murky political situation, a cliffhanger ending, and 'memberberries raining down from the sky.

I'm actually really glad you put that into words, because I was starting to feel that but couldn't articulate it, but I think you're pretty right on that.

I'll focus on TPM (because ANH is the complete original, so dealing with a non-original trilogy makes more sense compared to another). We get a pretty good establishment of the state of the Star Wars universe (the Jedi are more known about, at the peak of their power, the galactic government feels distinct from the future Empire, with all the perks and drawbacks of it, the look of the technology feels like the galaxy is at it's zenith and at a time of prosperity). But, despite setting up the world, how things progress from TPM are pretty open ended. It's got enough threads that it doesn't just close off naturally, but the threads that are around aren't exactly urgent ones, and more than anything else, we're left with a sense of "what next?" rather than "what about this, and that, and those?"

It ends solidly, with room to grow, but not to rely on other films to support it. Basically, you could watch almost any of the first 6 films, and they all have solid endings. They have room to move afterwards, but you're not left unfulfilled, at least, in my eyes.

Of all the Skywalker Saga, TFA never hits that mark for me. It just... stops, with a dozen threads up in the air.
While I might not like TLJ, I have to feel sorry for RJ for being dealt an awful hand.

Totally disagree.

After TFA ended, I wanted to see the sequel ASAP. How Luke would react to Rey, how the Republic would react to the FO, how Snoke would complete Kylo’s training, what kind of fun adventure Finn and Poe would get into ... I was super excited to see all of this.

JJ set up Rian Johnson with likeable characters in interesting situations and without exception Johnson willfully ruined al of it.

 Manchu wrote:
Visual Guide as well as official wiki.

Edit: And, I guess I should also mention, the film itself (for crying out loud).

I was just asking because it didn't look like the holdo did in TLJ. Which finding a photo of it online still doesn't. There is no stream after the ship. The streak in TLJ continued past the ship which I'd actually watched twice (once myself and once with the wife) before we went to see Rise of Skywalker. I don't own the visual guide so I can't comment. The wiki's I, briefly, looked for said people thought it might be one. Nothing conclusive. But sure, be a smug douche about a movie series. I fully endorse anyone's hobby

Why did you even bother to lie to me that you were “genuinely curious” when it is now clear you just wanted to argue? And I’m the smug douche

 Manchu wrote:
JJ set up Rian Johnson with likeable characters in interesting situations and without exception Johnson willfully ruined al of it.

In all fairness, as much as I didn't like what JJ did with a lot of the sequels, he definitely did start with good characters. Finn is easily one of my favourites, and I'm fond of Poe as well (minus that first quippy scene with Kylo on Jakku).

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
But why is it a one-in-a-million? What was unique about the situation in both TLJ and ROS to allow for it to happen?*

Honestly? I don't care. I assume that it's something to do with the specific position and relative sizes of the ships involved, and that will do me until a more official explanation comes along.

Why, if it's been used by people beforehand, is it called the Holdo Maneuver?

Probably because that's the most recent example of it that actually matters to the people involved. In the same way as I refer to my wife's meatball recipe as being hers, despite it probably having been cooked by other people in the past.

*especially the one in ROS, which I believe takes place over the Forest Moon of Endor, with Ewoks watching: if it can be done in orbit over Endor, why couldn't they do it to the Death Star II?

Again, it doesn't really matter. We know they didn't do it, so presumably it wasn't an option. Why it wasn't an option would require that explanation for how it works or doesn't work, but as above, I would assume that the sheer size of the Death Star meant that it would have just resulted in the ship smeared across the Death Star, rather than destroying it.


I don't know the 'right' answer, but I don't need to. I can choose to assume that the events of the new movies 'break' the setting, or I can assume that there are mechanics behind those things that just haven't been explained yet, and enjoy the spectacle. One of those choices makes the investment in the movie ticket a better deal, so I choose to go with that.

Yeah I like all the main cast in terms of both their performances and their characters. TFA is an ANH retread sure but coming up with likeable new main characters was a huge achievement.

 insaniak wrote:
I can choose to assume that the events of the new movies 'break' the setting, or I can assume that there are mechanics behind those things that just haven't been explained yet, and enjoy the spectacle. One of those choices makes the investment in the movie ticket a better deal, so I choose to go with that.

THIS. RIGHT HERE.

Is why I'll always enjoy SW even with the occasional "What?! How'd they do that?!" moments. There's a ton of stuff IN REAL LIFE that doesn't make much sense, or is too complicated to adequately explain to a casual observer. So as far as I'm concerned, inconsistencies actually make it feel MORE realistic to me, not less

-

 insaniak wrote:
If nothing could happen that hasn't been previously shown, all of the movies after the first one would have been considerably duller...

If you can hyperspace skip or jump to/from hyperspace from the lower atmosphere, then how did the Trade Federation expect to maintain a blockade of Naboo from high orbit? Why did Naboo need help raising the blockade when hyperspace skips or jumping into hyperspace from the lower atmosphere was eminently possible? Or for that matter, why not just use some of those fighters to do hyperspace rams on the blockading ships? The Battle of Coruscant ends with a Confederation victory as they slam Venator after Venator with droid-piloted transports. On Jedha, Saw Gurrera moves heaven and earth to get a shot at that ISD hovering in the atmosphere WHERE IT'S SHIELDS APPARENTLY DO NOT WORK (thank you TROS). Scarif ends with two old Y-wings blasting into the two ISDs on duty, and a third taking out the shield ring. No battle of Yavin; no thermal exhaust port to attack on the hyperspeed asteroid launched at the rebel base - and no time for them to respond anyway. No more Luke, no more Leia, no more Han, no ESB, RotJ, or sequel trilogy.

Changing the way hyperspace works basically invalidates EVERYTHING that went before. The movies DO NOT WORK anymore, if this is canon.

 Manchu wrote:
Why did you even bother to lie to me that you were “genuinely curious” when it is now clear you just wanted to argue? And I’m the smug douche

I was genuinely curious. Instead of providing any real information and links nor anything you answered in a snarky and douche manner. Good for you.

This is a great example of what I mean by gaslighting.

 Kalamadea wrote:
As for Holdo Maneuver, they should have just said it had something to do with the hyperspace tracking, which also wasn't a thing before TLJ.

If you watch closely in Rogue One, one of the projects they find while looking for the Death Star plans is a hyperspace tracker....

And that's the frustrating part about Disney Wares! They did a solid job with Rogue One, and even planted that little tidbit in to justify the First Order having it in TLJ. They clearly CAN do good Star Wars movies when they choose to!

They just... chose NOT to, for whatever reason.

 Manchu wrote:
Totally disagree.

After TFA ended, I wanted to see the sequel ASAP. How Luke would react to Rey, how the Republic would react to the FO, how Snoke would complete Kylo’s training, what kind of fun adventure Finn and Poe would get into ... I was super excited to see all of this.

JJ set up Rian Johnson with likeable characters in interesting situations and without exception Johnson willfully ruined al of it.

Well, sure...cliffhangers and endless unanswered questions make you want to see the next installment. But RJ didn't want to spend his entire film explaining Knights of Ren and parentage and where have they beens instead of advancing the main story and central conflict. Cripes, every second spent on CGI Snoke or the Knights is a second better spent on Ben/Kylo, the most interesting villain going played by the best actor in the bunch. I firmly believe RJ wasn't wrong about some of that gak.

You can say RJ shouldn't have signed on, but I'd lay money that he expected to be handed something closer to ANH or TPM. Something that introduces the characters and settings and sparks interest, but isn't such an incomplete thought. Hell, the Marvel movies are episodic and the last two Avengers movies are obviously part 1/2 works done by the same directors. And Infinity War still feels more complete and tied-off than TFA.

TL;DR - I thought TFA was a fun popcorn film, and that's how I view SW films anyway. But JJ bears some real responsibility for boxing in the directors to follow instead of setting them up to do their thing. It was kind of a jagoff move, really. You hand the next guy a cliffhanger that needs immediate resolution? So much for any "two years later" story you wanted to tell. And the studio bears a lot of responsibility for letting all that nonsense take place. IMHO.

 Vulcan wrote:

If you can hyperspace skip or jump to/from hyperspace from the lower atmosphere, then how did the Trade Federation expect to maintain a blockade of Naboo from high orbit? Why did Naboo need help raising the blockade when hyperspace skips or jumping into hyperspace from the lower atmosphere was eminently possible?

ROS didn't establish that any ship or any pilot can do this. It established that a particular, heavily-modified, light freighter in the hands of an extremely capable pilot did it, at a very high risk, and wound up with the entire ship on fire, and almost destroyed several times along the way. Which doesn't really seem like a viable tactic for regular civilian or militia ships to try to break a blockade.

Or for that matter, why not just use some of those fighters to do hyperspace rams on the blockading ships?

Because, (once again) it's a '1 in a million' chance of working, and so can't be relied on as a viable military tactic.

Changing the way hyperspace works basically invalidates EVERYTHING that went before. The movies DO NOT WORK anymore, if this is canon.

Or, you know, not.

They haven't changed the way hyperspace works. They've just shown some very lucky, and very rare applications of hyperspace travel. This only breaks the movies if you choose to apply headcannon in a way that breaks the movies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 gorgon wrote:
You hand the next guy a cliffhanger that needs immediate resolution? So much for any "two years later" story you wanted to tell.

To be fair. the end of TFA didn't actually need an immediate resolution. RJ could easily have (had he choosen a different story arc for the characters) to have picked up 'some time' after Rey met Luke, with Rey in training and the First Order having spent the interim building their stranglehold on the galaxy. He chose to take up the story immediately as TFA ended, but there are any number of other directions he could have gone in.

Having said that (and speaking as someone who enjoyed TLJ, and the sequel trilogy in general) I'll reiterate that I can't understand why the whole trilogy wasn't mapped out before TFA started filming.