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2019/12/31 02:42:38
Subject: Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - WARNING, SPOILERS.
I felt pretty alone after TFA because I never understood how anyone in the audience couldn’t see through the mystery box gimmick. I still don’t get how anyone could see TFA as anything other than an admission that Disney had no good ideas.
TROS is pretty much exactly what I expected from a series started by TFA. I’m only disappointed that R2D2 never got to fight that lava snake...
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).
It was a good move. Her character served no purpose other than making the movie worse. An awkward love triangle that added nothing to the movie. She's that throwaway NPC in an RPG that the party somehow becomes attached to and the GM has to slap together some shoddy backstory because she's being dragged along for no good reason.
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
As someone who had their entire childhood RUUUINED by those fething ewoks (I saw Jedi as a 14 year old - the movie was going fine until those teddy fething bears showed up). I found the lack of them refreshing (in the trailer).
Spoiler:
But NOOOOOOOOOO ... they had to go and feth this one up with the furry little melonfethers too. Wicket from Jedi and his crotchfruit.
I'm OVER 50 (and so far over everyone's BS, too).
Old enough to know better, young enough to not give a ****.
That is not dead which can eternal lie ...
... and yet, with strange aeons, even death may die.
2019/12/31 07:10:50
Subject: Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - WARNING, SPOILERS.
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).
It was a good move. Her character served no purpose other than making the movie worse. An awkward love triangle that added nothing to the movie. She's that throwaway NPC in an RPG that the party somehow becomes attached to and the GM has to slap together some shoddy backstory because she's being dragged along for no good reason.
Perhaps, but then did we really need half of the new characters we were given in RoS? We didn't need Dominic's character - that should have been Rose.
The other ex-Stormtrooper, aside from reinforcing the Stormtrooper Paradox (of them simultaneously being real people enslaved in a military that they often don't support themselves, but also faceless goons for the good guys to shoot while cheering), doesn't do anything for the plot. Poe's love interest (ugh, no thank you - give me FinnPoe any day) similarly doesn't need half the screen time she's given.
They/them
2019/12/31 12:06:33
Subject: Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - WARNING, SPOILERS.
Well, I hope people are equally disturbed by the setting being broken by Palpatine being able to make a fleet of sixty squillion star destroyers with death star guns on them. (God damnit that was baaaaad).
Da Boss wrote: Well, I hope people are equally disturbed by the setting being broken by Palpatine being able to make a fleet of sixty squillion star destroyers with death star guns on them. (God damnit that was baaaaad).
He's had 30 years to do it.
So yes, I'm equally as disturbed by that as I am by the other issues discussed so far...
2019/12/31 13:35:25
Subject: Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - WARNING, SPOILERS.
Da Boss wrote: Well, I hope people are equally disturbed by the setting being broken by Palpatine being able to make a fleet of sixty squillion star destroyers with death star guns on them. (God damnit that was baaaaad).
He's had 30 years to do it.
People are becoming more aware of logistics.
You don't just build space ships, especially not that many of them "in secret." The idea that all the materials, workers, and logistics to build all those ships could somehow be hidden is a complete break from suspension of disbelief for anyone who has ever worked in supply chains. You just can't hide the footprint that comes with that, or the ripple effects. If one were so inclined, it's easy to write off Palpatine as still being alive. It's a lazy as feth plot point that wasn't foreshadowed at all in the prior two movies, but it's not like space magic needs much explanation.
Building a fleet of star destroyers, with all the crew and personnel needed to achieve the task, in secret with no one noticing, is patently absurd. It's one of the gripes against the First Order from all the way back in TFA. When the Galactic Empire built super weapons, it got noticed even if people didn't know exactly what they did, and that was when the Empire controlled the galaxy. Palpatine is supposed to be hiding on some secret planet no one knows how to find, except a massive gak ton of people know how to find it and they built an entire shipyard there.
So...why did he announce to the galaxy that he was gonna do it, rather than just getting those destroyers off world and spreading them around the galaxy, so that there are a squillion billion death stars, potentially anywhere, and then just be like "Hi. I am in charge now."
Instead he warns everyone about what he is going to do...then...what?
It is bonkers stuff. I mean, it is already a bit rough having to accept that they just built another Death Star in ROTJ, and that the Empire just came back from nothing to reconquer the galaxy after ROTJ despite a crushing defeat. Now we have to accept that Palpatine on a desolate and barren planet with no apparent resources made and crewed a bajillion star destroyers with weapon on them that previously required a moon sized superstructure to provide the power for it...
So like, they beat the First Order now. But if any of the people on Exogar escape, then there now exists technology to put planet destroying weapons on a bog standard star destroyer, which apparently are pretty easy to build.
It is pretty bad, and there was no need for it to be like that.
I was trying to figure out who the entire building full of people cheering him on were, but in my head they are just all his random clones because he got bored and lonely.
2019/12/31 13:52:22
Subject: Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - WARNING, SPOILERS.
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.
The film also established that a bunch of TIE fighters could also do it in the same scene...
2019/12/31 14:56:38
Subject: Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - WARNING, SPOILERS.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I felt pretty alone after TFA because I never understood how anyone in the audience couldn’t see through the mystery box gimmick. I still don’t get how anyone could see TFA as anything other than an admission that Disney had no good ideas.
Eh. I found TFA to be fairly dull and forgettable (the same, but More Bigger!), but the 'mystery box' wasn't a problem. Its easy to make mystery boxes pay off in interesting and satisfying ways over the course of a trilogy.
The problem was lack of oversight. Letting Johnson pee all over the only plot hooks in TFA was beyond baffling, and letting Abrams double down (apparently out of spite) and go for Even Much More Bigger on rehashing his terrible ideas of what the OT was makes no sense at all.
Efficiency is the highest virtue.
2019/12/31 15:22:57
Subject: Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - WARNING, SPOILERS.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I felt pretty alone after TFA because I never understood how anyone in the audience couldn’t see through the mystery box gimmick. I still don’t get how anyone could see TFA as anything other than an admission that Disney had no good ideas.
Eh. I found TFA to be fairly dull and forgettable (the same, but More Bigger!), but the 'mystery box' wasn't a problem. Its easy to make mystery boxes pay off in interesting and satisfying ways over the course of a trilogy.
The problem was lack of oversight. Letting Johnson pee all over the only plot hooks in TFA was beyond baffling, and letting Abrams double down (apparently out of spite) and go for Even Much More Bigger on rehashing his terrible ideas of what the OT was makes no sense at all.
No. It's easy to make mysteries pay off in big ways when you write the whole story to involve and solve those mysteries. When you come in at part one and do nothing but ask questions and then pass the the story to another person who had/has no idea what any of that is supposed to do it's not easy. Especially when there is then supposed to be a part three that is supposed to be passed to yet another person.
These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
2019/12/31 15:46:56
Subject: Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - WARNING, SPOILERS.
Da Boss wrote: Well, I hope people are equally disturbed by the setting being broken by Palpatine being able to make a fleet of sixty squillion star destroyers with death star guns on them. (God damnit that was baaaaad).
I do wonder how Palpatine, AFTER losing his throne, his legitimacy, his influence over most of the galaxy, is able to make MORE Star Destroyers and MORE Death Star lasers than when he was actually running the galaxy.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
d-usa wrote: I was trying to figure out who the entire building full of people cheering him on were, but in my head they are just all his random clones because he got bored and lonely.
I did wonder that as well. Does anyone actually know who those acolytes were? I thought they were just tricks of the light or hallucinations, but no, they actually looked like they were there?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/12/31 15:48:56
They/them
2019/12/31 15:50:31
Subject: Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - WARNING, SPOILERS.
Told my buddy they could have gotten the same plot effect if instead of stopping several hundred Star Destroyers with Death Star guns, if the Resistance would have found out that since the initial rise of the Empire, Palpatine had been building the Eclipse in secret, with just an escort of Star Destroyers.
Even then you have the phantom logistics issue, but would still be a nod to the old EU. But then again, that would have worked even better as a replacement for Starkiller Base.
Honestly, people shouldn't complain about how crazy he went with his Star Wars stuff if they had ever seen any of the Transformer movies.
"By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should."
2019/12/31 16:17:02
Subject: Re:Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - WARNING, SPOILERS.
gorgon wrote: 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.
I mostly blame RJ in the sense that I didn't like TLJ but didn't mind the JJ movies. They all had their highs and lows, but the JJ movies I walked out thinking they had some stupid stuff but overall were okay movies.
We could argue that RJ was handed something he didn't want, but it's just crazy he, I dunno, didn't get on the phone to JJ and ask where he was going with some of his threads.
I don't know how involved RJ was in the writing anyway. Really, there should be writers that handle all the various story arcs and ensure certain points are hit through the series, we shouldn't have these 3 movies that seemingly ignore large chunks of the other movies in the series.
It's absurd that the Knights of Ren just go on a holiday for a whole movie with no explanation. It seems like they could have had a cool story fleshed out through the 3 films, concluding in the scene in TROS where Kylo fights them all, it could have made that scene so much cooler and deeper if we'd actually been following and learning about the Knights throughout the series.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/12/31 16:32:11
2019/12/31 17:13:45
Subject: Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - WARNING, SPOILERS.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I still don’t get how anyone could see TFA as anything other than an admission that Disney had no good ideas.
A darksider tempted by the light side? Pretty interesting idea, I’d say.
And I also like the idea of a defecting Storm Trooper.
But I’d be lying if I said I could think of any others from TFA.
Yeah, I forgot about Kylo. He was the only character who was written in an interesting way.
The defecting storm trooper concept was used so poorly, though.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Da Boss wrote: Well, I hope people are equally disturbed by the setting being broken by Palpatine being able to make a fleet of sixty squillion star destroyers with death star guns on them. (God damnit that was baaaaad).
When he reanimated those undead Star Destroyers, I really wanted him to make them sword-fight Sinbad. "Follow! Follow! Kill! Kill!"
Instead, he gave them horse dongs.
PS: So, there were only two Sith Moanas to guide people to Esticle, but we saw General Darwin Mayflower with Huxx at the First Order fleet and also at Esticle. Sure, he could have carpooled with Kylo at the beginning, but how did he commute after Rey stole the thingy? How did Kylo get to Exicle? How did all the workers and parts that weren't conjured into existence get to Esticle?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/12/31 17:20:06
The so-called “Storm Trooper paradox” brought up above, the notion that Storm Troopers are both real people as well as faceless mooks, makes me realize another under appreciated strength of TFA — the portrayal of Storm Troopers is really solid throughout. Obviously, the flagship example is FN-2187. But Storm Troopers get a lot of great scenes. The “TRAITOR” scene is outright iconic. Never before have we seen this kind of dimensionality to the run of the mill baddies in SW. There’s also the Storm Troopers who decide to head a different way after almost walking past Kylo’s temper tantrum plus Daniel Craig’s force-manipulated Storm Trooper portrayal. TFA really took the cue from the Clone Troopers as portraying Storm Troopers with some degree of point of view.
Unfortunately, this was yet another promising thread in TFA totally dumped by Rian Johnson.
Yeah I was excited after TFA to see the rebel stormtrooper angle expanded a bit more. It was touched on in RoS, which was nice, but I would have enjoyed seeing more.
Da Boss wrote: Well, I hope people are equally disturbed by the setting being broken by Palpatine being able to make a fleet of sixty squillion star destroyers with death star guns on them. (God damnit that was baaaaad).
He's had 30 years to do it.
People are becoming more aware of logistics.
You don't just build space ships, especially not that many of them "in secret." The idea that all the materials, workers, and logistics to build all those ships could somehow be hidden is a complete break from suspension of disbelief for anyone who has ever worked in supply chains. You just can't hide the footprint that comes with that, or the ripple effects. If one were so inclined, it's easy to write off Palpatine as still being alive. It's a lazy as feth plot point that wasn't foreshadowed at all in the prior two movies, but it's not like space magic needs much explanation.
Building a fleet of star destroyers, with all the crew and personnel needed to achieve the task, in secret with no one noticing, is patently absurd. It's one of the gripes against the First Order from all the way back in TFA. When the Galactic Empire built super weapons, it got noticed even if people didn't know exactly what they did, and that was when the Empire controlled the galaxy. Palpatine is supposed to be hiding on some secret planet no one knows how to find, except a massive gak ton of people know how to find it and they built an entire shipyard there.
The simple explanation would be that the shipyard as well as the personnel and good potion of the fleet was moved there prior to the fall of the Empire as some sort safety assurance. To ascend to his position Palpatine had to learn how to "fall upward". A large stretch of the fleet and its personnel might have been pre-built, moved there into hidding and for upgrade. The rest was fed by the First Order, bt unknown to them. Snoke was basically nothing more than a Palpatine puppet.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/12/31 19:27:09
2019/12/31 19:31:53
Subject: Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - WARNING, SPOILERS.
They should make a movie where the villain spends his time setting up all his contingency backup plans for the sequels.
“Yes, my apprentice. Etch that dagger into a map. The. Hide this device in a temple full of booby traps on the other side of the galaxy. Next, I need you to vaporize the paperwork for that thing we’re constructing in the outer darkness. No, the other thing. Then I want final approvals for this personnel roster for Operation Third Time’s The Charm.”
Automatically Appended Next Post: “Everything is proceeding according to my design. But, just in case I want a plan B, a plan C, and a Hail Mary ready to go. Trust in the Dark Side, but backup your Death Star.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/12/31 19:34:12
I love the TR-8R Stormtrooper. Even under the helmet, you can feel the hatred and sense of personal betrayal that Finn would desert them. And obviously the Empire/First Order are evil, but as Finn demonstrates, not all the stormtroopers are immune to a change of heart.
They/them
2019/12/31 20:12:46
Subject: Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - WARNING, SPOILERS.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I felt pretty alone after TFA because I never understood how anyone in the audience couldn’t see through the mystery box gimmick. I still don’t get how anyone could see TFA as anything other than an admission that Disney had no good ideas.
Eh. I found TFA to be fairly dull and forgettable (the same, but More Bigger!), but the 'mystery box' wasn't a problem. Its easy to make mystery boxes pay off in interesting and satisfying ways over the course of a trilogy.
The problem was lack of oversight. Letting Johnson pee all over the only plot hooks in TFA was beyond baffling, and letting Abrams double down (apparently out of spite) and go for Even Much More Bigger on rehashing his terrible ideas of what the OT was makes no sense at all.
No. It's easy to make mysteries pay off in big ways when you write the whole story to involve and solve those mysteries. When you come in at part one and do nothing but ask questions and then pass the the story to another person who had/has no idea what any of that is supposed to do it's not easy. Especially when there is then supposed to be a part three that is supposed to be passed to yet another person.
Yeah. That's my point. With proper oversight and direction, its easy. Letting each director do things independently is an obviously stupid decision, yet that's what they did.
That there wasn't an overall trilogy story bible from the start of the project is just baffling, that they didn't keep either of these two idiots in check equally so.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/12/31 20:39:25
Efficiency is the highest virtue.
2019/12/31 20:21:40
Subject: Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - WARNING, SPOILERS.
The thing about the out-of-nowhere Sith fleet is, once again the movie itself points out how dumb this is.
A lot of folks praising the film don’t seem to have paid close attention so may have missed that the Sith is a faction separate from and initially at odds with the First Order.
Therefore, the First Order cannot have been feeding the Sith the personnel and material to build the preposterously gigantic Sith fleet; if anything, it is more likely the other way around as it was Palpatine, after all, who was behind Snoke the whole time.
None of this is covered in anything close to sufficient coherency in the films but in TROS there is a line in the FO briefing scene where someone says the FO is facing a manpower shortage. This is meant to contextualize both Kylo Ren’s reliance on Palpatine’s Sith fleet as well as what we find later on is a much more widespread than previously thought issue of Storm Trooper defection.
In any case, on the movie’s own terms, there is no way to explain the scope of the Sith fleet or the logistics behind it or the technology involved. This is just another “and then ... and then ...” type childishness, like Palpatine suddenly appearing 5 minutes into the film with no one batting an eye.
And to a point I can hand wave or forgive stuff like that in a Star Wars movie, but not when it is so incredibly over the top and stupid that it snaps me out of the film.
It really does feel like a kid playing with their friends and being like "But then Palpatine had a million star destroyers and they ALL have death star cannons!!! pewpewpew!"
Sgt_Smudge wrote: I love the TR-8R Stormtrooper. Even under the helmet, you can feel the hatred and sense of personal betrayal that Finn would desert them. And obviously the Empire/First Order are evil, but as Finn demonstrates, not all the stormtroopers are immune to a change of heart.
Finn has multiple changes of heart - he's distraught when his stormtrooper friend is killed, but then whoops with delight as he guns down scores of his former friends and comrades during his escape with Poe.
2019/12/31 21:44:22
Subject: Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - WARNING, SPOILERS.
The film also established that a bunch of TIE fighters could also do it in the same scene...
The TIE fighters that were all destroyed?
I can jump a car off a bridge. There's a small chance that will turn out ok for me, although it might not be good for the car. There's a much bigger chance that it won't go so well, so as a rule, I would not jump a car off a bridge unless there was a really compelling reason to do so.
Seriously, though, it's like people are actively looking for things to poke holes in, rather than imagining how things could work. I don't understand why you would pay good money to see a movie, and then spend the time afterwards expanding on all the reasons to dislike it, rather than reflecting on what was good about it. It's just bizarre.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Da Boss wrote: So...why did he announce to the galaxy that he was gonna do it, rather than just getting those destroyers off world and spreading them around the galaxy, so that there are a squillion billion death stars, potentially anywhere, and then just be like "Hi. I am in charge now."
Because the most important part of his plan involved luring Rey to him so that he could possess her, and then go out and reconquer the galaxy.
Now we have to accept that Palpatine on a desolate and barren planet with no apparent resources made and crewed a bajillion star destroyers with weapon on them that previously required a moon sized superstructure to provide the power for it...
Why would you accept that, rather than that he built a bajillion star destroyers on a planet that presumably had the resources to do so?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/12/31 21:47:04
2019/12/31 21:58:38
Subject: Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - WARNING, SPOILERS.
