Star Wars Star Wars: The Last Jedi - THREAD PART 2 - *SPOILERS and RUMORS*

[atlas1]

Do we know that Rey wasn't meant to be a Palpatine from the beginning?

 

[SM]

Do we know that Rey wasn't meant to be a Palpatine from the beginning?

It's an interesting question, there's the parallel's of her fighting style to Sidious, and her theme to Palpatine's, but other than that you have:
- Obi-Wan's voice calling to her in her vision
- The Skywalker saber returning to her over Kylo and calling to her in Maz's castle

So it seemed J J was leaving everything open in TFA. Considering Palps wasn't meant to return it's hard to envision her being a Palpatine.

 

[Exe Gesis]

She was also hinted as being a clone in TLJ cave sequence. And theorized too as another Anakin (creation of the force).

 

[JackOutback]

Not as absurd as you think Jack. Rightly or wrongly, there were many “corrections/retcons/contradictions/erasing” moments in TROS. Whatever you want to to call it, it already happened.

And you keep missing my point. I’m saying it shouldn’t have come to this. RJ, Abrams and co should have had a framework in place, sure they all make their own films within the confines of that. But as long as the overarching story keeps ticking over.

In the absence of that, RJ took his film in a direction that veered away. Some of his terrible decisions I’m glad were corrected. It absolutely needed it.

But some of his better concepts, Rey being a nobody etc, I’m dissatisfied that it was shoehorned back into a Palpatine.

These are the consequences of lack of said planning. Making it up as they go along.

I completely agree that a framework would have generated more consistency. But I also see why they did what they did. As much as we like to think the OT was all set in place before filming started, there were never any guarantees of sequels. The story changed and adapted with each one. Vader wasn’t originally Luke’s father and Luke/Leia weren’t twins, two of the most significant developments. They wanted to try and recapture that style and it didn’t quite work.

But given the style they agreed on, perhaps JJ shouldn’t have tried to dictate so much of the overall plot in TFA. And maybe RJ shouldn’t have walked so much backwards. I know which film is better though, and which one will stand the test of time.

 

[SM]

I completely agree that a framework would have generated more consistency. But I also see why they did what they did. As much as we like to think the OT was all set in place before filming started, there were never any guarantees of sequels. The story changed and adapted with each one. Vader wasn’t originally Luke’s father and Luke/Leia weren’t twins, two of the most significant developments. They wanted to try and recapture that style and it didn’t quite work.

But given the style they agreed on, perhaps JJ shouldn’t have tried to dictate so much of the overall plot in TFA. And maybe RJ shouldn’t have walked so much backwards. I know which film is better though, and which one will stand the test of time.

Who thinks this??

 

[edgie]

i.e., include the fans in there to blame alongside Kennedy, Abrams, Johnson, Iger, and the LFL story group

If the fans are to blame there's a good chance you are doing it wrong.

Remember when bands like Queen or Rolling Stones or Zeppelin or Beatles changed styles? Did the fans carry on? Or did they embrace the new direction because the music was still good? The music was different, but it was still good, thus it was embraced.

Last Jedi... was not very good.

 

[edgie]

It's an interesting question, there's the parallel's of her fighting style to Sidious, and her theme to Palpatine's, but other than that you have:
- Obi-Wan's voice calling to her in her vision
- The Skywalker saber returning to her over Kylo and calling to her in Maz's castle

So it seemed J J was leaving everything open in TFA. Considering Palps wasn't meant to return it's hard to envision her being a Palpatine.

The sabre thing is awful definitely up there with one of my biggest hates of this trilogy, it's a direct rip off from the wands in Harry Potter.

 

[SM]

The sabre thing is awful definitely up there with one of my biggest hates of this trilogy, it's a direct rip off from the wands in Harry Potter.

Even the Kaiber crystal reacting to the soul of the user to determine the colour is ******* dumb.

 

[Exe Gesis]

If the fans are to blame there's a good chance you are doing it wrong.

Remember when bands like Queen or Rolling Stones or Zeppelin or Beatles changed styles? Did the fans carry on? Or did they embrace the new direction because the music was still good? The music was different, but it was still good, thus it was embraced.

Last Jedi... was not very good.

actually this always happened in the music industry. fans vented on bands who changed their styles after a couple big similar albums, and bands often went back to being who the fans wanted them to be. Ac/Dc was very aware of this and angus often said thats why they kept the same formula.

 

[edgie]

Even the Kaiber crystal reacting to the soul of the user to determine the colour is ******* dumb.

Yep.

Probably having different coloured sabres for goodies and baddies in the first place was dumb so maybe that's on George, but oh well, there could have been better ways to explain things than that!

 

[SM]

Yep.

Probably having different coloured sabres for goodies and baddies in the first place was dumb so maybe that's on George, but oh well, there could have been better ways to explain things than that!

It was explained though, the Sith used synthetic crystals which distorted the colour and gave it the red colour. Everyone else used natural crystals and so could pick their colour.

 

[edgie]

actually this always happened in the music industry. fans vented on bands who changed their styles after a couple big similar albums, and bands often went back to being who the fans wanted them to be. Ac/Dc was very aware of this and angus often said thats why they kept the same formula.

Some did but most of the fans stuck around and supported it. Metallica is a good example of it not happening but Load is a fine album and now that different to the prior album anyway which is loved. That's an example of toxic fanbase. Iron Maiden, another example that changed styles and was popular. Ramones. Even Silverchair fans stuck with them (I didn't, but never a huge fan to start with).

For all of AC/DC widsom in sticking the norm, they were never more unpopular than when they were trying to recapture that formula in the 80s after they disliked the direction the producer of their most successful album was putting them on. I think as well Angus uses that as an out to him not being interested or able to write anything other than rock music, which there isn't anything wrong with.

 

[edgie]

It was explained though, the Sith used synthetic crystals which distorted the colour and gave it the red colour. Everyone else used natural crystals and so could pick their colour.

Well there you go. I knew it was something like that, I thought that Sith harvest the crystals from a sith world where only red crystals made be present, or since there is never more than two they produce new sabres with the same crystals.

It was always only ever meant to be red vs blue. Green came in to it because the blue sabre wasn't showing well in Jedi against the blue skies of Tatooine with old effects I think, then purple was a favour to Samuel L. Then the floodgates opened in the EU.

 

[JackOutback]

If the fans are to blame there's a good chance you are doing it wrong.

Remember when bands like Queen or Rolling Stones or Zeppelin or Beatles changed styles? Did the fans carry on? Or did they embrace the new direction because the music was still good? The music was different, but it was still good, thus it was embraced.

Last Jedi... was not very good.

Fans almost rioted when Bob Dylan went electric. Now recognised that the fans were wrong.

Movies and music are always open for a rethink because they often have layers and first impressions don’t don’t do them justice. Films like Blade Runner or Shawshank Redemption we’re ignored by fans and sometimes critics initially.

Also, Star Wars fans can be famously shitty. They have a long history. I do wonder if sections of Marvel fans will turn should they not love the direction. They’ve been pretty fortunate up to now with largely good movies and the bad ones came at a time when Marvel was still establishing itself. Only in the last few years has it reached a level that Star Wars had for so long (and overtaken it).

 

[edgie]

Fans almost rioted when Bob Dylan went electric. Now recognised that the fans were wrong.

Movies and music are always open for a rethink because they often have layers and first impressions don’t don’t do them justice. Films like Blade Runner or Shawshank Redemption we’re ignored by fans and sometimes critics initially.

Also, Star Wars fans can be famously shitty. They have a long history. I do wonder if sections of Marvel fans will turn should they not love the direction. They’ve been pretty fortunate up to now with largely good movies and the bad ones came at a time when Marvel was still establishing itself. Only in the last few years has it reached a level that Star Wars had for so long (and overtaken it).

Marvel is hugely formulaic, much more so than Star Wars which is getting bashed around for being 'the same', and everyone seems cool with that. I can see people losing interest, but never turning, and I don't believe they let the Universe rest long enough for people to actually assess the quality and let things breathe. It's a wham bam thankyou mam saturation of release.

Dylan fans can be filed along with Metallica fans.

 

[JackOutback]

The idea that TLJ has somehow been relegated to ‘dream status’ is clearly absurd. No matter what pivots TROS took, it still exists and nothing in the new movie explicitly contradicts anything that happened before. It’s just a continuation of the childish tantrum we have been seeing for two years, like those that try to pretend the prequels didn’t exist.

As for what I would have done, I generally manage to go into movies without preconceived ideas about what a movie should be about. I don’t prepare them in my head. But the key things that should have been retained were Kylo as the big bad, no resurrected Emperor or Sith, and Rey remaining a nobody and leading a new era of ‘Jedi’ where there’s no Order and no training and no incestuous dynastic legacies where it seems every major character in the films got it on at some point. That gives you a foundation for future movies.

I should have added, the number on thing that should have been retained was the legend of Luke Skywalker inspiring the people to rise up. It was the key character development of TLJ and it was excellent. It was set up to hang the whole trilogy on Skywalker. After retreating because he blamed his arrogance or hubris caused by his own legendary status, he came to accept his own flaws and failings and stepped up to become exactly the legend he had been afraid of for so long.

It looked like JJ only vaguely understood this. The title hinted at it, Poe talks about hope, the final battle involves people and not an army. But instead of Luke inspiring this uprising, Lando just goes on a fly-around and everyone joins up

 

[edgie]

That's cause Lando is a smooth mother*er.

 

[edgie]

The 'it isn't a Navy, it's just... people' is one of the genuinely great moments of TROS for me. Loved it.

 

[mike123]

The reason anything in the OT was a good reveal was because it wasnt teased. We meet Luke Skywalker, we aren't teased who that is. He's just some guy. We meet Vader, we aren't teased who that is. We meet Leia Organa, we aren't teased who she might be, she's a princess of the Organas. When Obi-Wan tells Luke he knew his father, we aren't teased. There's no correlation set up. We just accept all that and follow the unfolding tale/relationships. When it's revealed Vader is Luke's father, and Leia his sister, it's a huge bombshell.

In the ST, everything is too meta. Who Rey and Snoke might be is teased constantly -- both in film and, in these days of social media, Twitter/Reddit is a new media for filmmakers/studios to use to drive interest in movies, and in ancillary books/comics/cartoons. It takes all the wind out of it that a reveal is never going to be a bombshell, or a reward for the entire fanbase. As you have deliberately created segmentation in the fanbase investing in different theories. Whereas in the OT method, the entire fanbase isn't segmented by theories, there's no mystery, so when a twist occurs, the entire fanbase accepts it as one.

Abrams' penchant for creating mystery boxes from the outset and using that as cheese/clickbait, as rattling keys at a child, to derive interest is disingenuous and counter-productive to the writing process as you end up micromanaging the story and characters to suit your agenda, whereas the best writing is always organic where the characters go their own way, the story takes paths it itself demands of you to go. It's hard to explain, but story writers will understand

Not something I considered before but 100% correct. The twist in the OT is the previous information you were given isn’t true, becuase the information was already there in place it’s harder to expect. Whether in the ST we’re never given the information so we’re expecting the twist. And when the twist turns out be nobody it doesn’t matter it ends up just leaving people disappointed.

The mystery boxes got the ST to bad start it couldn’t recover from it. They should have just picked up from where Return of Jedi left off instead of resetting back to the start of the OT. They should have just explained everybody’s back stories instead of leaving it as mystery to be explained in the following films.

 

[mike123]

Given what Abrams was then given to work with after TLJ, I can see why the story went where it did In TROS.

This is exactly why I didn’t watch it, there was no chance anything following TLJ could be good.

 

[mike123]

I absolutely do not. TLJ delivered a big bad that had broken free of previous convention in Kylo Ren. It delivered a hero in Rey not defined by parentage. It moved away from a straight up Jedi/Sith dynamic. JJ could have done anything with any of those beats if he had the skill or creativity. He didn’t, so he went back to an Emperor and aping the arcs of Luke and Darth Vader. The idea that he was forced into such an uncreative, inconsequential storyline is absurd.

Problem is that hero is a Mary Sue and Kylo isn’t indimidating enough to be the big bad and was already defeated by the heroes. And the movie done nothing nothing to earn moving into that direction since every scene is are completely devoid of logic and consistency.

Firstly moving away from the Jedi sith dynamic isn’t a good thing. Secondly the movie doesn’t, it teases doing that but then takes a 180 just reinforces it in the final.

 

[Sub_Zero]

It was explained though, the Sith used synthetic crystals which distorted the colour and gave it the red colour. Everyone else used natural crystals and so could pick their colour.

FYI this is from Wookiepedia

Though synthetic crystals were ordinarily unsuitable for use in lightsabers, the Sith discovered that they could create synth-crystals that were energized, magnetized, and modified with the power of the dark side of the Force in special furnaces, causing the crystal to glow in harmonic vibration. As a result of their artificial origins, synthetic crystals created more powerful lightsaber blades and could be more easily augmented. Also, their common usage by Sith and other Darksiders after this discovery caused synthetic crystals to become something of a staple among such groups, and their use among Jedi was strongly discouraged.[3]

Most synthetic crystals were red, a result of the forging process, and often times the initiate's intentional manipulations, as most individuals who utilized synthetic crystals were Darksiders. The red-hued lightsaber blades generated by such crystals were often nicknamed "bloodshine blades". The crystal's ability to change to reflect the intentions of the creator could be said to foster a stronger bond between the resulting lightsaber and the wielder. However, synth-crystals could be made in any color, requiring only slight adjustments of the creation process and special manipulations through the Force during the forging.

 

[glenferry23]

I completely agree that a framework would have generated more consistency. But I also see why they did what they did. As much as we like to think the OT was all set in place before filming started, there were never any guarantees of sequels. The story changed and adapted with each one. Vader wasn’t originally Luke’s father and Luke/Leia weren’t twins, two of the most significant developments. They wanted to try and recapture that style and it didn’t quite work.

But given the style they agreed on, perhaps JJ shouldn’t have tried to dictate so much of the overall plot in TFA. And maybe RJ shouldn’t have walked so much backwards. I know which film is better though, and which one will stand the test of time.

Like SM said, who thinks that about the OT? I’m certainly not in that category. Lucas did lots of making things up as he went along too. However at least there was consistency with that - it was one main storyteller throughout that period.

 

[glenferry23]

This is exactly why I didn’t watch it, there was no chance anything following TLJ could be good.

Still well worth viewing, it’s Star Wars after all. But I do understand the sentiment, a few of my friends have also said similar things. After their disappointment with TLJ, they’d probably just wait to download or stream TROS later on.

 

[Toump Ass]

I'm all up for new story lines, yes please!
Horny thinking about expanded "star wars universe" with *NEW* Jedis and *NEW* Siths that aren't clones, or part of a dynasty, or having had sex with a Skywalker! Thank you very much! Very horny now!!

Please sir can I have some story with NO DEATH STAR or PLANS FOR A DEATH STAR or A ******* SPACE SHIP WITH A DEATH STAR ATTACHED TO IT!?!??! WHOOO HOOOO!

YES TO INNOVATION, NEW DIRECTIONS, AND NEW HEROIC ADVENTURES! A NEW ERA!!! NO MORE CHARACTERS WHO SMUGGLE SPICE OR HAVE "FORCE SENSITIVITY" AND A LONELY AND MYSERIOUS CHILDHOOD!





...Just don't make it a s**t film.

For all the "VISION" and "INNOVATION" and "NEW FRESH UNHEARD OF IDEAS" RJ allegedly had ("I know, how about 'FORCE POPPINS'!!!! IT's NEW, INNOVATIVE, NEW FRESH FORCE IDEA!!! NO ONE THOUGHT OF IT BEFORE NOW!!! GRAET NEW STORY! "), he still handed over a steaming pile of s**t.