Movies: Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

[MadDevil]

I'm not sure I'd call being shot by a bowcaster a "minor" injury.

 

[ArGarBarGar]

Yay, more bickering about the TFA lightsaber battle.

Luke tossing the lightsaber is an unintentional metaphor for what Rian decided to do with the story threads he inherited.

Honestly, a lot of those threads were stupid.

 

[CaptainCrunch67]

The movie will have flashforwarded a few years, they've already basically confirmed this.

Rey will have spent the last few years training with Jedi Master Toda, a former member of the Jedi Council formed by Luke after the end of the Galactic Civil War who has been hiding on an ice planet next to a neutral side ice cave since Snoke executed order 667. Oh and he's a Wampa Jedi Master because that action figure will sell yo.

 

[Shockmaster]

Honestly, a lot of those threads were stupid.

So was Johnson going rogue.

 

[ArGarBarGar]

So was Johnson going rogue.

Going rogue? You mean because he chose to go a different path instead of following the outline Abrams laid out? A decision that Abrams backed?

 

[HanSolo]

How am I supposed to feel for and connect with your protagonist, who is shown to be immediately as powerful as your stories antagonist, when you give them a background and story that completely contradicts what your showing me.

Rey's never held a ls before, shes never been trained in the force, she has no idea that she is a latent force user. Hell, your own story says the force and the Jedi are skme bull**** myth now that people have to be told are real, even though they've been around and at the heights of politics and news for eons by this point.

The entire Rey v. Kylo fight is something like 5 minutes long. She spends the vast majority of that time getting whaled on, again by a guy that was injured. We can keep rotating on how injured he was until we're blue in the face. The point is at one point in the fight Kylo stops trying to kill Rey and instead tries to flip her.

He then gets caught off guard and Rey gets a lucky swipe in after breaking out of an arm lock with Kylo. Rey did not do one single extraordinarily refined/masterful thing in that fight.

I can understand your point if it feels cheap to have the antagonist lose so early, but I don't believe that's the same as saying it's completely unbelievable that it happened. The fight was choreographed and key moments in the film used plot convenience to establish a scenario where Kylo could lose. Whether or not it should have happened from a narrative perspective is a different matter and not one I'm here to argue.

Yay, more bickering about the TFA lightsaber battle.


Honestly, a lot of those threads were stupid.

-How did the First Order re-rise to power? This is probably the easiest to infer, as an Imperial Remnant likely retreated and waited for leadership to rise up again.

-Where does Snoke come from? How did he take control of the First Order. How did Leia and Han know Snoke was controlling Ben?

-Why did the Resistance military fracture from the New Republic? Why didn't the New Republic just support a defensive military to prevent the rise of the First Order outright?

Rian took people's complaints that the PT was too expository and seemed to interpret that as "no one gives a f*** about the context, let's just give em a bad guys vs good guys story with the good guys facing insurmountable odds"

I'm not sure I'd call being shot by a bowcaster a "minor" injury.

Apparently the flight distance of a hundred meters or so is enough to completely invalidate the weapon's power. Nevermind that Kylo was doubled over after being hit, nevermind that he was bleeding, nevermind that he was clearly in pain before the fight with Finn

As I said, the bowcaster shot only grazed his love handle. He didn't take nearly the full power of the shot, so, naturally, he wasn't sent flying.



You're just reciting the scene without explaining why it's believable.



I haven't addressed her Force use in that moment at all, so I'm not sure why you're asking.



By whose judgment does the context allow it to happen, yours and Abrams? I don't know why it's so hard for you to understand that some of us disagree that the writing believably justifies itself. That fact that something is explained doesn't mean that we have to just accept the explanation. You suggest that I'm lecturing you, but you're the one here lecturing us on what we're missing. You're acting like your opinion is fact that we simply "refuse to accept" and you're disparaging our opinion by pretending that it's motivated by an agenda.

1. It was in the side of the gut. Probably missing vital organs. You're continuing to try to minimize what happened by just inventing things. When Kylo does that macho display of hitting his own wound and draw more blood, he doesn't hit his love handle.

2. I did explain. You just don't like my explanation. A guy with the easiest opportunity to kill an opponent didn't because he believed he could flip her. He could have just frozen her again, he could've put her to sleep but he chose not to presumably because he wanted her to accept his offer on her own. Something he tried to do again in The Last Jedi. So a guy with a stab wound just under his left shoulder and a bowcaster shot to his lower body, in a moment of a lack of focus got parried off their saber lock, put on guard before locking arms with Rey again. Rey got a bit of her lightsaber onto Kylo's foot, in the moment of pain Rey got the chance to slash up and cut Kylo's face non lethally. Or put more simply, injured and distracted guy got thrown off by a girl going aggro. Why is that so hard to believe? Is it canonically an unlikely scenario? Sure. But it doesn't, to me, stretch into some realm of impossibility. I mean more people get angry and angrier of a girl with at least some melee fighting experience taking advantage of a twice injured distracted foe with training than they are about someone creating a fully functioning apparition and projecting it lightyears across the galaxy. The scene was constructed to show that Rey got lucky and wouldn't have gotten away with it if not for tapping in the force. As I said above, Rey didn't do a single thing with the lightsaber that indicated any sort of mastery of the weapon. Of the lightsaber fights it's the most crude and unrefined style since A New Hope which had to be simplistic by technological limitations. And with all the extraordinary things done in this saga, this is the one that seems to piss people off the most.

4 pass

5 I mean fair, my tone has been authoritative and absolute and that's not exactly appropriate. But when people either miss, distort, or dismiss context clues that were thrown in with the subtlety of a rave girl in a Mormon church I feel like voicing my interpretation and vehement disagreement. TFA has flaws for sure and I could rehash the ones that I acknowledge but the end fight being possible/impossible is not one of them. If it's a matter if it narratively cheapened the saga by having the protagonist win so early, that's a different matter. I didn't mind but I'd have no problem with someone having an issue with it like RobBrown4PM. But for the fight itself, Rey had a lot of circumstances work in her favor including Kylo's own character flaws in believing he could turn Rey in that moment. How Rey using the force to focus and swing her sword a little harder to throw an injured/unexpecting guy off guard is so "unbelievable" is something that no one is ever going to make me understand.

 

[Shockmaster]

Going rogue? You mean because he chose to go a different path instead of following the outline Abrams laid out? A decision that Abrams backed?

Going a different path in itself isn't the problem. Going a different path that mostly makes no sense is the issue.

 

[ArGarBarGar]

Going a different path in itself isn't the problem. Going a different path that mostly makes no sense is the issue.

Alrighty...

 

[RandV]

The easy answer is that they could've done as the original trilogy did and incorporated the passage of time to make the hero's mastery of the Force seem gradual and believable. Four years passed between Luke first picking up a lightsaber and him defeating someone in a duel with it and making using the Force appear effortless. I'm not sure that even four days passed before Rey defeated someone in a duel and made the Force appear effortless. It would've been better if the writers had Rey able to do nothing at all or just the most trivial of tricks in the first film, had a couple of years pass, then had her able to do apprentice-level tricks in the second film, had another couple of years pass, then had her demonstrating a mastery of the Force. In addition to creating more believable character development, that would've contributed to a more epic feeling for the trilogy. Epics typically span years, not days.

Also 80's!



If Rian Johnson remade this the Russian agents would tell Rocky at the start his match is in 30 hours

 

[ArGarBarGar]

-How did the First Order re-rise to power? This is probably the easiest to infer, as an Imperial Remnant likely retreated and waited for leadership to rise up again.

-Where does Snoke come from? How did he take control of the First Order. How did Leia and Han know Snoke was controlling Ben?

-Why did the Resistance military fracture from the New Republic? Why didn't the New Republic just support a defensive military to prevent the rise of the First Order outright?

Are these threads or just things that occurred in the past that you would like to have explained outright? I was talking more of things like Rey's parentage or how Luke's lightsaber got to Rey in the first place (which was teased as being explained in subsequent movies) or how Snoke was the new big bad and would be an important role in future films.

Rian took people's complaints that the PT was too expository and seemed to interpret that as "no one gives a **** about the context, let's just give em a bad guys vs good guys story with the good guys facing insurmountable odds"

I think this is an inaccurate representation of what Rian Johnson was trying to do, also.

 

[ArGarBarGar]

Also why does the force have to be gradual? Do Jedis level up and increase their power levels like in DBZ?

Because literally only TPM acts like that as a thing, and the movie was weakened from it.

 

[ThePhoenixx]

Also why does the force have to be gradual? Do Jedis level up and increase their power levels like in DBZ?

Because literally only TPM acts like that as a thing, and the movie was weakened from it.

For every other user...Yes... for Rey...No.

They trained and got better.

She didn't need to.

Training/education is for losers.

Burn the books!

Don't stay in school!

 

[ArGarBarGar]

For every other user...Yes... for Rey...No.

They trained and got better.

She didn't need to.

Training/education is for losers.

Burn the books!

Don't stay in school!

I had a big post lined up for this, but as always I have gotten so sick of going around and around with this discussion.

At the end of the day, I disagree, and I think the movie demonstrates that clearly enough.

 

[ThePhoenixx]

I had a big post lined up for this, but as always I have gotten so sick of going around and around with this discussion.

At the end of the day, I disagree, and I think the movie demonstrates that clearly enough.

Whether you agree with the Mary Sue part or not that is the message they are sending to today's youth.

Think about it, the old Star Wars emphasized a good education and how that could lead to a person having the skills to overcome adversity. Luke constantly failed because he continually dropped out of school for various reasons even though his teacher(s) told him he wasn't ready and to stay in school. He even lost a hand as a consequence for not staying in school.

The new TLJ Star Wars? You don't need school to succeed. If you are thrust in to a situation schooling won't help. Just do it. Anything you can do I can do better. Burn those books. Yoda will laugh when you do. Older people are stupid because they read and believed in books.

Want to be a therapist? Just go out and do it. If you are a natural you will do well. Books and learning is for lesser people.

 

[ArGarBarGar]

Whether you agree with the Mary Sue part or not that is the message they are sending to today's youth.

Think about it, the old Star Wars emphasized a good education and how that could lead to a person having the skills to overcome adversity. Luke constantly failed because he continually dropped out of school for various reasons even though his teacher(s) told him he wasn't ready and to stay in school. He even lost a hand as a consequence for not staying in school.

The new TLJ Star Wars? You don't need school to succeed. If you are thrust in to a situation schooling won't help. Just do it. Anything you can do I can do better. Burn those books. Yoda will laugh when you do. Older people are stupid because they read and believed in books.

Want to be a therapist? Just go out and do it. If you are a natural you will do well. Books and learning is for lesser people.

Dude, this is such a gigantic reach, even if I agreed with the idea that Rey is a Mary Sue.

 

[ThePhoenixx]

Dude, this is such a gigantic reach, even if I agreed with the idea that Rey is a Mary Sue.

It really isn't much of a reach. You don't even need the Mary Sue part. One only has to realize that she is moving along without a day of school while Luke failed because he didn't stay in school.

Everything I stated is true. I'm not saying that was the writers intention, but that is one of the underlying meanings.

Burn the books vrs Stay in school.

She did keep the books though. So there is that.

 

[ArGarBarGar]

She did keep the books though. So there is that.

Which completely undercuts the entire message you think the film is sending.

 

[ThePhoenixx]

Which completely undercuts the entire message you think the film is sending.

Not really.

Just means she isn't a book burner. Big difference.

Have you ever wondered concerning her character and if it matches up with her life? To get inside her head?

She is an extroverted, well spoken, well groomed and well adjusted young lady. The kind of woman a person would expect that has grown up in a good family and has received a good education.

But that's not her. She is an uneducated, social outcast since toddler age who has very little interactions with humans other than when she trades with grunt man. She is essentially a hermit.

Ever met a hermit?

 

[x Tame Impala]

Also why does the force have to be gradual? Do Jedis level up and increase their power levels like in DBZ?

Hyperbole.

Can you name a single ability or skill that doesn’t have to be worked on relentlessly to be good at? Even the greatest athletes and fighters of all time, the people born to be great at whatever they do, had to train constantly to master their abilities.

Rey is given mastery of any/every skill she needs from the get. It’s bad, sloppy, and lazy writing.

 

[x Tame Impala]

Star Wars movies, and their politics within (no matter how dumb and stereotypical), have next to zero bearing on society today.

Any arguments saying otherwise are just a hammer looking for a nail

 

[ArGarBarGar]

Not really.

Just means she isn't a book burner. Big difference.

Have you ever wondered concerning her character and if it matches up with her life? To get inside her head?

She is an extroverted, well spoken, well groomed and well adjusted young lady. The kind of woman a person would expect that has grown up in a good family and has received a good education.

But that's not her. She is an uneducated, social outcast since toddler age who has very little interactions with humans other than when she trades with grunt man. She is essentially a hermit.

Ever met a hermit?

Why does she have to be a hermit if she lives alone? Jakku is a crappy place to live, but it is populated and has people to socialize with in some capacity.

She is well-spoken in our world because we equate what we believe a proper English accent to be with education and wealth. But Jakku isn't Earth, so that accent is simply incidental in this story. As far as being "well-groomed", I have no idea how you can make that assertion considering she wears a simple outfit and ties her hair back.

This is such a bizarre argument you are trying to make about the messaging of the movie.

 

[HanSolo]

Are these threads or just things that occurred in the past that you would like to have explained outright? I was talking more of things like Rey's parentage or how Luke's lightsaber got to Rey in the first place (which was teased as being explained in subsequent movies) or how Snoke was the new big bad and would be an important role in future films.


I think this is an inaccurate representation of what Rian Johnson was trying to do, also.

I don't think that's what Rian was TRYING to do but it is in effect what ended up happening. That's really all we're left with. Maz's speech. There has always been good and there has always been evil. Kylo and the First Order are the new evil while Rey and the Resistance are the new good. Outside that there's nothing really to speak of in terms of a grander scope. That was fine in the OT because it was so new and focused on the familial relationship between Luke and his father. At this point a Star Wars trilogy needs to have something going for it to give weight to the good vs evil conflict. As for Anakin's lightsaber getting to Rey, I really don't care about that thread. A force sensitive friend of Han's has a weapon formerly owned by Luke, a friend of Han's. I don't think an explanation was really a critical necessity.

But as for Snoke, I do think that's important. With Palpatine in the OT it was enough to simply know he was the ruler of the Empire, knew the force, and was Vader's master. With Snoke and the ST the final chapter of the OT showed the rebellion victorious over the Empire, with Luke and Vader toppling the last of the Sith. Now the galaxy is back at war and the how of it matters. Presumably, the First Order rose from the Imperial Remnant under Snoke? But who is Snoke? Where did he come from? How did he raise the First Order to prominence? How did he learn the Dark Side? If he had it and was alive during the OT war, why did he never step in? With Snoke dying, barring some third chapter explanations for these things he dies as nothing more than a rehash of Palpatine. And the rise of the First Order has no context unless the viewer goes and checks out new EU.

Also why does the force have to be gradual? Do Jedis level up and increase their power levels like in DBZ?

Because literally only TPM acts like that as a thing, and the movie was weakened from it.

Because of the prequels. It wasn't that long ago that we were talking prequels when the new trilogy was first announced and I distinctly remember people decrying that the prequels sapped all the mysticism from the Force with shit like midichlorians and chosen ones.

Obi Wan and Yoda weren't teaching Luke how to level up and boost his force power stat. They were teaching him how to better focus himself to let the force flow through him. The saying of the OT was "the force is strong in you" not "his force powers are really strong." I could be wrong about this but much of Lucas' original conceptions of the Force were based around Buddhist (or Hindu, I'm an ignorant idiot) beliefs of life energy. The point of the Force in the OT wasn't to train and train and train until you add power 1, 2, 3, and 4 while avoiding 5,6, and 7 because they are evil powers. It was to achieve the focus and oneness with the Force to capably use it. The point of everything we learned about the Force in the OT was that with that kind of focus and allowing the Force to flow through you, using powers is possible to those force sensitive.

Anytime Rey does anything with the force it's after focusing (to the point that there's even an audio cue at times). But she doesn't do anything particular remarkable in TFA in relation to what others have done with the force in past films (lightning, force choke, absorbing energy, force leaps, force push, stopping a blaster shot, paralyzing a foe, etc.)

She lucks into a mind trick, pulls the lightsaber out of the snow (after an implication in the film that the sword was imbued with force qualities that aligned well with Rey), and then....uses the force to calm down and channel her aggression to momentarily throw Kylo off.

People are too focused with this idea of powerlevels and training because the prequels infected everyone's mind with talks of who was stronger than who and that some have more midichlorians than others and learning to use the force was more like going through a k-12 program than it is refining your ability to tap into the mystical energy. Rey wasn't out there running around like a fully trained Jedi ala Anakin, Obi Wan, Mace, etc. In times of dire need she reached out to the Force, albeit something she was unfamiliar, and when she let it flow through her, things happened to get her out of tough situations.

Anyway, I'm pretty over defending parts of TFA at this point. I don't honestly know why I'm even bothering writing so much. No one is gonna give a shit, but hey, there it is.

 

[ArGarBarGar]

Hyperbole.

Can you name a single ability or skill that doesn’t have to be worked on relentlessly to be good at? Even the greatest athletes and fighters of all time, the people born to be great at whatever they do, had to train constantly to master their abilities.

Rey is given mastery of any/every skill she needs from the get. It’s bad, sloppy, and lazy writing.

Luke was able to blindly deflect a laser and blow up the Death Star without "relentlessly" working on anything. His only training is with Obi Wan introducing him to the force and having him play with a space toy for a short time. And the only things he is taught had to do with his own mentality towards the force.

The Force is not a physical attribute or outright skill at a specific thing. It is demonstrated to be heavily tied with the mind and the will of the human trying to work with it. That is what makes the force interesting and makes it much more fluid than other types of "skills" we think about (such as weight-lifting or excellence at sports, for instance).

HanSolo: I have read a lot of theories (or analysis) of the prequels and to me it seems the general point (which was somewhat backed up by Luke in TLJ) is that the way the Jedi Order did things was problematic because they were too focused on numbers and "this is your power level", and because of that was a very flawed organization with no emotion (leading them to lose the power of the force and be destroyed by the Sith in the process). If it had been written well it could have been a really great take and a great set of movies. But Lucas stumbled HARD out of the gate and never really recovered.

 

[ThePhoenixx]

Why does she have to be a hermit if she lives alone? Jakku is a crappy place to live, but it is populated and has people to socialize with in some capacity.

She is well-spoken in our world because we equate what we believe a proper English accent to be with education and wealth. But Jakku isn't Earth, so that accent is simply incidental in this story. As far as being "well-groomed", I have no idea how you can make that assertion considering she wears a simple outfit and ties her hair back.

This is such a bizarre argument you are trying to make about the messaging of the movie.

She lived in the middle of a desert in a hovel far far away from any other human because she was a social kind of gal. OK.

Her accent?

Ya, it's the accent that made stupid TP say that, not the way she verbally articulates herself. He's so stupid he doesn't even know why he thinks what he thinks. lol

I gather you haven't met a hermit/isolationist. I have. They sure don't look/act like that.

They have poor hygiene and poor/blunted social skills. These are those skills that improve the more you use them. Some people spend a lifetime trying to master social interaction.

 

[ArGarBarGar]

She lived in the middle of a desert in a hovel far far away from any other human because she was a social kind of gal. OK.

I never argued she was a "social kind of gal", but that she has social interaction because she lives and works within a reasonable distance from civilization (and works within a populated area as well). Are you seriously arguing that the only person she ever talks to is Unkar Plutt?

Her accent?

Ya, it's the accent that made stupid TP say that, not the way she verbally articulates herself. He's so stupid he doesn't even know why he thinks what he thinks. lol

What?

I gather you haven't met a hermit/isolationist. I have. They sure don't look/act like that.

They have poor hygiene and poor/blunted social skills. These are those skills that improve the more you use them. Some people spend a lifetime trying to master social interaction.

Rey isn't a hermit/isolationist.