That he would have as much of a prominent role as he turned out to have? Yes, I am certain that was the result of JJ having to react to what Rian Johnson did.

That he would have some role, or would at least be mentioned? I suspect that was indeed at least a part of JJ‘s original plan.

Edit: And just because I can, here’s why I think that – heavy spoilers for TROS inbound, so read at your own risk:

Spoiler

Remember a couple of years ago, when Daisy Ridley said that she talked to JJ about Rey‘s parentage, and the answer made her cry? As she turns out to be Palpatine‘s granddaughter – and I do have my issues with that particular reveal, I promise – that would at least suggest to me that Rey‘s parents weren‘t useless drunkards in JJ‘s original outline. At the same time, this theory hinges on the proposition that there was, at one point, an outline for all three films, so make of that what you will.

 

@Nevermind

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My theory is that Rey was intended to be the Daughter of Luke and Mara, but this version fo mara would've been the biological daughter of Palps

 

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I never cared much about the EU, but I wouldn‘t have minded that. It would have filled at least one glaring hole in the fabric of the sequels. I supposed we‘ll get another book/comic on Palpatine at some point…

 

Nope, considering the overall tone and desperate attempts to emulate the originals in the two Abrams movies I suspect that Palpatine was something planned from the very start though admittedly likely with a bit more foreshadowing in part two than what we got.

 

So, quick recap so you know how much salt to take this with: I enjoyed TFA, but recognise that it's a fundamentally lazy film in many ways, with barely an original idea in its head, and I loved TLJ, although I can understand some of the criticism levelled at it, even if I disagree. Therefore, ROS was always likely to be at a disadvantage with me, due to the likelihood of retcons etc to TLJ.

All that said, my fresh out of the cinema hot take is that RoS is, basically, fine. There's some good set pieces, solid if never particularly noteworthy performances (McDiarmid aside, because he's clearly having a ball), it all looks gorgeous, and one or two decent emotional moments. While I'd rather they'd stayed the course following TLJ than change things, they do at least do a fair job of making the changes with liberal application of 'from a certain point of view' rather than just out of nowhere retcons. Carrie Fisher's absence is handled pretty well, and on that note, that's an area where the changes (and the general attitude to the Force in this film) benefit TLJ, making her space flight somewhat more plausible.

The only thing that I really, really didn't like was...

Spoiler

the kiss at the end. Fucking what?

Oh, and it doesn't do anything to address the timing issues - you still seem to be able to go from one side of the galaxy to another at improbable speeds, although they are at least a bit vague about precise times and locations in-universe now.

Worst of the trilogy, with TLJ the best, but far from a train wreck.

 

I loved The Last Jedi and thought it was up there with Empire for the best Star Wars film.

This is... bad. There were good moments but the plot was awful on almost every level. The scale dramatically worked against it, the movie took the themes developed in TLJ and TFA and proceeded to kneecap them - destroying any sense of thematic consistency.

Force scenes were really cool and generally well done. Visually it was stunning. Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley had excellent chemistry as always and their lightsaber fights were all amazing. Everything that wasn't about them was pretty bad though.

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the entire grand fleet outta nowhere was incredibly stupid from start to finish. Palpatine was badly served by this plot - and how is he alive anyways?? Way to retroactively ruin Return of the Jedi too. Rey and Kylo were great, the kiss was the only good part about the last twenty minutes. Their lightsaber fights were some of the best in the series. His redemption felt undeserved and while I get what they were going for with the redemption in death... I felt like it came way too fast.

Thats the problem with the whole movie really. Way way too fast.

All that being said the more I think about it the more I do see quite a few good moments and scenes that I really liked. I just can't forgive the plot!

Fortunately there's always AO3... Anyone have any sequel fics eh? I need to not remember this writing.

 

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wtf why did they make reylo canon

 

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I bet JJ trawled AO3 when writing the script.

 

Just got back from the theaters, and by god this was a bad movie. I went in expecting a sub par film but this was something else.

The story feels like it was written by a 14 year old who is just throwing ideas out and the they connect the ideas by saying that's just how it is. Every single god damn scene is explained! You are literally told everything that is happening on frame but also are told nothing about the plot. Its so wooden.

This story jumped the shark so many times I ran out of sighs.
TFA was a predictable but fun movie and TLJ was a bit of a mess but it still felt like a movie. Episode IX feels like a bad tv show, it doesn't even feel like a proper movie.

That not even getting into the steaming pile of shit that Episode IX took on star wars lore itself.

Overall this was not only a bad star wars movie but also just plain bad movie.

 

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I haven't watched Return of the Jedi in years - was Vader's 'redemption' as unearned and badly written as Kylo Ren's? I remember it being done a lot better, but that might be nostalgia.

 

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Hmm. About the only hint that there's anything good about Vader prior to RotJ is him wanting Luke to rule at his side, which...isn't exactly super positive. Then Luke starts talking about knowing there's still good in him during RotJ, and so it proves. From memory, in the new trilogy, there's at least one scene in TFA where Kylo is conflicted about his choices...but then he kills Han, and his moral arc in TLJ is more about becoming his own villain rather than an apprentice. There's the desire on others part to see him redeemed - Leia and Rey, mostly (only?) - but not much on his side.

Of course, it depends on how you define redemption. He got to become one with the Force, true, and his big kiss from Rey, but I'd wager that most of the galaxy would probably still spit on his grave, if he had one. And he did actively fight alongside Rey against Palpatine before ultimately giving up his life to restore hers, rather than toeing the party line right up until the very last minute before committing to Luke, like Vader.

So...less build-up, but more in the moment stuff? Maybe?

 

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Haven't seen IX, so can't compare them, but I can say that Vader's redemption wasn't earned by Vader, but it was earned by Luke. Luke spent pretty much the whole movie talking about how he knows there's some good left in Vader, that Palpatine couldn't destroy it all, etc. He does everything he can to convince both himself and Vader of it.

Then, when he proves more difficult to turn than expected, Palpatine starts to torture him, and he begs Vader for help. Vader hesitates for a moment, but another scream from Luke pushes him to pick up Palpatine and throw him down the pit.

All in all, it was actually quite well done, playing with themes of familial love and faith.

 

I rarely make my own memes, how's that?

My largely disorganized review:

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Where to even begin.

I think that The Last Jedi was a trainwreck of a film. Throughout the runtime of The Retcon of Skywalker I found myself comparing it unfavorably to TLJ. Trainwreck Squared, then? Trainwreckered?

I'll try to deal with topics in some sort of order.

Firstly, yes, TROS makes it very clear its intention to ignore TLJ as much as possible, and several moments throughout the film double down on the intention to remind people that yes, TLJ happened, but this movie is ignoring it. Kylo says something like "your parents were nobodies because they chose to", a deliberate attempt in my view to overturn Kylo's "your parents were nobodies" from TLJ. Finn and Rose have two short interactions, both of which make it very clear that there's nothing of a romantic nature between them. And of course, Kylo's helmet. And Kylo uses a TIE Interceptor instead of the TIE Silencer Rian gave him. The "Holdo manoeuvre" is brought up and dismissed as a "one in a million" in five seconds flat. Rey attempts to toss Luke's saber into a fire and Luke's force ghost catches it.

I can very easily deal with character development, because there isn't any. The whole film is 2,5 hours of breakneck rush from plot point to plot point because Jar Jar Abrams had one film to do what should have taken two. That's not to say that if JJ had had 5 hours to work with, his plot in TROS could have been good. Some ideas are just gonna be crap no matter what. And there is a motherload of crap ideas in this film.

But before we get into all the juicy stuff, I'll bring up two things which made me smile. There is a quick visual gag where Rey and Poe are in one shot and Rey buzzes her saber on while Poe turns on a flashlight. That, I thought, was genuinely funny. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but just a really neat moment. If you haven't been in a dark room and pretended a flashlight was a lightsaber, then I can't even.

The second thing happens after threepio's memory gets wiped by a plot point--a tiny alien named Bubu Frik--and upon C3PO's reintroduction to R2, he says Bubu is one of his closest friends, having literally known the guy for a few hours.

Someone mentioned upthread that every scene is explained, like the script was written by a 14 year old. They're right. I don't think there was a single attempt at visual storytelling (which is something JJ himself did so well with Rey's introduction in TFA) or showing instead of telling. Every single thing is explained. It seems JJ had some awareness that his film packed with plot points and decided that instead of cutting some of it down, he should just go ham on hammering everything home in case the audience are idiots and miss something.

I called the film The Retcon of Skywalker because there are retcons galore, not just in relation to TLJ but TFA as well. For example, Lando says that he and Luke were looking for the planet Exogol---like Luke hadn't been established as a hermit in TFA and confirmed as such in TLJ. Palpatine had fathered a son, and Rey was his daughter. I feel about Palpatine producing offspring the same way I do about Voldemort producing offspring in CC. It's just a bad idea and fundamentally doesn't work imo. JJ could have actually taken this hint from Rian and not have Rey connected to the Prominent Surnames of SW.

Leia was apparently a Jedi all along, trained in youth by Luke, and had even constructed a lightsaber, which she subsequently hid on Ach-To (Luke's hermit hangout) until someone needed it or some pithy, dumb shit like that, as if a trained Jedi wouldn't have been useful in the war against the FO.

I gather that there was some timeskip since TLJ, and the first time we see Rey on screen she is receiving Jedi training from Leia. See, Rian, this is what Jedi training looks like, not two days on a rock with a grumpy hermit. I'm bringing up the timeline because I still can't get over the fact that time elapsed between the end of TFA and TLJ seems to be about a week. That still doesn't absolve JJ of shit, because he had Rey beat Kylo in TFA. Subsequently, JJ's attempts to make Kylo badass in TROS don't speak to me.

JJ is lucky that the opening crawl is a sacred element of mainline SW films, because those two short paragraphs allow him to "establish" the background of the film, where a competent filmmaker would have to actually do the filmmaking work of establishing the world of their story through film. TROS literally begins with Kylo finding a compass to Palpy's planet--Exogol--and within I think 10 minuts of the runtime Palpatine is on screen, delivering the blandest villain dialogue ever. Btw, dialogue in the film is hack shit, there's not a single clever turn of phrase and I imagine there was a lot of eye-rolling on set when JJ wasn't looking.

The timeskip also allowes JJ to skip the groundwork of showing Rey, Poe and Finn growing closer as friends and gelling as a team--instead JJ just shows them bantering and being friends, which comes out of fucking nowhere, especially with Poe and Ray. Again, JJ had an inkling of something good with Poe and Finn in TFA, but maybe JJ is only good at setting up Mystery Boxes and doesn't know the first thing about resolving plot lines.

The dagger they find on Not-Tatooine-Not-Jakku is dumb. Rey eyeballs it against the debris of the Death Star like one would a torn page to match the edges, and that's how she finds the Sith wayfinder to Exogol, when a wild Kylo appears and smashes the compass, so she has to steal his ship.

Rey's motivation sucks. She had a better motivation in the first act of TFA, when she wanted to get off Jakku. She's had no discernible personal motivation through the rest of the trilogy, apart from a generic "I want to fight evil".

Kylo's redemption arc isn't an arc--characters don't have arcs in this film, no time for that bullshit--and is entirely unearned. Literally the first shots of the film are of Kylo murdering people. Then he acts--well, he fails, but JJ intends it to be--the part of a tough badass Sith, then when he and Rey are lightsabering on the ruins of the Death Star his mom haxxors into his mind by telepathy which makes him drop his saber. Leia evaporates like Luke in TLJ, Rey shanks Kylo, then heals him with the Force, Kylo has a two-minute conversation with the memory of his dad and he's redeemed, good guy Ben Solo again.

For all that the Knights of Ren were hyped in the marketing, most of their screen time was shots of them walking or marching, and then they had like 30 seconds of being destroyed like redshirts by Kylo.

Most of Palpatine's screentime were closeups of his face in darkness broken up by a strobelight.

Visuals were mostly uninspired. There was one good shot of the Falcon in front of the allied fleet, the Reylo duel on the Death Star was alright and the desert chase was mildly entertaining, but most of the film was either props doing all the work (if this film hadn't had a retarded Disney budget, there wouldn't be a single interesting frame in it) or boring dark shots that were supposed to look epic but instead were just dark, especially Palp's cave, where he apparently had an entire Sith cult, but they all they sat and watched him get slowly burned to death by his own lightining.

The whole premise of Palpatine being in the film at all not only cheapens the OT, it also exposes JJ once again for the hack incapable of original thought. Plucky nobly Jedi triumphs over the Emperor and manages to redeem the Emperor's puppet in the end. Palpatine's involvement is the underpinning of the whole film and this basic premise doesn't work, which means the rest of the film doesn't work.

Timeline are also out of whack. At some point it's said that Palpatine wants to unleash the Sith fleet in 16 hours, then later in the film Poe or Finn says there's only 8 hours left, which honestly makes me think that the whole latter half of the film takes place over 8 hours, which would be even more ridiculous then the slow space chase in TLJ. Also, Lando manages to gather an allied fleet of thousands of ships and get them over to the Final Battle in what seems like 5 minutes.

Hux is revealed as a spy for the Resistance, which majorly doesn't jive with when he was channeling Hitler on Starkiller Base in TFA.

I'm sure there's more stuff that I forgot, but YT video essayists will see to the rest. This is a dumb film and it stinks.

 

Obviously,

Spoiler

Molly Weasley let him had a piece of her mind via Howler, and demanded he cleaned up his act OR ELSE.

 

At the end of the movie, I looked at my friend and we started laughing. I do not know what I saw, but it is not Star Wars - it is a pure Disney product. A deception after the success of Marvel.

Main issue is the lack of overarching story. Prequel was the fall of the Republic, the original was the fall of the Empire, the sequel was a mess.

TRoS can be compared to a detailed draft: it has all it needs to be the sequel trilogy within one movie - it does not work.

I read Iger book in which he stated his respect for Lucas's creation. They droped the ball. They should have allowed him the kindness of finishing the Skywalker Saga before playing in his sandbox (even if he had crazy medichlorian ideas and Darth Lord Jar-Jar Binks). The sequel does not fit with the rest (Rogue One and Solo were well done).

They retconned so many things it does not make sense. The Force can do a lot of things, but it is not magic. I did not know teleportation existed in Star Wars and that Yoda was so weak in the force compared to Rey... Or that Kenobi could have been more useful in RotJ. My pet peeves is that Sidious was born around 84 BBY, became emperor at 65, lost the throne at 88 and the event of TRoS happened in 35 ABY (119 years), the math make no sense in my mind.

Best line of the movie: I am the spy (I can see a thousands meme from that scene).

 

The biggest problem with how the film is structured is that there is no buildup or anticipation of any kind. Plot points are brought up and dealt with immediately. It's like if you wrote a mystery novel with 50 mysteries, beginning a whole new mystery in one chapter and resolving it right away in the next one, while introducing the next mstery.
--- Post automerged ---
Also, I don't recall a single memorable music moment in the film.

 

I think the 2 words I'd use to describe this film would be: Uninspired and Derivative.

It wasn't bad. I just couldn't say it was good either. It was fine. There were a small number of nice moments. There were a lot of moments which were obvious or overplayed. There was nothing terrible. There were a few bits where I was quite bored, but other bits where I was (if not quite gripped) focused.

My biggest issue with this whole trilogy has been the lack of context to the plot. In the OT and PT we learn about the universe, about species and culture and politics. More so in PT than OT, that was I think one of the strengths of the PT, but the OT still gave us a lot of detail about the galaxy. In the sequel trilogy...I don't know where the First Order fits into things in comparison to the New Republic in comparison to the Resistance. In some parts the First Order seems like a paramilitary terrorist organisation. Other times it seems like they actually are in charge, and other times it seems like there's a full blown civil war. And it would have been so easy for them to throw in just a little more world building to give us the context to understand that sort of thing.

Also, I preferred the PT's presentation of the Jedi and the Force. I'm not so keen on this epic fantasy, mystical stuff where things keep happening that no one understands.

 

How do people feel about the opening text crawl revealing that Palpatine is around? I know the audience all knew he was back from the trailers, but imagine just sitting down to watch these films without that knowledge, and having such a huge reveal just tossed in like that. It just further cements the feeling that this is a sequel to a film that doesn't exist, a version of Episode 8 that ended with the Palpatine reveal.

 

Have you seen the despecialized edition of the original trilogy @Ched ? If not, you should really see it, especially if you have never seen the originals. My grandfather had the originals on vhs tapes, which I watched religiously when growing up. Many of the changes/additions made to the trilogy never felt right with me (and many others).