Star Wars EU and comics are the greatest source of lulz.

 

It wouldn't have to be Lucas, but it's really hard to see how having no plan was optimal. Sure they're paying the directors a lot of money to do a complex job and the plan could shift based on their artistic judgement, but I find it astonishing they didn't go into the Force Awakens with a basic outline of all three movies.

Right now in or out of the universe all the original heroes are dead, and the replacement cast hasn't quite measured up to the cultural pull of the original or even the prequels. I'll see the movie, which is probably enough for the staff of Lucasfilm, but they've pulled a lot of my enjoyment of the setting with the comprehensive failures of the original trilogy's heros.

 

But... Supreme executive power derives from a mandate of the masses, not from some farcical galactic ceremony. To quote another 70s film.

 

At this point, Disney needs Luuuke Skywalker to fix it.

 

Disneyes Eunt Domus!
People called Disneyes They Go The House!

 

Considering that the most likely candidate for that post seems to have been JJ I am actually thankful this didn't happen because I don't think I could have maintained my love for Star Wars through three episodes of his shit, no matter how nostalgic they are. Indeed I shudder what idiocy he came up with for this last episode (and I suspect I will be better off watching episode 3/6 to see the plotline done justice...). To me episode 7 is the worst of all the movies so far (though I am seemingly a strange guy for enjoying episode 8 a fair bit)

 

Saw a rather feasible fan theory. Silly, but feasible.

Spoiler

Palpatine 'created' Rey in the same way he 'created' Anakin, via some Sith jiggery-porkery. That's why he's back and relevant for this movie. Palps' force experiments are the loose thread that ties all the trilogies together. That's why Rey didn't see anyone in the dark side cave in The Last Jedi. She was abandoned at a young age because her junktrader parents were frightened of the immaculate conception / her manifesting force powers.

 

You're not wrong, let me be clear there. I cannot emphasize enough how fucking awful Abrams is as a creative; he can do visuals (most of the time), and he's not Lucas-level bad at dialogue, but the man can't write to save his life and has no idea how narratives work, even at the most basic, conceptual level. If he had been given ultimate power over the sequel trilogy, it would have been really awful.

But... It's really awful now anyway, so that's not exactly a major issue. And if he had been given the nod, then while the trilogy still would have been shit, it at least would have been internally consistent and there would have been some kind of actual plan for it (a bad one, but a plan nonetheless), and that's more than it has now.

I'd vastly prefer they'd picked someone, y'know, competent to helm the project, and given them total creative control, but really, at the end of the day they needed to give it to someone, and not doing so is one of the bigger issues with the whole trilogy.

 

!!!SPOILERS AHEAD, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

Death Star wreckage is on an Endor which has been devastated by falling debris (hashtag Ewok extinction, hashtag first genuine lol over this entire Disney-fied shit-show). I guess you can't drum on the helmets of your slain foes and build an Ark-ship so as to waddle off two-by-two at the same time. Maybe the ewoks stuffing Imperial corpses in their larders for safekeeping should have brainstormed some ideas about getting off their planet before the official Imperial recycling policy landed on their heads.

Victorious rebels "See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!" right the fuck out of there after the victory party and roasting Dagobah-mallows over Vader's corpse (warning, burning Vader suit and Dagobah-mallows both considered carcinogenic in California).

Palpatine had some of his infamous backup clones on the busted-ass Death Star, along with clones of his homemade Vader life-sized action figure, just in case (hashtag the Expanded Universe is only mostly dead, hashtag drill it if you have to).

A recently-disembodied Luke's Force presence is able to make use of one of the still-viable Anakin clones, possibly because Mara Jade (hashtag too little too late, Disney) knew about the clones and went to the wreckage to facilitate just such a resurrection. Nothin' says lovin' like your husband from the oven... er, incubator... in your father-in-law's clone body (hashtag "Choke me, Daddy.").

Unfortunately, something about this process accidentally awakens a Palpatine clone, as well (hashtag according to Keikaku, hashtag Keikaku means plan).

Cue Luke and Palpy's "glorious" double return, with their parts played by Hayden Christensen and some young newcomer (probably wearing Ian McDiarmid's CG face), respectively. Double points if reformed Vader comes back in one of the other Anakin clones, with Hayden in a dual role (and Hamill dubbing vocals for the Luke-akin clone).

Lando pilots his old ship while grimly wondering where he can get a young clone body, too... and a case of Krayt 45 malt liquor (hashtag one smooth motherfucker, hashtag should'a been Two-Face).

Rey attempts to flip over an incoming T.I.E. because why the fuck wouldn't she, surely it's easier than stepping aside (hashtag didn't learn from Prometheus, hashtag Stunning And Brave)? Looks like she'll make it...

She gets clipped by the T.I.E. (hashtag unintentional tie clip pun) and is basically torn in fucking half.

Cue Rose Tico in the cockpit, unabashedly making the internet trollface directly into camera (hashtag unwoke Asian/Woman driver clichés, hashtag body-check your privilege). "You don't win wars by killing the enemy, but by destroying those you barely know but profess to love... lolidunno, but you can't steal Finn now, bitch! Hope Vinnie Barbarino still wants to make ReyLo a thing. Gotta split! Tee-hee!"

Holdo's Force ghost appears just to stick it in the eye of the Jedi 1%. Force ghosts aren't just for hyper-accomplished Jedi anymore (hashtag break through the astral ceiling). Nobody gives a shit what she has to say and she fades back into double secret utter irrelevance... or a hell full of velociraptors and Mace Windu's severed limbs (hashtag I'm a full-meta alchemist, hashtag get the L outta here).

Obi Wan's Force ghost shows up to tell whoever still gives half a shit where he left the robotic lower half of Darth Maul, so they can put Ma-Rey Sue back together again. She's more machine than womyn, now.

Meanwhile, C-3P0 was also ripped in half in a scene that was supposed to be funny droid hijinks, but was actually just kind of gratuitous and disturbing. R2 attaches Rey's lower half to him (hashtag man I feel like a woman).

Palpy's up to his old tricks again, though, and uses the Force to impregnate C-3P0 via his gaping Reyness (cue mass triggerings over "Forced Reynal sex" hashtag life support system for a womb, hashtag droid consent question mark, hashtag mystery box, hashtag unwokest thing evvvvar exclamation point x3).

Movie ends with the seed of an idea that could have been good but just left everyone sad, ashamed, and unable to push any of the shitty new merchandise. Already angry fans are furious. Already entrenched activists insist It Just Works... except for the parts that are completely *phobic. Misused orig-trig actors continue to march ever closer to the grave while Disney spins its wheels trying to please the unpleasant and un-please-able. Kennedy continues to waste space. Rian's head finally becomes perfectly spherical and rolls off his shoulders, causing a geyser of soy to shoot out of his neck stump. The head rolls out the door with a contract for its own trilogy clamped in its shit-eating grin.

You heard it here first.

I haven't spent a dime on Nu St4r W4rz: Best decision ever.

Hopefully I drove that annoying and very much dead hashtag cliché into the ground harder than Tico T-boning a disgusted Finn, and made it more irritating by not actually writing them as proper hashtags. I woke up at 2am with pleaseletitbeheartburn so bad it felt like my lungs were in a vice, so everyone has to suffer.

 

J.J. Abrams Confirms Emperor Returns In 'Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker'

 

Honestly Telling is palpatine is in this movie is all you need to know about the state of Star Wars.

Palpatine should’ve been left out of any media. That’s a huge spoiler that could have wowed me in the movie.instead I’ll go into the movie expectation it. Meh.

 

There were rumours last year that Matt Smith is in the Episode 9 and plays young Palpatine, but few months later he confirmed that he's not going to be in the film at all. Now, assuming the rumour wasn't just a rumour, I'm guessing that early plan was to have the Emperor as a young clone, but then they decided to have the original actor return for a nostalgia factor. Which isn't a bad decision. If they want the Emperor to be involved then having Ian McDiarmid back is the correct way to handle it.

 

Oh, I remember that rumour. I find it quite amusing that Matt Smith was both a great Prince Philip and I could totally imagine him as young Palpatine, when Ian McDiarmid looks nothing like Philip.

 

Ehhhh. Perhaps from a quality story-telling pov. But after the divisiveness of TLJ, its pretty clear they needed something to hype up the OT and Prequel fans and actually give them something they care about to theory-craft over. If you go to any Star Wars reddit, this is all they're talking about.

 

I'll freely admit being in the minority with enjoying the living hell out of TLJ and finding it measurably better than TFA (fanwank that it was - if I was looking for that done right, I'd just rewatch Rogue One), and this trailer... gives me little to anything to work with, mostly because a lack of connective narrative tissue and a reliance on the same sort of textural references that exasperated me about TFA (god, JJ Abrams was just the wrong fit for this franchise...).

Beyond that, I'm just reminded of all the old news articles from the early 80s I read about the release of Empire Strikes Back and apparently just how much fan backlash it got back then for upending established narrative conventions, especially surrounding the Vader reveal, and then just how much of it felt mirrored with TLJ the past few years. I'm also aware that for as much as Star Wars is committee designed, the script and direction had to been approved by Lucasfilm in their entirety, so there is SOME vision with all of this and Johnson wouldn't have been allowed to go as rogue as chunks of the internet presume he did...

...which I'll freely admit is the only thing giving me hope for this movie, because the other co-writer with Abrams is Chris Terrio, one of the guys who cowrote Batman vs. Superman: Dawn Of Justice and Justice League. I mean, say what you will about Johnson, I'd take him over THAT.

 

This inspired me to rewatch Nerd Crew. RLM really is the best part about new Star Wars movies being made.

 

Well, my hype levels just diminished considerably.

 

He's also the screenwriter for Argo though, which is an absolutely fan-fucking-tastic film. There was some interview somewhere with someone that basically said Affleck thought the initial script of BvS was absolute garbage, and the only way he'd agree to being Batfleck was to let Chris Terrio overhaul the script. I generally trust Affleck's directorial sense, so if anything, we probably would have gotten an even shittier BvS and Justice League had Terrio not been part of those projects. God fucking forbid.

 

I'd honestly have loved it if Affleck had directed BvS. He's quite good imo.