Nobody uses this board but just in case we want a place to talk about the Final Final Final Star Wars movie when not everyone has seen it yet I figured I'd throw this up.
I sure hope some Skywalkers get risen!
Edited 6:36pm, December 18, 2019 by FALCON X-0N, author.
I dont feel much will change for us. Its like the mandalorian. As the client said. First comes the revolution then the suffering. Whatever alliance or republic comes out of this.. will still have no time for the edge of the universe. In the long run it doesnt affect us much other than deciding who are enemies are. As for..there only being one jedi. That doesnt mean much. We have ignored the vong for 20 years. We can hand wave that. That and Lucasfilm handwaved that. For most of our lives it was "Luke was last jedi period". Then..there was katarn. Quinlan Vos...etc.. and even in new canon theres kanaan , ezra, ahsoka, kanaan's son (who if I was rian johnson would of been cynical and said died at luke's academy..but JJ would probably say he lives. ) the numerous force kids they rescue during Rebels.... long story short. SW has a history of going THERE IS ONLY O- .......except for him. And him. And her.. oh and her but she doesnt identify as a jedi anymore so its a-ok. Oh and he was trapped in a hyperspace dimension for all the important canon events so he technically was "dead"... etc etc etc. We dont have to play it verbatim. Our only real concern is deciding who our next big bad is...which.. I have...ideas.
Wasn't the most perfect movie out there, but I enjoyed it. I would put it above the previous two, but then that is just me. They did wrap up most of the character arcs, left some new ones open.
Spoilers, I kinda expected the ending with Ben... he was someone who would be hard for most people to forgive... if he could get even one person to forgive him, I think that was a victory.
That being said... the whole force material transference thing... was (/V\) level bullshit
I liked it, but...it wasn't great. I'll admit after seeing it twice, there are...considerable problems with it as a franchise-ender and as a trilogy-ender and as a film itself.
Now, some of the big emotional moments work- -especially towards the end- -and that's largely due to the performances of the actors. Driver and Ridley do have good chemistry, and Driver especially switches from Kylo to Ben and then suddenly, with him doing very little different, he is so clearly Han Solo's kid that it's perfect.
Babu Frikk is a tiny puppet. Babu Frikk speaks only in muppet-speak and Fonzie. Babu Frikk is my homeboy.
Rian Johnson is much better filmmaker when it comes to shot selection and all than JJ Abrams, but damn if JJ doesn't know how to keep you on the edge of your seat. Everything's colorful, boisterous, and light- -he keeps in Star Wars. It's adventerous.
It does kinda have the Revenge of the Sith problem where there's clearly two movies of content in here and they're just like fuck it let's chop it up. Sith survived basically by cutting out every subplot, and Skywalker is...cutting out every payoff?
Honestly, the biggest thing I noticed on my second run-through was just how much damn stuff the movie pays off from the original trilogy, at the explicit cost of ignoring stuff from their own trilogy! Did Luke Skywalker's death in the last film ignite the fire of hope that will burn the First Order, inspiring others to stand up and fight as we start to see at the end of the film? No! And it's enforced too - Poe wonders if it was all for nothing as no one has stood up since Crayt. But if Lando flies around every planet in the galaxy in the next 45 minutes...well, he's Lando so we'll let that one pass. Is Finn in love with Rey or trying to tell her he's Force-Sensitive? Who cares? We're only going to mention it repeatedly and never pay it off. But we finally get to see Leia as a Jedi after Luke said he's teach her back in Return of the Jedi. Is Rose Tycho in this fucking movie? Apparently yes, but you'll be forgiven if you don't realize it! Can you come from nothing but still end up with a grand importance in the world? No! Literally you can only have the Force, or matter at all, only if you are secretly the heir to one of two dynasties. But at least Chewie finally got the medal JJ Abrams wanted him to get back in 1977.
Even though I feel like it's an enormous wasted opportunity to not go into how the fleet at the end should have been inspired by Luke, I did enjoy seeing the galaxy just show up and kick the Empire's ass with the biggest fleet we've ever seen. Also, on my second run-through I am 95% certain we see the Ghost land behind the Falcon at the very end.
I'll admit, it FELT a lot more like Star Wars than The Last Jedi. A lot more. But I kinda feel like that's because the movie is kinda stitched up like a greatest hits album. And maybe Rian Johnson was a bit 'too clever by half' for Star Wars, but JJ spends too much of this movie trying just to walk back the last movie, and then rest of it trying to pay off stuff he wanted to see in Star Wars two trilogies ago, and then whatever umbles are left gets used for his own characters and stories. It's like a Star Wars: Greatest Hits album.
The Force-ethereal-pulling didn't bother me, they did hint at it in the last one. It's dumb but not as dumb as some of the other stuff, especially from the EU, that I'm kinda bummed they brought back, like EVERYTHING HAS A SUPERLASER, or FORCE LIGHTNING STORMS THAT DESTROY FLEETS!
That and the "I'M EVERY SITH" "OH YEAH I AM IRON MAN INFINITY PLUS ONE" moment was real cringey it was one of the few bits at the end which didn't land for me. But Palpy's motives and all kind of rewrites a lot of how the Sith work, right?- -so was Palpatine an evil amagalm-man of generations of Sith the whole time? If Luke had killed him Return of the Jedi, would there have been an immediate possession?
Don't get me wrong, The Emperor being alive this whole time doesn't bother me on any real power-creep level though. The minute that Meriadoc Brandybuck mentions "cloning! Sith Dark science!" I flashed to the old EU. Didn't Palpy have backup bodies ready to go, and didn't said bodies tend to rot and collapse after he jumped in there? Same with why they can't do the Holdo manouver again- -just don't worry about it, it isn't important to this movie.
The weird ritual where he is the Sith Collective though was a bit odd. Maybe that was just what he had become, but all his dialogue implies that this is just kinda how the Sith do now in the Disney Canon- -the rule of two was because when your Sith 'successor' killed you, you jumped into their body and then so on and so forth until it's this weird Dune-style other memory of all of histories greatest monsters. All this time, Cru, Palpy was Baron Harkonnen!
Part of it is like...I mean I know there's a sense of power-creep, but the sequel trilogy has had a lot of what we'd call in here moderiffic powers, but you can forgive most of that due to just changing times and audiences not seeing a lil' Force Choke as threatening unless the guy is put on a gimble and spun around like an egg beater. Blocking a lightsaber was cool as hell in '83, but now, audiences have seen the matrix and we need to have our heroes be able to stop and deflect them with their bare hands. So I just try to roll with it, even if my inner RPer is going all "that's now how the Force works!"
While we're on the topic, so while the ending beat with Ben and Rey did work for me, but did anyone else feel like there's a Force Ghost Anakin off to the side going "WAIT ALL I HAD TO DO TO SAVE THE LOVE OF MY LIFE AND BRING HER BACK FROM CERTAIN DEATH WAS TOUCH HER ON THE STOMACH AND GIVE'ER A KISS WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME! ...WHAT THE FUCK GUYS! ...I MURDERED CHILDREN FOR FUCKS SAKE!"
...So yeah like C+/B-, might go up when I see it on video
I thought it was A+ but what do I know.. I adored Star Trek Into Darkness. No zon Im not letting that one go :D Also it doesnt invalidate anything because he never had access to padmes body at her death. She was being buried while he was busy being rebuilt. Nor would it change him turning to the dark side for that reason as his visions didnt show her death to be caused by him, only that she would die. Its one of those pre-destination paradoxes where knowing the future causes the future. So.. she would of still been dead cuz of his choices leading up to that. That and lets not pretend anything that happens in Sith made any sense. This awesome nonsense yet still nonsense makes more sense than that film. As for power creep. You thought it was power creep. I thought it was fair game and you guys called me crazy when I tried shit like that.. #CRUWASRIGHT #Youowemecookies #Cruisonlyrightonceevery10KYearsLetmeHavethis also no ...if palpy was baron harkonnen hed be getting off on his granddaughter having sex with men while semi-possessing her. Cuz thats a thing. Thats how Vladdy rolls.
As for superlasers on everything. Ehh. why not. I mean shit.....a galaxy class can glass a planet all by itself. They just dont cuz they are the good guys. I mean shit....they avenge Jadzia's death.. BY EXPLODING A GOD DAMN SUN.... well..making it unstable and semi-exploding but yeah. And they try and save a planet by ironically making the most powerfull weapon known to man....a giant black hole generator that you only need a single drop of to obliterate planets. Granted that last part was JJ... but the jadzia part wasnt. Im just saying. Before we get grumpy about everything having a weapon of mass destruction lets not forget what else we allow in our game world :)
The how sith work thing..........we actually dont know. None of the ancient sith wars are canon anymore so. We dont..really know. The new canon darth bane still created the rule of two but alot of the specifics are murky. Theres nothing to really say it never worked like that all along. I mean..lets not kid ourselves Palpy owned like tons of jedi without breaking a sweat. And he may very well of been planning to use ultimate ani's body/continue the cycle before he got all cyborged up. According to new canon there were no encounters with sith ever again post-bane. At least none that were recorded/proven. Darth Maul was the first canon encounter in a millenium. Im not justifying the plot point..just pointing out that all we do know about the sith was erased. All we really have at this point are the few canon novels on the subject, and the movies which really dont give us alot of information to go on compared to the old canon. So....yeah. Theres nothign saying thats NOT how it works ..nothign to say it is either. I mean shit in New Canon the sith as a race dont exist.THey were formed directly by a schism within the jedi order. Original legends sith started out as a distinct species at first. All thats really known is they cut off from the jedi 5000 years ago. Engaged in minor skirmishes..then about 1300 years before the clone wars they engaged in a centuries long direct conflict with the jedi order that completely destroyed the Old Republic..and the sith were wiped out to the last man. Or so they thought. Bane survived. And while the jedi rebuilt the modern galactic republic. The new canon makes a big distinction between THe Old Republic, and the Galactic Republic. The former being the original organization that was destroyed during the Jedi-sith war. The galactic republic being what replaced it and is what we would for the most part refer to as the old republic in most contexts.
Long story short......theres just SOOO much we dont know. We are kinda in a trek situation now. Where canon wise all we have to go on is the movies. Sure theres some neat extended universe for trek stuff but not all of it fits (and unlike lucasfilm they never had a canon master who was in charge of continuity and making sure it all jived. ). This is where we are basically with star wars. But in the end....we must recognize the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars. In trek..we save whales. In Star Wars..SPACE WHALES FUCKING KILL GRAND ADMIRAL THRAWN. SPACE NARWHALS FOR LIFE MUTHAFUCKER *MIC DROP * P.S. they're the jedi of the sea. Also apparently the new canon didnt create it cuz apparently during the early clone wars series saesee tinn makes a comment that there hasnt been battles like these since the days of the old republic. So ..even back in the pre-force awakens days they considered the Galactic Republic and the Old Republic two very distinct entitities.
Edited 8:54am, December 23, 2019 by Elusa Harkonnen, author.
