The Rise of Skywalker ROS What went wrong (Spoilers Welcomed)

[DarthDaveBanner]

Terrio talking there reminds of before BvS when he was waxing lyrical about the movie taking a look at the complex philosophy of the problem of evil and suffering... when in reality what we got was a Lex Luthor who was angry that God didn't step in to stop his dad beating him.

 

[Detective Conan]

Terrio talking there reminds of before BvS when he was waxing lyrical about the movie taking a look at the complex philosophy of the problem of evil and suffering... when in reality what we got was a Lex Luthor who was angry that God didn't step in to stop his dad beating him.

Yeah, he sounds really pretentious.

 

[thangaran]

I actually really enjoyed the movie overall. Much more so than the bull**** TLJ. Did it have its problems, of course but it felt a lot more in line with TFA, albeit super rushed and too dense.

I know this is probably so childish of me to think but when they announced a new trilogy involving the old characters, I had always dreamed of seeing Luke just totally kick ass with a massive display of awesome jedi powers and lightsaber action against the first order or some sith enemies. Like physically kicking ass, not some holographic projection

 

[Spider-Fan]

I don't want to single anybody out, but I have to say that every time I watch The Last Jedi it just cements to me more and more that Rian Johnson understood the force and why it works so well in the original movies more so than anybody else who's worked on them since. Everybody is making the force all about doing cool things, and cool action, and outrageous set pieces. But the force was not ever about that. Yes that was a byproduct of using the force, but at its core the force was something universal. Something the connected people to one another and the universe itself.. Something spiritual. Not just an excuse for people have superpowers. This is why I like the Last Jedi so much. It just feels to me so much more like the original movies in spirit than anything else they've done since. The Star Wars movies when I was growing up were never about super ninja action or anything like that. That's not what happened to my imagination, but unfortunately it seems like that's all anybody ever wants to see. I feel like the spirit of the forest has been twisted into something it was never supposed to be.

I'm not trying to target anybody by saying that, it's just something that I personally have found frustrating. The Force is an idea, not an excuse.

 

[FeedOnATreeFrog]

I thought TLJ left the story in an exciting place with young Supreme Leader Kylo Ren.

1. Tales of Luke's heroism in TLJ and Kylo Ren's humiliation at Crait should have been what was threatening Kylo Ren's power across the galaxy, not Palpatine randomly popping up. If anything, Kylo in his desperation and paranoia could have turned to an ancient power he didn't fully understand, bringing back the threat of Palpatine via some sort of possession (either himself or Rey being the victim). But having Sheev back in the flesh again, right from the start, felt like shallow repetitive fanfic which undercut the overall dramatic trajectory of the trilogy.

2. They rushed the important stories by wasting time on things that didn't matter. Specifically, they spent a lot of time 'developing' Finn and Poe with the addition of backstories and new side characters, but they didn't actually create an interesting conflict for these two characters with these developments, thus a giant waste of time.

I perhaps would have had their friendship tested over a differing ideology on how to handle the FO (maybe the Resistance get their hands on their own superweapon in their desperation), with Poe hellbent on wiping out the FO, and Finn standing in opposition, knowing that much of the FO are just kids like himself who had no choice in the matter. Maybe Finn lays down his life to save thousands of Stormtrooper kids, which ends up inspiring the Stormtroopers within the First Order to rebel or lay down their arms, breaking the cycle of violence. So, Rey saves Ben (or vice versa) and prevents the return of Palpatine, but Finn is the unlikely hero who actually stops the war.

 

[moviedoors]

I don't want to single anybody out, but I have to say that every time I watch The Last Jedi it just cements to me more and more that Rian Johnson understood the force and why it works so well in the original movies more so than anybody else who's worked on them since. Everybody is making the force all about doing cool things, and cool action, and outrageous set pieces. But the force was not ever about that. Yes that was a byproduct of using the force, but at its core the force was something universal. Something the connected people to one another and the universe itself.. Something spiritual. Not just an excuse for people have superpowers. This is why I like the Last Jedi so much. It just feels to me so much more like the original movies in spirit than anything else they've done since. The Star Wars movies when I was growing up were never about super ninja action or anything like that. That's not what happened to my imagination, but unfortunately it seems like that's all anybody ever wants to see. I feel like the spirit of the forest has been twisted into something it was never supposed to be.

I'm not trying to target anybody by saying that, it's just something that I personally have found frustrating. The Force is an idea, not an excuse.

Nailed it. Johnson legitimately engaged with the spiritual, philosophical side of the Force and what being a Jedi is actually about. That aspect of it wasn't check-listing lip-service in between action scenes, it was the point.

And JJ is the opposite. The Force is just about doing cool, badass things.

 

[Gut0nez]

Finn standing in opposition, knowing that much of the FO are just kids like himself who had no choice in the matter. Maybe Finn lays down his life to save thousands of Stormtrooper kids, which ends up inspiring the Stormtroopers within the First Order to rebel or lay down their arms, breaking the cycle of violence.

Dude, stop reading my mind!

 

[OrganaSkywalker]

What went wrong......
Well almost nothing. Just some fast pacing but the movie was one of the best. We got to see the spiritual side of the force and the physical side. We got a lot of answers. And Leia had a great and emotional send off. For me best of this trilogy. Maybe even one off the better ones of the skywalker saga.

 

[Prettyricky]

The opening crawl and on

 

[childeroland]

Too many characters.

Rey Palpatine.

Bringing back the Emperor when you had a perfectly good villain in Kylo Ren.

Not using Zorri Bliss enough.

Reylo, as much as they did it.

"MARTHA" I mean "Ben"

 

[CaptainWagner]

So, SO many things went wrong and a lot of you have put a lot of my primary issues very well. If I were to break it down to the biggest mistakes:

1) Surface Level Story-Telling: TCW, TLJ and Rebels had been doing fascinating things with the Force and taking it to a deep level, much more similar to how it was first presented. In the hands of JJ, suddenly it's back to surface level Good Jedi vs. Evil Sith and doing cool magic stuff. It's basically "Star Wars by Michael Bay." We get the same thing with the Empire. We set up this humanization of the stormtroopers with Finn and now Jannah, but then it immediately goes back to "Let's mass-murder these faceless people who were just like us save for a single life-altering moment". Another example: Hux. There's all these layers of him taking issue with the Sith leadership, but then that gets boiled down to "I want Kylo to lose" and is immediately abandoned to make way for one-note bad guy Pryde.

2) Conflict of Vision: It's so obvious here that JJ hated TLJ and tried to undo everything in this movie. It feels like he tried to cram his own version of Episode 8 into the first 45 minutes of this, making everything feel rushed and not letting any moments really land. And it doesn't just ruin the pacing, it completely upsets the thematic and story consistency of the trilogy as a whole. JJ wants Kylo to have his cool helmet back? He rebuilds it with no motivation. JJ doesn't like Rose? She's written out and her romance with Finn ignored. JJ wanted to give the shippers a Reylo romance? Have them kiss, no matter how unearned or problematic it is. JJ and Terrio think Rey isn't interesting if her parents aren't "important"? Retcon that and have her abandon her character development to literally take the identity of the people she wants to be like.

and the absolute worst affect of the movie:

3) The Worst Fans Win: This movie feels like it was written by a focus group of anti-TLJ trolls. Not the people who had legitimate criticisms, the people who couldn't handle the lack of "cool" Jedi moments, action sequences and reverent nostalgia. And worse than them, I think the thing I hate most about the movie is that the toxic people who bullied Kelly Marie Tran off of social media got exactly what they wanted.

 

[Rorschach2012]

It's very simple, the studio listened to the whiny fanboys.

I’m glad. I loved it.

 

[Yellow Cyclone]

It's very simple, the studio listened to the whiny fanboys.

if they listened they wouldn't have brought back JJ and palpatine to begin with

so tired of that "whiny fanboy" narrative

the answer to OP's question is quite simple. no plan. period. it's only 3 freaking movies. feige's down the hall cranking out 20+ movies in a decade to build to something, and these clowns couldn't plan out THREE movies in half the time. there is literally no excuse. it's a classic trilogy format, it's not rocket science. but apparently it is

and with no plan, you have no coordination. and with no coordination you have people on different pages...trevorrow needs luke alive. but rian doesn't care about any of jj's mystery boxes and kills luke. but jj doesn't care about anything because he's just the fire and forget setup guy, until suddenly he has to come back and take over for colin, fix rian's mistakes and answer his own mystery boxes that were ignored by rian. and collectively it was about introducing a new generation to new heroes but nothing was earned, there was no emotional connection, and character development. some characters like finn actually regressed. hell poe regressed too, that's TWO of your new leads!

not to mention you have the OT actors and you don't have any of them in the same scene, han/luke never meet, luke's reaction to han gets cut because of course it would, and even poor chewie gets the shaft in TFA with leia. that last example is a perfect microcosm of how much "care" and "respect" went into the ST. how does that get by multiple people in the editing room, and first/2nd cuts? the audience knew that right away. amateur hour.

honestly if it wasn't for favreau doing it as a fan on a spec(!) pitch, their track record would be completely junk

 

[Tony Stark]

The more I think about it, bringing back Palpatine just undercut Luke/Vader/Anakin's story line. It's really pissing me off. I don't mind Rey being revealed as Palpatine's grand daughter, and that could have led to a strong story arc in and of itself, but The moment I see in the opeing crawl, "THE DEAD SPEAK", I was just like, 'you have to be f-ing kidding me!'

The only thing that makes me like Palpatine in this film is it's hard not to love any time Ian McDiarmid gets to revisit that character, but it was at the expense of the larger story.

 

[thangaran]

if they listened they wouldn't have brought back JJ and palpatine to begin with

so tired of that "whiny fanboy" narrative

the answer to OP's question is quite simple. no plan. period. it's only 3 freaking movies. feige's down the hall cranking out 20+ movies in a decade to build to something, and these clowns couldn't plan out THREE movies in half the time. there is literally no excuse. it's a classic trilogy format, it's not rocket science. but apparently it is

and with no plan, you have no coordination. and with no coordination you have people on different pages...trevorrow needs luke alive. but rian doesn't care about any of jj's mystery boxes and kills luke. but jj doesn't care about anything because he's just the fire and forget setup guy, until suddenly he has to come back and take over for colin, fix rian's mistakes and answer his own mystery boxes that were ignored by rian. and collectively it was about introducing a new generation to new heroes but nothing was earned, there was no emotional connection, and character development. some characters like finn actually regressed. hell poe regressed too, that's TWO of your new leads!

not to mention you have the OT actors and you don't have any of them in the same scene, han/luke never meet, luke's reaction to han gets cut because of course it would, and even poor chewie gets the shaft in TFA with leia. that last example is a perfect microcosm of how much "care" and "respect" went into the ST. how does that get by multiple people in the editing room, and first/2nd cuts? the audience knew that right away. amateur hour.

honestly if it wasn't for favreau doing it as a fan on a spec(!) pitch, their track record would be completely junk

agree with a lot of what you said here. Despite Trevorrow being an average director, him giving Luke a happy ending would have been so so so much better than what we received. Having Luke play a much bigger role in the action would have been so good to see as well. Yes not having any of the old cast physically meet was remarkably dumb.

I think given the legacy of these characters, there should have been a general or even a detailed outline of what to do. If this was a totally fresh take or different trilogy altogether thenI think going by the fly can work. Not with these beloved old characters though. This trilogy ****ed them hard

 

[writer0327]

Mainly the regurgitation of all the standard Star Wars tropes. It was spectacle and melodrama without any real purpose. Sound and fury signifying nothing. I don't hate the movie, I don't think its any good and it didn't do anything the other SW movies haven't already done, except they did them better. At moments I felt like I was watching a rehash of ROTJ.

 

[writer0327]

I completely agree with this as well. Which doesn't really contradict my prior point about the script being the core problem since he helped write this movie. But in general, Abrams is not a wonderful director in my opinion. Yes his movies look very professional and visually appealing and he can come up with some dynamic action sequences, but when it comes to the story end of his movies he almost always drops the ball for me. His movies are rarely about anything, and if they are it's not really overall important to the movie. Especially in his genre filmmaking here with the Star Wars and Star Trek films. All he does is a greatest hits version of better movies with some new window dressing. That's it and that does not do a lot for me.

In other words, JJ is quickly becoming Zack Snyder.

 

[moviedoors]

The only thing that makes me like Palpatine in this film is it's hard not to love any time Ian McDiarmid gets to revisit that character, but it was at the expense of the larger story.

Yes. McDiarmid absolutely crushes it. It is a lethal serpent of a performance. His visual presentation is appropriately dark and dire and doom-filled; he just looks ****ing scary. And the way the sound mix turns his voice into this seismic croak culminates it into the the most viscerally menacing version of the Emperor yet presented in a Star Wars film.

The problem is, The Emperor just shouldn't even be in this movie.

 

[Blade Hoarder]

Before I saw this movie I would've said Chris Terrio. But after seeing it, seems like John Jay had Terrio on speed dial. Number 1, replacing JJ's wife. He would get a call from JJ every time he had an idea in his head and nag Terrio to include it. Every dang one. Plus all the extraneous BS that existed solely for selling toys. Focus group additions. Not even the Coen Bros could make coherent script under these circumstances.

 

[writer0327]

Nailed it. Johnson legitimately engaged with the spiritual, philosophical side of the Force and what being a Jedi is actually about. That aspect of it wasn't check-listing lip-service in between action scenes, it was the point.

And JJ is the opposite. The Force is just about doing cool, badass things.

You'd be surprised how many fans actually want exactly this. Super-saiyan Jedis going ham on mofos is what Star Wars is all about.

 

[Mr. Peanut]

You'd be surprised how many fans actually want exactly this. Super-saiyan Jedis going ham on mofos is what Star Wars is all about.

I think most fans want a healthy mix of both. ESB had introspection about the nature of the Force and it had what is still possibly the most fun and exciting duel between Force users that we've ever had.

Luke's introspection about the Force in TLJ was mostly handled well and is one of its strongest points, but it was also tinged with the feeling that Rian was using it as meta commentary about the "naive" ideals championed by the original trilogy. Why do we need meta commentary about Star Wars in Star Wars? And it also felt like Rian was being purposely contrarian when he denied fans one last cool action scene with Luke before he died. What's wrong with doing things, from time to time, that you know will make fans happy and excited? We could have had our "Captain America weilding Mjolnir " moment, but Rian doesn't like the feeling of appealing to fans.

 

[Spider-Fan]

I think most fans want a healthy mix of both. ESB had introspection about the nature of the Force and it had what is still possibly the most fun and exciting duel between Force users that we've ever had.

Luke's introspection about the Force in TLJ was mostly handled well and is one of its strongest points, but it was also tinged with the feeling that Rian was using it as meta commentary about the "naive" ideals championed by the original trilogy. Why do we need meta commentary about Star Wars in Star Wars? And it also felt like Rian was being purposely contrarian when he denied fans one last cool action scene with Luke before he died. What's wrong with doing things, from time to time, that you know will make fans happy and excited? We could have had our "Captain America weilding Mjolnir " moment, but Rian doesn't like the feeling of appealing to fans.

I'm going to be fair to Rian Johnson and point out that JJ Abrams started the meta narrative on Star Wars in his film. But nevertheless, Johnson ran with that idea as well. The difference here is Johnson did attempt to give people the fan service moment where Luke faces off against the first order with the laser sword, they just don't like the package that came in. The difference is, what Luke does in The Last Jedi feels like a Jedi thing to do. He finds a way to save the resistance and faced off against the first door in a non-confrontational way. Overtly fanservice Force Powers is how we got the prequel trilogy, and those movies suck. When you focus too much on that garbage then you have no story and you have no point. Which is something I think this new movie is guilty of. It's fanservice the movie and ultimately doesn't say anything

 

[jmc]

Having now watched it its obvious where the problem ultimately lies with these last two films. Both of these last two movie are both acting as second and third films combined. Had TLJ ended when Kylo offered Rey the chance to join him in creating something new it would have set up 3 film perfectly, but Johnson added what was practically an epilogue, which more or less capped everything off in a bow, leaving JJ with no real option other than to start a new story from scratch. What's left is a complete mess of a trilogy that is not only meaningless, but outright retroactively screws up plot and character arcs from the Original and Prequel films.

 

[Mr. Peanut]

I'm going to be fair to Rian Johnson and point out that JJ Abrams started the meta narrative on Star Wars in his film. But nevertheless, Johnson ran with that idea as well. The difference here is Johnson did attempt to give people the fan service email at where Luke faces off against the first order with the laser sword, they just don't like the package that came in. The difference is, what Luke does in The Last Jedi feels like a Jedi thing to do. He finds a way to save the resistance and faced off against the first door in a non-confrontational way. Overtly fanservice Force Powers is how we got the prequel trilogy, and those movies suck. When you focus too much on that garbage then you have no story and you have no point. Which is something I think this new movie is guilty of. It's fanservice the movie and ultimately doesn't say anything

J.J. did have some meta elements, but it was more nostalgic callbacks than straight up commentary and deconstruction. But either way it's definitely not the aspect of TFA that should have been expanded on, in my opinion.

I don't really think Luke's method was the Jedi way. Jedi aren't pacifists, they are defenders of peace. The First Order were clear aggressors and were murdering countless billions of people, not to mention enslaving and brainwashing countless others. A Jedi would absolutely be justified in killing them in defense of their victims.

 

[Spider-Fan]

J.J. did have some meta elements, but it was more nostalgic callbacks than straight up commentary and deconstruction. But either way it's definitely not the aspect of TFA that should have been expanded on, in my opinion.

I don't really think Luke's method was the Jedi way. Jedi aren't pacifists, they are defenders of peace. The First Order were clear aggressors and were murdering countless billions of people, not to mention enslaving and brainwashing countless others. A Jedi would absolutely be justified in killing them in defense of their victims.

Luke was defending them. They got away right? I can use the same logic you're throwing me to justify that Luke could have killed either Vader or the Emperor, but just like that it wasn't the Jedi way. Luke won that battle by winning the battle for Vader's soul. He didn't do it by super ninja tricks. What Luke did in The Last Jedi was absolutely the Jedi way