Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, December 20, 2019) Movie • Page 341

I never said Rey was dumb. Can you clarify your question?

 

My bad. I thought you said Rey was dumb along with the message. I got it mixed up.

 

I didn't like that either, but if that's the way you want to go, at least add some depth to it. Maybe Kylo is serving another master because he needs a surrogate father since Han was always running around the galaxy and Luke failed him.

 

I love Rey. This movie makes it harder to still do so, but I still ultimately do.

 

I still never got the message that the force can make you really strong without any training just because you’re related to someone that was very strong. Sure, Luke and Rey both started off being able to use the force, but without training they wouldn’t have been able to succeed. I’d say the bloodline is like hidden potential if anything. Without training you won’t progress just because you have blood, but if you train then it awakens their true abilities which is boosted because of their link to other strong force users

 

But the combined lesson of the six films is that the only way to be the super hero protagonist of a Star Wars film is to be from a significant bloodline.

Even if the films don’t dwell on that theme, it’s implicit in how they chose to tell these stories.

And it’s especially stark given how strongly TLJ refuted that story structure, only for ROS to discard it.

 

It’s one thing for the Skywalker line to be strong. It originated from a virgin birth, possibly conceived by the force. It totally makes sense for that to mean something.

but Palpatine? As far as we know, he was just some manipulative evil dude from Naboo. Why should his bloodline be special, too?

while it doesn’t contradict things on a surface level, it adds a layer of blood being crucial to strength in the force vs the force itself dictating who is stronger.

sort random but connected, did you see the Freddie prince jr rant haha? I know he goes off, but I think he was nailing the core of things and it has nothing to do with blood. That is my understanding of force. And I just don’t see that in this movie.

 

Honestly it's the fasc-y undertones that really turn me off from the Special Bloodline vision of Star Wars. Like the Jedi have superior genetics and that's why they're the heroes. Kind of flies in the face of a franchise that started out with the villains being not-thinly-veiled-at-all literal space Nazis, but what do I know.

Also if Finn wanted to tell Rey that he was Force-sensitive, does that mean he's secretly the long-lost grandson of Mace Windu or something dumb like that? He has to come from a special bloodline to be a Force-sensitive hero, right?

 

I think this is why it feels off for me as well. Anakin's story revolved around a "chosen one" prophecy that was supposed to be a one-off, special sort of situation. But this reveal almost reinforces that "Nope, you really do just have to be born from superior genetics" and it doesn't leave much room for it to be more interesting. I get that Luke's story was similar and nothing is really contradicted here, but I don't know... now it feels less special I guess?

 

The Knights of Ren were a big letdown. Seemed like JJ Abrams thought they were a pretty cool idea but then he did absolutely nothing with them in TFA and kicked the can down the road to Rian Johnson. Rian Johnson had an actual story to tell and they didn't fit into it. So JJ comes back in the third film and brings them back but does jack shit with them again!

Kylo Ren should have been the supreme leader of the whatever here - the big bad - and the Knights of Ren should have been his lackeys instead of Palpatine coming back and having Kylo play second fiddle to him.

I will always be against the idea of Rey being a Palpatine, but I think the idea would have worked better without the emperor actually coming back and just having Kylo use that information to try to manipulate Rey. Hell, even better would be to have Kylo giving her that information to fuck with her and neither Rey nor us as the audience know for sure whether he is just saying that or not.

 

When the officers of the lead Star Destroyer saw horses on their ship, why didn’t they just try spinning to kill everyone on the surface? That’s a neat trick.

 

"Now this is podracing!"

 

Here is something I thought the story could've gone, based on what JJ tried to do ish. I'll try and be brief.

Instead of trying to shoehorn ideas, run with the story after TLJ:
-Set the story within a couple of years
-Have Kylo portrayed as being haunted by voice: Han, Luke, Snoke
-Fracture between Hux and Kylo, maybe a splinter with Kylo running off with the Knights of Ren
-Kylo going so mad that he starts hearing Palpatine's voice. I would base this off Momin in the Vader comics, Palpatine's spirit possesses Vader's mask and that has what has been controlling things behind the scenes. (I'm not against the idea of Palpatine coming back, but how he's brought back. This grounds it with more of the established universe, even if the example is outside the films, but that hasn't been an issue since Disney. It also gives a purpose to Vader's mask showing up in VII)
-Palpatine leads Kylo and the Knights of Ren to wherever to basically unite Vader's mask with a host. Palpatine resurrected.
-Fight between FO, Kylo/Palpatine/Knights of Ren, and Rey and Resistance.
-Good guys win

My thinking is that after TLJ, it sets up Kylo as the last of the Skywalker line. The Force sees this as imbalanced. Hell, you could say something like midichlorians of kids skyrockets, if you so wanted to tie that back in, and that's why Jedi's don't like to have children. Rey is a random vessel of the Lightside chosen by the force to bring back balance to the Force by destroying the Skywalker line.

Of course, you could've not included Palpatine and just had it Kylo verses Rey.

So just spitballing ideas.

 

I think Kylo losing his shit that he was going to get defeated by a no one when he was a mighty Skywalker would have been such an awesome theme to undergird their final showdown. Especially if JJ really followed through on what TLJ had set up and shown Kylo how many force sensitive "no one's" were actually out there.

Like, if Rey had been finding and training such a group and that group defeated the Knights of Ren? (would have given the Knights of Ren something to fucking to do at least).

 

This is without a doubt better than what we did get. Big thing for me is that last idea - should have just been Kylo vs. Rey. We did not need Palpatine here, and I truly believe he was brought back for the absolute worst of reasons.

 

There are so many instances of dialogue in both JJ movies that completely go against “show, don’t tell” that a lot of screenwriters try to adhere to. “I created Snoke” from Palpatine, and then 5 seconds later we see the tank with other Snokes. That whole scene would have played so much better if Palpatine didn’t speak at all until you actually see him. Use the music and tension to build the scene. Idk, there’s so much potential for this movie with some minor fixes that could have easily elevated what we got.

 

This was another thing that was weird to me. We now have TWO scenes of exposition where Kylo tells Rey her origin. He was apparently wrong the first time so you literally have a seen where he has to correct what he said? And Rey is just supposed to believe him and pretend he's still a reliable source of information? I realize she had felt a pull to the darkside so it made sense to her, but I don't know. I feel like they already pulled the trick of "I already knew the truth in the back of my mind" in The Last Jedi. It just felt lazy to me to do it again.

Also, to reinforce this... I don't know why you would introduce a knife that was apparently the murder weapon to Rey's parents, but you don't give her any more information from it. Why even give her visions of the murder when she touches it? Why is it even important if it doesn't even help reveal who they are or what really happened? Then Luke appears later and confesses that they apparently kind of already had an idea. What the hell? Just so many unnecessary things going on that are mixed together... Just simplify it. Have her grab the knife and reveal everything to her or put the pieces together herself instead of having other unreliable characters explain it to her in plain English.

 

Holy fuck am I glad that didn’t happen for me. Jesus Christ these panic at the disco circa 2008 fans. Fuck.

 

Thematically, I would've been fine with Palpatine back: He was pulling strings alive, why couldn't he have a contingency plan for when he was dead? Bringing him back for *reasons* and then throwing in the familial connection felt contrived to me.

 

If Palpatine was involved in this at all, it should have been solely as his essence or spirit or whatever. Kylo Ren should have been the ultimate villain of the trilogy, as Rian Johnson was clearly setting up. Kylo could've encountered the spirit in the ruins of the Death Star, or @WanderingSquall's idea about him inhabiting Vader's mask is also a good idea because it would be like a little mini-payoff to Kylo having the mask in the first place.

Rey is a nobody who discovers that she's destined to have a role to play in saving the galaxy from fascism (see, the problem isn't with destiny, it's with your Special Bloodline dictating your destiny/role). Rey realizes the family you choose is just as important than the family you're born into.

I think a plot involving the First Order kidnapping Force-sensitive children would have made sense as well (because the Force awakened, not just in Rey, but in a new generation of young people all over the galaxy, which is a nice meta-commentary on the real world and a new generation of young people discovering Star Wars with this new trilogy).

Finn, Poe, Chewie, and Rose are along for the whole adventure. C-3PO can tag along on the ship but he doesn't leave the ship because why would he. BB-8 is there too.

Luke returns as a Force ghost who is wiser, more in touch with the Force than he ever has been, but still recognizing that the idea of the Jedi is what needs to survive more than anything the Jedi actually practiced or did.

The film ends on a hopeful message about Rey choosing the path of the Light, sparing Kylo Ren's life (but imprisoning him somehow, or he dies as a result of his own actions and not hers, or he is redeemed at the end but still dies or whatever), and deciding to dedicate her life to building a new and better order, not the Jedi. Maybe she calls it the Skywalker Order, like a lot of people speculated, and we could've had the same title.

Something with those beats would've been much better imo.

 

Quote from JJ: “There’s as much a brother-sister thing with Rey and Kylo Ren but also a romantic thing. So it’s not like literally a sexual/romantic thing, it’s more like they’re bound together in this movie in a spiritual way. Again, felt romantic to me.”

J.J. Abrams Explains Rey Reveal, Rey and Kylo Ren, Other Loose Threads in 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker'

Stop talking, JJ

 

I think @oakhurst was just implying there’s an adoption story in this film, and that in the end, we get to choose our family in some capacity. Our blood doesn’t determine it.

that’s what I took away from the film, personally.

 

Caught another showing of this and liked it even more but that’s probably because my expectations were lowered. Don’t like what J.J. did to Rose or the scene where Rey throws her lightsaber and Luke’s ghost is like “whoa hey treat this with respect” I half expected him to wink to the camera

the scene where former Jedis lend their power to Rey gave me even stronger chills now that I could really make out even more voices. Anakin saying “Rey, bring balance to the force as I did” was so great and hearing Qui-Gon, Mace Windu, Obi Wan, Ahsoka, etc was just so worth it.

I had fun

 

I wrote this back when TLJ had just come out and I stand by a lot of the things I wrote in there. I think the biggest mistake in it was separating Rey from the rest of the cast for most of it, but other than that I would've been cool with a movie that played out in this way.

 

It’s a really bad sign if actors are tweeting this!!