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Thread: Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker *****SPOILER THREAD*****

  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bidoofdude View Post
    Finn being somewhat able to use a lightsaber efficiently could be a small contribution to the notion of him being force-sensitive. Has there even been an instance of a force-user that is straight up just not a lot but only a little force-sensitive?
    Efficiently? He stabbed some Stormtroopers which he managed to take by surprise, but in a duel against the Riot Trooper he was defeated (and was saved when the Riot Trooper was shot by Han Solo). He also lost against Kylo Ren (who probably would've beaten him faster if he hadn't been wounded by Chewie before the fight) and was saved by Rey. The ability to just pick up a lightsabre and use it to a limited capacity doesn't necessarily make one a "Force user" in the sense of a Jedi or Sith; after all, Han Solo once used a lightsabre in The Empire Strikes Back (and made a fairly precise cut on the Tauntaun's belly). A lightsabre is basically an energy sword; anyone can pick it up and swing it, and given that Finn would have had melee combat training as a Stormtrooper, yeah, he has some combat skill. But beyond that of a regular being? I don't know. And even if he did, I'm not sure how he could have improved his Force sensitivity without any training. Luke was trained by Obi-Wan in A New Hope and then tried to continue training himself between then and The Empire Strikes Back, but he had made fairly limited progress (he was still bested by a mindless Wampa). It was only after he received intense training from Yoda on Dagobah that he made leaps and bounds, but even then was still bested by Vader. In the years between Empire and Jedi Luke continued to train himself, which is why he was further improved by Return of the Jedi.

    Finn showed no real Force potential in The Force Awakens and appeared to have no improvement in The Last Jedi. Suddenly in The Rise of Skywalker he's developed Force sensitivity? Now Leia did develop Force sensitivity in The Empire Strikes Back, but that's because it was later revealed that she's Luke's sister and the daughter of Anakin Skywalker; so she's already really powerful in the Force. And her Force sensitivity was only activated when Luke reached out to her. It's my understanding that the Organas deliberately avoided exposing her to any Force training in order to prevent any awakening of the Force within her, and the same with Luke's upbringing as a simple farm boy. I think that this was done to avoid allowing them to be detected by the Emperor and/or Vader. Because when Vader was attacking Luke in the Trench Run, he could sense that, "The Force is strong in this one," because indeed Luke's latent Force potential had already been activated. And the whole reason why Obi-Wan separated himself from the team on the Death Star was because he knew that Vader would sense his presence and while his primary objective was to shut down the tractor beam, his secondary objective was to distract Vader from Luke and company. Obi-Wan's more powerful presence masked Luke's; like a kind of Force misdirection.

    ----------------------------------------------

    On a separate note, I'm still really not happy about how Rose Tico got sidelined as a character. I think the worst thing about this is not what it does to Rose, because she's just a fictitious character, but what it does for Kelly Marie Tran, who's a real person with actual feelings. We all know about the hate that spewed forth towards her because fans didn't like Rose; and we know that this kind of vitriol adversely affected the mental health of Ahmed Best and Jake Lloyd. But Lucas tried to make things better for the fans and Best by improving the character of Jar Jar in Attack of the Clones (making him useful). By making Rose still useless but throwing her into the sideline, this feels like it's legitimising the fan hate towards Tran. It also made Jannah feel like she was a replacement for Rose... I think that much of Jannah's role in the movie, especially the assault on that Star Destroyer deck, could've been done by Rose. Rose should've teamed up with Finn to take out that tower. Why Jannah? One of the poignant things that Rose did in The Last Jedi was verbalise the Rebel/Resistance cause... when she saved Finn's life she said that they will win not by hate but by love. This is how Luke defeated Palpatine - through love (his love for Anakin and Anakin's love for him). And ultimately, it's how Rey was able to destroy Palpatine and how Ben was able to resurrect her - through love. And the whole reason why Palpatine won at the end of Revenge of the Sith was through hate. This has been a recurring theme in the Star Wars saga -- the struggle between love and hate, and it was Rose who articulated and embodied this over-arcing principle. But no, let's just make her... there.

    Rose's uselessness in The Last Jedi is a legitimate criticism - one that I share. But I don't think that sidelining her was the answer. Just make her useful! The problem with Rose wasn't because she was Asian or that she kissed Finn or any of that stupid nonsense - it's because you could remove Rose from the story and nothing consequential would change. She was useless. And guess what? Same in The Rise of Skywalker! You could remove Rose from the story and nothing much would change. She doesn't do anything that no other nameless Resistance personnel could've done. There's no more compelling arc in her character... no reference to her sister or feelings for Finn. Nope nope nopety nope! She was arguably even MORE useless in Rise of the Skywalker than in The Last Jedi. It's just less noticeable because she has bugger all screen time.

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    RE: Armitage Hux

    I personally think that it was a nice surprise that he was the spy. It makes sense to me because Kylo Ren always treated him like crap, both in The Force Awakens, but especially in The Last Jedi. I liked how Hux said that he didn't even care if the Resistance won or lost, he just needed Kylo Ren to lose. This was a personal vendetta. On one hand, I do agree that his character was wasted and it would've be nice to see him do more... but on the other hand, having him be shot by Allegiant General Pryde also made sense as it showed that Pryde wasn't an idiot and is more attune to the old school Imperial way of dealing with under-performing officers. I liked the follow up line of, "We've found the spy." It felt similar to the spirit of, "You have failed me for the last time, Admiral." Although the even more menacing part with Vader was the follow up line of, "You are in command now, Admiral Piett!" Kinda sucks being promoted in the Empire.

  2. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime View Post

    • No real wasted scenes or pointless character arcs as we saw in The Last Jedi (re: Canto Bite/casino scene, Finn & Rose's meaningless adventure)



    [list]Lots of neat Easter Eggs. Anyone else notice that Anthony Daniels appeared as a Rebel pilot manning the gun of the Millennium Falcon?
    That is Wedge in the turret, not Anthony Daniels.

    The middle of this movie is a macguffin quest, just like in TLJ. How is it better?

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by philby View Post
    That is Wedge in the turret, not Anthony Daniels.

    The middle of this movie is a macguffin quest, just like in TLJ. How is it better?
    Are you referring to the quest in the desert? As it was supposed to be Only Rey's quest, and part of that scene was Kylo's purpose to show her true powers and he did. Or was it another scene you referring? < But yes I agree that everyone need not go and loosing Chewbacca in the process being caught.

    Or the quest to reset C3PO?

    As for Rose, no comment. She shouldn't been picked imo. I wont go in more because is bound to upset people on either side.
    Last edited by drifand; 22nd December 2019 at 11:48 AM.

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    Speaking of cameos, John Williams is the bartender when they are looking for Babu Frik

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    Hux must have felt a small pang of remorse for killing everything in the Hosnian system after his mad speech and decided to atone for his sins

    Bzzzzt. Fail.

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    It had parts that I liked, parts that I hated and parts that just made me rolls my eyes. Overall not a terrible movie which is more than I expected. They tried to retcon a lot of TLJ (which they couldn't avoid) and it detracted a bit from the storytelling. The Holdo Manoeuvre explanation? Hahahahaha.

    It's worth seeing even if you hated TLJ. It does bring it to a close.

    And for those saying that only trolls and whingers disliked TLJ, it's very unfair to pass judgment on others just because they didn't agree with the path the franchise took. I certainly dislike that movie. Ep IX almost redeems the sequels. Almost.

  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by philby View Post
    That is Wedge in the turret, not Anthony Daniels.
    You are correct, sir.

    Quote Originally Posted by philby View Post
    The middle of this movie is a macguffin quest, just like in TLJ. How is it better?
    Because this movie's MacGuffin quest (amid the many other MacGuffin quests) actually contributes to the story. As I said before, this movie does suffer from having way too many MacGuffin quests, but at least they are all relevant to the story. Feels like a video game. The issue I have with the Canto Bite scene isn't that it's a side-quest, but that it's an ultimately irrelevant side-quest. Other Star Wars movies have side-quests too, and that's fine so long as they all service the story.

    * Episode 1: while on Tatooine, the Jedi embark on a side-quest to help some slave boy and end up freeing him.
    * Episode 2: Obi-Wan Kenobi goes on a side-quest to Kamino; finds a clone army. Anakin goes on a side-quest to Tatooine; finds his mother.
    * Episode 3: Obi-Wan Kenobi goes on a side-quest to Utapau; kills Grievous, survives Order 66.
    * Episode 4: Obi-Wan Kenobi goes on a side-quest to shut down the tractor beam power and confronts Vader. Man this dude loves side-quests!
    * Episode 5: Luke goes on a side-quest to Dagobah. Meets a wrinkly green Muppet.
    * Episode 6: Luke abandons his teammates on Endor to go on his personal side-quest to confront Vader.

    Side-quests are fine. Multiple side-quests in on themselves aren't inherently bad (Avengers Endgame also has several side-quests in motion). They just need to be relevant to the story, and the test for that is whether or not the final outcome of the story would be any different if that side-quest never happened. What would happen if Finn and Rose never left for Canto Bite? Pretty much nothing. They still wouldn't have broken the First Order code. The First Order would still have decimated the Resistance fleet. The Resistance survivors would still have been forced to flee to Crait. The Battle of Crait would still have happened all the same. Nothing different.

    And this was the big criticism about Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace (and likewise Daniel and Wheelie in the Transformers G1 cartoon continuity). If you remove these characters and what they do, what would change? In TPM you could easily have re-written the story where Qui-Gon Jinn gives Jar Jar a Jedi communicator and orders him to go into hiding and to wait to be contacted by him. Jar Jar would obey as he has a life debt. The Jedi then take the Queen and her entourage to Coruscant but end up in Tatooine, blah blah blah, all the same stuff happens. Then when they return to Naboo, Panaka says that the Naboo don't have the manpower to retake Theed, so Qui-Gon Jinn calls Jar Jar and asks him to arrange a meeting between Queen Amidala and Boss Nass. The Naboo make the same alliance with the Gungans and the Battle of Theed happens in the exact same way. Jar Jar's entire presence on Tatooine and Coruscant are completely useless and could easily be removed without changing the outcome of the story. Contrast this with say Luke Skywalker's side-quest to Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back. This would obviously have massive consequences on the story if it didn't happen. If Luke chose to ignore Obi-Wan, or if for whatever other reason, he didn't go to Dagobah or didn't find Yoda etc. -- everything would change. The Dagobah side-quest has consequence, the Canto-Bite side-quest does not. Sure, it does give us an interesting look into the machinations of society in the Star Wars universe; how the privileged live off the suffering of the poor. That's all interesting and stuff, but it's ultimately not needed when you're telling a movie story.

    The original trilogy also mentioned the suffering under the Empire, but we didn't have to see it. The OT handled "less is more" quite well. Politics was mentioned or referenced but not directly witnessed, and quite frankly, we didn't need to witness it. The Prequel Trilogy was bogged down with too many talking heads scenes between politicians. Really? Who wants to see that? This stuff only needs to be mentioned in passing by other characters.
    e.g. in A New Hope, Palpatine dissolves the Imperial Senate. That's a pretty big freaking deal! But we're not shown the Senate chambers and how all this happened. It's just discussed between an Imperial officer and Grand Moff Tarkin, and that's all the information that the audience needs to know. At most, this is the kind of stuff that you can include in an extended director's cut or something. Things that don't service the immediate narrative can be removed. And this is why Peter Jackson had to cut or change a lot of stuff from The Lord of the Rings when he adapted them as books, because a lot of it would have bogged down the narrative in the film medium. It can work fine as printed text, but with film as a time limited visual format, you need to adapt. I don't agree with all of Jackson's changes, but I generally agree with most of them. No Tom Bombadil? Good freakin' call!

  8. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime View Post
    You are correct, sir.


    Because this movie's MacGuffin quest (amid the many other MacGuffin quests) actually contributes to the story. As I said before, this movie does suffer from having way too many MacGuffin quests, but at least they are all relevant to the story. Feels like a video game. The issue I have with the Canto Bite scene isn't that it's a side-quest, but that it's an ultimately irrelevant side-quest. Other Star Wars movies have side-quests too, and that's fine so long as they all service the story.


    ...

    What would happen if Finn and Rose never left for Canto Bite? Pretty much nothing. They still wouldn't have broken the First Order code. The First Order would still have decimated the Resistance fleet. The Resistance survivors would still have been forced to flee to Crait. The Battle of Crait would still have happened all the same. Nothing different.
    Re: Canto Bite, there are two things to consider

    1) It was meant to fail. It was a dogshit plan, that then failed and got a bunch of people killed, same as the plan to attack the Dreadnought at the start of the film. It's part of Poe's arc. He has to learn that you can't lead by flying by the seat of your pants. You can't lead on rash impulse. That might get you by as a fighter pilot, but it gets people hurt when you apply it to leading. As with Luke in ESB, the film bothers to show him and his plans failing. I'm not saying its my favourite section in any Star Wars film, but it has a purpose. Ironically, to say it was pointless and led to nothing is both to miss the point entirely but also kind of get it. It doesn't move the plot forward - in fact it hinders our protagonists. It absolutely moves Poe's character forward though.

    2) It really doesn't take that much screen time up. It's literally two sections. The first is that they land and get chucked in jail. The second is when they escape from prison and free the planet. It's not like it's cutting back for forth for the whole middle third of the film.
    I'm really just here for the free food and open bar.

  9. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime View Post
    What would happen if Finn and Rose never left for Canto Bite? Pretty much nothing. They still wouldn't have broken the First Order code. The First Order would still have decimated the Resistance fleet. The Resistance survivors would still have been forced to flee to Crait. The Battle of Crait would still have happened all the same.
    Not necessarily - the First Order only picked up the Resistance transports because DJ sold them out to save himself, which he wouldn't have been able to do if Rosefinn hadn't recruited him and then let him overhear Poe talking about them having cloaked ships. I mean sure somebody on the Supercalifragilistic might've thought to scan for cloaks anyway just in case (you'd think that'd be routine, but maybe once you've built a ship 60km wide there's not much left in the budget for repairing wear-and-tear on the scanners so they save money by just having a guy look out the window instead), but just from what's on screen it looks like Holdo's original plan (the one that didn't involve ramming) might've worked. Of course they'd still have needed somebody to come pick them up, but they'd have had more time to play with while the First Order chased an empty cruiser, and "Hey can we get an Uber?" might have gotten a better response from the Resistance's so-called allies than "Hey giant laser pointed at us and we're doomed, wanna come join in?"

    ...that's not a good look for Team Poe, granted, but they did make a difference.

    Then again I feel like there's an argument to be made that if Poe hadn't gotten the Suicide Squadron annihilated bombing the dreadnought, it would've jumped after them along with the rest of the enemy fleet, and judging by the dialogue its autocannons could've blown away capital ships at extended range, since that's exactly what they were about to do over D'Qar before they asploded. That old line about the winner being the second-last person to screw up seems relevant.

  10. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by SharkyMcShark View Post
    Re: Canto Bite, there are two things to consider

    1) It was meant to fail. It was a dogshit plan, that then failed and got a bunch of people killed, same as the plan to attack the Dreadnought at the start of the film. It's part of Poe's arc. He has to learn that you can't lead by flying by the seat of your pants. You can't lead on rash impulse. That might get you by as a fighter pilot, but it gets people hurt when you apply it to leading. As with Luke in ESB, the film bothers to show him and his plans failing. I'm not saying its my favourite section in any Star Wars film, but it has a purpose. Ironically, to say it was pointless and led to nothing is both to miss the point entirely but also kind of get it. It doesn't move the plot forward - in fact it hinders our protagonists. It absolutely moves Poe's character forward though.

    2) It really doesn't take that much screen time up. It's literally two sections. The first is that they land and get chucked in jail. The second is when they escape from prison and free the planet. It's not like it's cutting back for forth for the whole middle third of the film.
    Quote Originally Posted by Miss Kitty Fantastico View Post
    Not necessarily - the First Order only picked up the Resistance transports because DJ sold them out to save himself, which he wouldn't have been able to do if Rosefinn hadn't recruited him and then let him overhear Poe talking about them having cloaked ships. I mean sure somebody on the Supercalifragilistic might've thought to scan for cloaks anyway just in case (you'd think that'd be routine, but maybe once you've built a ship 60km wide there's not much left in the budget for repairing wear-and-tear on the scanners so they save money by just having a guy look out the window instead), but just from what's on screen it looks like Holdo's original plan (the one that didn't involve ramming) might've worked. Of course they'd still have needed somebody to come pick them up, but they'd have had more time to play with while the First Order chased an empty cruiser, and "Hey can we get an Uber?" might have gotten a better response from the Resistance's so-called allies than "Hey giant laser pointed at us and we're doomed, wanna come join in?"

    ...that's not a good look for Team Poe, granted, but they did make a difference.

    Then again I feel like there's an argument to be made that if Poe hadn't gotten the Suicide Squadron annihilated bombing the dreadnought, it would've jumped after them along with the rest of the enemy fleet, and judging by the dialogue its autocannons could've blown away capital ships at extended range, since that's exactly what they were about to do over D'Qar before they asploded. That old line about the winner being the second-last person to screw up seems relevant.
    Replied in the Last Jedi spoiler discussion thread to avoid further derailing this thread about The Rise of Skywalker.

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