Star Wars Episode IX

[Funt Solo]

...the reliance on coincidence, contrivance and fan service...

This is the bit that bothers me, because when there's a scene in a movie that's clearly been placed there as a nod to the fans it lifts me out of my willing suspension of disbelief, because it reminds me suddenly that I'm watching a movie, made by people, who are aware of the audience. It takes me from that galaxy far, far away and teleports me jarringly back into my cinema seat.

Breaking the fourth wall is perfectly fine, when it's done in such a way that you feel like the character is letting you in on a secret, like a confidante (as in Ferris Bueller's Day Off). Having the film-makers do it doesn't have the same panache. C-3PO wasn't a kit built by a young Anakin: that's just fan service. The irony is that it's not actually doing the fans a service: quite the opposite.

And why is the galaxy so small? Solo has an example of this when he just happens to bump into Qi'Ra: in a galaxy with many heavily populated worlds, this stretches credulity as just a happy coincidence. Handy for the plot, bad for the movie's credibility. And Han funds the nascent Rebellion, because ... why? Contrivance. Instead of the Kessel Run (or the Clone Wars) remaining as a fantasy imagined, they each become a CGI festival that can't match our unseen wonder. 

[Mardroid]

There is an over-arching question of what the Emperor's motivation is. See, if your plan is to rule the galaxy, then blowing up all of the planets leaves you little to rule over.

He doesn't want to blow up all the planets. The idea is that if he has the demonstrable power to blow up planets, he hopes the rest of the galaxy will fall into line through fear. That was always his plan since the first Death Star.

[Colin YNWA]

Finally saw it yesterday. And I think my friend Esther described it best. I've never seen a movie quiet so afraid of it's own shadow, and quiet so cowardly.

Everything about this movie screams studio interference and toxic fan appeasement.

Yep this is exactly right.

[TordelBack]

It's certainly true that this is a movie lacking in any kind of courage, but can you really blame them? It's been two years of utterly relentless atracks on TLJ, its director, cast and studio, which led directly to a SW movie actually losing money. I would have loved to see a proper follow-up to TLJ, my favourite SW movie since RotJ, but the most vocal wankers of the internet and their amused acolytes made their feelings very clear: so this is what we got instead.

Luckily for me there was enough good stuff jammed into the wildly OTT TROS that I really enjoyed it; but it wasn't the movie I wanted, just the movie we deserved.

[Funt Solo]

I found this interesting: How The Last Jedi Defies Expectations

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There is an over-arching question of what the Emperor's motivation is. See, if your plan is to rule the galaxy, then blowing up all of the planets leaves you little to rule over.

He doesn't want to blow up all the planets. The idea is that if he has the demonstrable power to blow up planets, he hopes the rest of the galaxy will fall into line through fear. That was always his plan since the first Death Star.

Right, I agree to an extent: I mean, he certainly had that agenda in the original trilogy. I thought that in this most recent movie the Palp was providing some exposition and (my memory might be off here) but I thought he said something like (paraphrasing heavily): "Fuck it! Let's just blow all the planets up!"

[Colin YNWA]

I found this interesting: How The Last Jedi Defies Expectations

That's fantastic and echos a lot of what I think about the movie, if it does it far more clearly and smartly and gets to the knub of something I'd not thought about.

Excellent - thank you for pointing me there.

[broodblik]

So basically The Last Jedi made boring characters to begin with even more boring by trying to alter the SW universe by removing Jedi from the recipe. Mmmmm and I just wanted a Star Wars movie not a Freudian, psychoanalysis, altering my male-echo into pulp, let us get our hankie out and cry us to sleep movie.

[Funt Solo]

That's a lot to decompress.

Here's one: how come "bringing balance to the force" means that the light side wins?

[Hawkmumbler]

That's actually the one thing the prequels got right. The Jedi had become decadent and corrupt, bloated be beurocrats who dealt in slave exploitation and eugenics. They had to go, the balance required saw them nearly driven to extinction to equal the Sith's law of The Two.

[TordelBack]

As Luke so elegantly explains, the Light isn't the preserve of the Jedi, and the Force isn't just the Light side, it's life in all its aspects, life and death, light and dark. This was previously teased out a few times in The Clone Wars cartoon.

Where the Force is out of balance is where evil ambition enters the picture, where the passion and violence of the Dark side is used as a quick and easy source of UNLIMITED POW-AH, perverting the natural cycles of the Force with dreams of immortality and complete control. The most charitable reading of this is that the Jedi exist to challenge this distortion, to maintain the balance, rather than pursue any overall triumph of light: to enact the Will of the Force, in all its dimensions. 

As Hawkie says, this plan has all gone to shite by the time of Phantom Menace, with an isolated rule-bound Council in a literal ivory tower, giving legitimacy and ultimately muscle to a corrupt centralised government. Qui-Gon stands almost alone in the movies in his rejection of the Jedi 'code', but as a consequence comes across as a rather fey character, seemingly unmoved by injustices around him, while wholly embracing the course the Force places before him. Hermit Luke, both when he despairs and when he reconnects with the Force, seems to be on a similar road. Even Ghost Yoda, finally reconciled with his monumental failures, appears to have embraced this view.

While it does draw on the proposed original ending of Return of the Jedi (Obi-Wan and Yoda appear as ghosts and help Luke defeat the Emperor), the climax of Rise of Skywalker does seem to represent a Jedi-centric triumph that is wildly at odds with any notion of balance.  But ultimately the sole person that emerges from that clusterfudge appears to have a more balanced viewpoint, and may be forging her own direction.

[Bolt-01]

Forgive me for mentioning something that might have been mentioned before, but it my mini-units pointed out to me over the weekend that Rey healing the Sand snake with a Jedi ability effectively renders Anakin's entire reason for turning to the Dark Side as pointless. 

Apparently he could have healed Padme after he choked her...

Don't know if it could have helped Mace Windu with his hands though...

[IndigoPrime]

I guess it depends whether he was capable of doing that. Jedi appear to have differing levels of control/abilities.

[JOE SOAP]

Apparently he could have healed Padme after he choked her...

It's somewhat implied that the bond (Dyad plot magic) between Rey and Kylo makes them different: ability to make contact with, passing objects/energy to, each other through the force. Might not work anymore now one of them's dead — although the healing ability has also appeared in the EU, the canon Clone Wars cartoons with Darth Maul's 'rehab', and recently demonstrated in The Mandalorian.

[DrRocka]

Isn't it a simple case of Rey can do this, Anakin couldn't?
I don't get why people are wondering why, if a character can do something in this film, previous  ones didnt. Just cos I dye my beard purple doesn't mean my grandad did.

[Bolt-01]

Ah, but Dr Rocka - he 'could' if he'd wanted to.

Much as how at the end of ROTS (Ep03) Yoda tells Obi-Wan of Qui-Gon becoming what appears to be the first known force ghost, was Rey utilising a 'new' Jedi ability to heal the snake as in my memory she plays it off as being something pretty basic (as after all Rey has not had a lot of training from a 'classic' force master)?