LogFAQs > #950053935

Darmik posted...

Episode 7 left up questions and mysteries for the following movies to answer (and to be completely fair they were literally just leading to the exact same thing as the OT). Episode 8 did that. Episode 9 then said those answers were wrong.

I wouldn't agree 100% with this, because I think that 8 went out of its way to ruin a bunch of plot threads that were meant to span the entire trilogy. Like let's be real, going "that mystery about Rey's parents is nothing", keeping the audience in the dark about an escape plan as well as the character who's primarily affected by it and then going "we had good intentions the whole time, you should have trusted us and been more patient!" and killing off the big bad was just a bunch of insufferable smug bullshit. The idea of "subverting expectations" got a bad rap because of how The Last Jedi did it, and I do think that it was an intentional spanner in the works that ended up derailing the entire sequel trilogy.

But like I said before, I think TRoS was a worse movie. It was a phoned-in piece of dogshit. Parts of TLJ felt fake and forced, like the shoehorned humor - and I don't think it's a great viewing experience because those moments take you out of it. But as far as I'm concerned, TRoS felt entirely fake and forced. Most of the dialogue feels rushed and expository, pertaining to and leading to multiple macguffins before the final villain wastes 20 minutes of screentime with a nonsensical plan full of possessions and betrayals that amounts to nothing and ends with him sucking the souls out of a couple of characters apropos of nothing.

And TLJ is partially to blame. But I think that the post I'm quoting has a really solid point that a lot of people are skimming over, and it holds a lot of truth as to why TRoS ended up being a worse movie.

TLJ exists, for better or for worse. So TRoS has two options. They can either go back on everything that TLJ said and try to reset the status quo enough to answer TFA's questions in a way that makes sense to the way they were posed in TFA, or they can take what TLJ did and move forward with it to make something completely new. You can either do as much damage control as you can and try to salvage the original vision of the entire trilogy, to the detriment of the final movie, or you can try to turn lemons into lemonade by exploring the ramifications of that second movie and risk making something different and arguably more interesting. You can try and marry the disparate elements.

There's been some consternation over the idea that the most important force users in the movies are Skywalkers. The important ones who aren't Skywalkers - Obi-Wan, Yoda and Palpatine - are directly tied to the Skywalker family and its subsequent feud in one way or another. And a majority of people haven't played all the games and gotten into all the EU stuff where there are more prominent force users - the main conflict of the Star Wars franchise to a majority of people has always been a Skywalker thing, from destroying the previous society to bringing in a new era of peace.

Because of that, I do think it would have been an interesting idea to have Rey be an unrelated party who finds peace in the fact that her higher calling isn't tied to her past. I think it would have been cool to stick with the ending of TLJ and imply that the next generation of force users are growing up around the galaxy, with little to no relation to the Skywalker feud. That's a new direction compared to making Rey a Palpatine - The Force doesn't give a fuck, and anyone can stand up to adversity if they have the heart of a champion. It would at least be an attempt at giving the sequel trilogy an identity of its own.

But Rey is a Palpatine, and that's why she's so good at using the force. The Last Jedi was wrong, she was special all along. Applaud us for layering references upon references to make this movie the most Star Wars it could have been.

---

I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft