The Rise of Skywalker: Discussion

What point are you trying to make with this line of argument? Stories evolve and move on. What about all the people who died before the advent of video games, the Internet, digital cameras, before the Hubble Space Telescope and its "Deep Field" pictures of far-flung galaxies? Or people who were committed fans of artists like Elvis and The Beatles, who passed on before they could hear a mountain of outtakes, or all the work of surviving band members? What about all the people who went to bed and died in their sleep the day before John Lennon was shot? What about the people who died before we landed on the moon? What about all the people who were gay or gender-dysphoric or autistic or epileptic down the ages and were treated as criminals, demons, and outcasts? What about all the people who were born into slavery and never lived to see it abolished? What about the millions of people compelled to obey social convention and locked into loveless or abusive marriages they never got out of? What about all the people who perished before microscopes, vaccinations, and modern medicine? (I guess that one's a bit touch-and-go right now). What about the billions of people on Earth living in abject poverty and under corrupt dictatorships this very moment?

To keep with Star Wars (though some of those prior developments are hardly unimportant to the existence and proliferation of Star Wars):

What about all the people who died fantasising about a backstory to the Original Trilogy, but never lived to see it completed? They died with no known awareness of Anakin, Padme, Jar Jar, Qui-Gon, Palpatine's elaborate scheming, the gorgeous worlds and elaborate tech, or the grandeur of the Galactic Republic -- or all the arguments that would ensue about the canonicity of the PT and its supposed "lack" of filmmaking quality. Perhaps some of those people would have loved the PT or the ST or whatever other branch of Star Wars that is still budding or yet to exist. 

There's a lot to rue about a vast and indifferent universe where stars and galaxies can persist for billions, even trillions, of years, and all at colossal distances, while we are stuck on this "pale blue dot" of an isolated world, not even knowing (yet) if life elsewhere is possible (though it probably is), and all we get, on average, is eighty revolutions around our humble sun; then we are annihilated, maybe forever. 

Maybe you're just jealous that Palpatine can cheat death and come back! Who wouldn't be? Anyway, I think TROS shines an interesting light on the former movies. Rey and Kylo are a new "rule of two", and it makes you wonder why the Jedi (or why their code) forbade Qui-Gon from taking a second padawan when he insisted on training Anakin, given the Sith ritual Palpatine goads Rey into performing, based around essence transfer.

"The most idiotic decision ever to have been made with Star Wars"? Did I hear you right? So absolutely nothing in the EU, or "The Holiday Special", or even what some fans consider questionable in the PT, gets anywhere near choices made in the ST? Ask the Internet what it thought of Jar Jar for the past twenty years, or Anakin slaughtering younglings, or Padme telling him after his Tusken slaughter, "To be angry is to be human". You might get an interesting set of responses that shade into what you just asserted. At the end of the day, you have your opinions and I have mine.

I actually like the idea that Palpatine wasn't totally defeated at the end of the Lucas films. It meant the architects of the Sequel Trilogy still had something neat and undeniable to play with. It actually does a great justice to Palpatine, in my opinion -- even Anakin -- in suggesting that their combined impact in the Force was bigger than what could be comfortably overcome at the end of the OT. That something survived and grew in power and influence once more. I've previously made the analogy of Sauron being vanquished in LOTR. A lot of people in that story assume that's the end of him, but his spirit endures for generations, until the threat can no longer be denied and must be confronted head-on. 

If you look at what happens to Palpatine at the end of ROTJ, it's hinted he might have survived in some form. He is thrown a long distance and then just disappears. And then this strange blue gas appears and is still seen to be "hovering" around the reactor core when Lando and Wedge destroy it. In Lucas' original nine-film outline, Alan Arnold noted in 1979 that "The Emperor knows the same ghosting technique as Obi-Wan Kenobi". So Lucas was clearly open to the idea of Palpatine surviving at the time. Ian McDiarmid also spoke to a Star Wars publication and hinted that the Emperor's death wasn't necessarily absolute and final at the time. He'd obviously had conversations with either Lucas or Richard Marquand or inferred along such lines.

Furthermore, I think Lucas was still running with this concept in ROTS. The opera scene being a case-in-point. Even some of Palpatine's later dialogue is a little abstract and mystifying. For instance, he boasts to Yoda that he won't stop him, because "Darth Vader will become more powerful than either of us." What? So Palpatine isn't bothered if Yoda defeats and kills him? He doesn't want to cling onto life at all costs? And he isn't worried about Vader surpassing him in power and inevitably overthrowing him? What in the Sam Hill? But if you look at what happens in TROS, it starts to make sense.  

You're throwing out a lot of hyperbole here. Is ROTJ really "one of the world's most beloved movies"? 

I don't see it on this list:

www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/100-best-films-ever-hollywood-favorites-818512/item/seven-samurai-hollywoods-100-favorite-818479

Nor this one:

www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all-time

Nor this one:

www.afi.com/afis-100-years-100-movies/

Nor this one:

www.filmsite.org/momentsindx.html

Although it does make it into "The Top 100" of this one:

www.imdb.com/chart/top/

But even all those lists hardly encompass "the world". Ask China what it thinks of Star Wars. A billion people generally manifesting ignorance/indifference right there.

This Western critic certainly didn't find much to love in ROTJ:



I wish Star Wars fans would get out of their stupid bubbles. We may generally love these movies, but it doesn't mean everyone thinks they're worthy of much interest or acclaim. 

It's like Muslims that go around boasting that they have followers of 1.5 billion. Yeah? That still means over 5 billion other people aren't too keen on living under sharia law. Insular, in-group thinking will be the death of us all.

BTW: Who's spitting on Snoke? I thought that was the complaint people had toward Rian Johnson. He's the one that killed him off in an unceremonious and relatively bathetic way, not Abrams. Abrams was the one who came up with the character and put him into the Star Wars universe in the first place. He had to sit by as Rian Johnson obviated/trashed/teased/trolled/subverted many of his story concepts. But as Abrams said in a recent interview, his intention was never to deny that those story choices (in Rian Johnson's film) took place, whether he agreed with them or not. There was a similar push-and-pull tension between Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand in the Original Trilogy (they kind of disliked and publicly bashed each other's movie). Granted, Lucas was overseeing things back then and in charge of the overall narrative, but two people rarely agree on the nitty-gritty (look at us). I can't fully explain Snoke, but it suggests there's a lot more to Palpatine than meets the eye.

Regarding something as the "worst thing ever" speaks more to a blinkered and childish mentality than anything I want to be a part of. Seen it plenty in the Elvis world. It's a reason I stopped posting there. Typical Internet overstatement. I don't have a "worst Star Wars movie ever", because I enjoy or find something to like in all the ones I've ever watched.