Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker*

It was never remotely a "family" story. It was the story of a lone young hero whose family had been killed off by the Empire. I've always thought it got a lot weaker when it turned out two of the main characters - including the primary villain - were Luke's relatives.

 

I think you underestimate a film that -- in many ways -- changed Hollywood and changed the world. Historically, look at films made before Star Wars, and look at films made afterwards. You can't deny the cultural significance of the film.

I think your problem is you're looking at it only through modern eyes. You need to see it through 40 years of pop culture history and get how much of an impact the original films had on billions of people. Hell, a lot of important movies had huge flaws -- I'd point to Gone with the Wind, Godfather, 2001... they all had flaws, but they're still remembered for their longevity and their impact on the way films were made and what audiences expected. It's still an important film today, and I think kids seeing it for the first time now can still appreciate it on many levels. In fact, Lucas has said many times he made the original film for kids, though that mission certainly changed over time.

Can you sum up your biggest objections to the film in a couple of sentences? Because your message is getting kind of cloudy and obfuscated.

It's clear from The Secret History of Star Wars -- a book I've cited about 179 times in this discussion -- that Lucas didn't originally intend for Darth Vader to be related to Luke. In fact, they struggled at the start of the Empire screenwriting process to justify the existence of Anakin Skywalker as a separate character. Eventually, they decided to simplify it by just combining Anakin with Vader, and that was that. This opened up a lot of plot holes: for example, why did Vader not realize that Princess Leia was his own daughter when he tortured her? Lots of story problems.

 

It's clear from the opening crawl of, and subsequent revelation in, Empire that Vader is aware he has a son in Luke Skywalker - his discovery of that fact is not shown onscreen but there's approximately two years between the events of Hope and Empire, so you can let that one slide for the sake of storytelling brevity - but he seems genuinely surprised in Jedi that he also has a daughter... evidently a fact he didn't know until he searched out Luke's feelings in the Emperor's throne room duel.

This is where careful and concise plotting in advance for the prequels would have been the much better and more prudent option instead of merely winging it on the fly as Lucas did for that trilogy... there's some fine-detail to the backstory (alongside the major dramatic broad strokes) given in the OT that Lucas either missed or didn't care to explore in the PT... and much to it's detriment.

 

The fact is that Star Wars has evolved. The first movie was basically George Lucas' love letter to Flash Gordon and Dune. Empire was a Shakespearean tragedy and shifted the saga into the family soap opera it became with ROTJ and the prequels. The sequels started off as an extension of that too,although one gets the sense that Rian Johnson was trying to start to drag the series away from the family soap aspects and back to its roots,albeit a bit clumsy in it's execution in places.

I think Star Wars as a universe CAN survive and flourish without the Skywalker family stuff. One of the great things about the original is that "lived in" fully formed universe that we were dropped into. A feeling that the world around the characters we were following was much bigger than them and that there was a universe of possibilities. I don't see why it can't continue without Anakin Skywalker and his progeny.

 

Fair enough. I even believe it's ridiculous to go to the movies and sit there before it starts and say "this is going to suck". I said before The Force Awakens that if there's another Death Star I'm done with Star Wars and cringed when there was a Starkiller Base. Sure enough I went to see TLJ. I only Star Wars movie I haven't in the theaters was Solo (I actually liked Rogue one). But every movie I've seen in the last 5 years or so has been the cheapest non-3D, non-Imax showing I can find. Just my small way of sticking it to the man.

 

And I thought Solo was a really fun movie. So many have avoided it for a number of reasons (casting, who needs this story?, Last Jedi backlash, etc.). Terrific popcorn movie which holds its own among the Star Wars movies.

 

I'm not critiquing Star Wars from a 1977 point of view, so I think you're fundamentally misreading my post. There was nothing "wrong" with Star Wars in 1977 - at least not after the editors got done with it - apart from maybe some dodgy acting and bad dialog. But it worked, especially if you were 8 years old (hi!).

What I'm saying is that the shorthand Lucas used in 1977 and which worked so effectively on American movie audiences at that time absolutely cannot and will not work on the audiences of 2019, which is why Disney's films are going to feature fundamentally different protagonists. The percentage of 9 year olds in the world who can immediately relate to Luke Skywalker -coming of age white suburban/exurban farmboy - is vanishingly small.

I actually think JJ kinda dropped the ball with The Force Awakens and that Rey probably should have been from a densely urban environment, maybe an on-the-skids Coruscant, post the collapse of the Empire. Her desert junk scavenger background doesn't particularly resonate with any audience, and might be one reason why her character is something of a cipher. If they'd made her part of a community trying to eek out a living on Coruscant by scavenging abandoned buildings and attempting to open up land for agriculture, complete with food scarcity and all manner of exploitation, it would have been a great means to set the scene regarding the post-Empire galaxy and given her a more-relatable hardscrabble background to a broader audience.

I have no objecion to Star Wars, hence your confusion. I'm saying its protagonist and his background is utterly alien to the vast majority of global audiences in 2019, so the shorthand that Lucas used so effectively in 1977 - intentionally or unintentionally, if he was simply writing what he knew - doesn't work well on modern audiences. Hence Disney taking a very different approach with these sequels when it comes to lead characters.

 

Honestly, if there's a flaw with the sequels, it's that they've dealt too much with the Skywalker clan right from the start. JJ probably should have reunited Luke, Leia and Han in The Force Awakens and then killed two or all three of them off at the climax, leaving the next generation to pick up the torch.

 

That’s exactly what they’ve done pretty much. That’s why Luke tells Rey in the new trailer it’s her fight now. The force awakens introduces new into the story and then we start losing the old characters. It’s just not all in one movie as you suggest. Hard to pack too much into one 2 hour movie, which is why it’s spread out.

 

I would have set it about 70 years after ROTJ,and started from there. The Droids (R2 and C3PO) are still around as well as Chewie who still has the Falcon (but highly modified ) , everyone else are new characters, slowly weave in the legacy stuff with the second film (Kylo Ren is the corrupted grandson of Han and Leia! Look! There's Force Ghost Luke Skywalker to help guide our new Jedi heroine !) And maybe to tie it all together,have the Spectre of Palpatine being the "Phantom Menace" behind The First Order ( who wouldn't have been an exact copy of the Empire In asthetic) and have the trilogy act as a more effective coda to the first six films and the start of the future beyond the Skywalker saga.

I think you still needed some of the legacy stuff and the connective tissue to the OT,but other than maybe flashbacks in Episodes VIII and IX where you could use Hamill,Fisher and Ford,none of the legacy human heroes should have been in Episode VII. Mostly because it created an expectation among a large portion of the Audience that this trilogy was the further adventures of Han,Luke and Leia with their new younger friends who were only going to take the spotlight at the end of this trilogy. When that portion of the fandom didn't get that, and when it because clear the OT heroes only existed to serve the story of the new heroes (much like how Yoda and Ben Kenobi only existed in the OT to serve the story of Luke and co.) People just rejected it, especially once it became clear Luke wasn't just going to suddenly be the lead good guy in the sequel going into IX ,which is a hope that many held onto.

 

Which is why I think in retrospect this trilogy should have started with Han,Luke and Leia all having already passed away,put the main focus on the new characters ( who grew up with the folk legends of Luke and his friends battle with the evil Galactic Empire)....THEN weave in past connections. Honestly,aside from Luke's arc which was brilliant,having Leia and Han around really wasn't needed aside from the nostalgia factor. You definitely needed a bit of the nostalgia factor going into the new films,but again,you had the droids, Chewie and the iconography of the Falcon and Such that could have reminded audiences the setting and asthetic.

 

One thing I see brought up lately by people who actively hate the Disney era films so far is how supposedly children "Don't care about or like Disney Star Wars! it's proof that Star Wars is ruined forever!!" Of course,that can't really be in any way proven aside from anecdotal "evidence" of dropping Toy sales and the supposed underperformance of the Galaxy Edge parks. Both I may add, have been taken out of larger context regarding Toy sales and Disney theme parks as a whole,and are dubious barometers to prove such an argument that we honestly won't really be able to measure for another decade or so,but that's a topic for another time.

Anyway,supposing that's true,that today's children have rejected the current era of Star Wars and the brand is damaged,well.... isn't it possible that part of that reason is that kids are being affected by all of the online "fandon menace" crap that has seemed to creep into nearly all aspects of Star Wars fandom and discourse? Could kids who are just getting into the series with these films,who genuinely love them,be influenced and intimidated by the harassment and shaming they are seeing of people who dare even say anything remotely positive of the Disney era films? Could it be possible they are either being driven away or forced to "closet" their fandom of Star Wars in fear of being harassed and ridiculed online by adults who are frankly acting like childish bullies and,yes, manbabies?

I mean let's pretend the internet and the social media of 2019 existed in 1983 and you at like,12 or 13 come home from seeing Return of the Jedi,loved it, and you make the error of posting on Twitter or Facebook or on a message board how much you loved ROTJ. Then instead of encouraging words and expected kinship with other fans,you are greeted by hundreds of messages calling you stupid for liking it,how much it sucked,that you suck for liking it,how you don't know how to watch movies and that you don't know what you are talking about because you aren't a "true" or "real" fan,all by people probably at least old enough to be your parents or older siblings?

This video alludes to that and makes a great case that perhaps the fandom as a whole needs to take a cue from Rose Ticco's supposedly infamous quote from TLJ. Watch till the end to find in interesting connection between that line....and Irvin Kershner.

Definitely makes one think....

 

Oh, I dunno. What's your evidence for this theory?

If you read the source for a lot of Lucas' philosophy and writing -- Joseph Campbell's 1949 book The Hero With a Thousand Faces -- you'll see that he drew upon lots of very old myths and legends in crafting the characters and structures of Star Wars. One of the many legends Campbell covers is this one:

The hero's journey: A reluctant hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow benefits to his fellow man.

You can see that this basic plot has been used dozens, maybe hundreds of times in many, many books and films. I think the universal themes of Star Wars actually still make sense today, and they present situations that are very relatable and understanding to broad audiences regardless of language or culture.

I think what you're really saying is: "I grew up, and the films don't seem as good to me now." What I see is that there are new kids discovering these films for the first time today and still enjoying them very much. Lucas had the smarts to generally only make films that happened in period-history settings (Indiana Jones, American Graffiti) or futuristic/fantasy situations (Star Wars, THX 1138), so they actually don't date too badly. It's contemporary films that tend to date the most: I've said many times that Jaws and E.T. are hard to watch today, because they very much reflect the time in which they were made and take place. I think the first Star Wars films kind of achieved an immortality beyond that, in the same way that Wizard of Oz and Forbidden Planet and 2001 have all achieved classic film status that kind of puts them beyond criticism. They may not work to you, but I would bet that the mass audience and also significant film critics will disagree with you.

I also think Disney looks on Star Wars as a crown jewel that they can exploit as theme park rides, toys, future movies, future TV shows and things like that. The original film is almost unimportant to them now -- they're just worried about what comes next. The big money and the greatest impact will be made by those projects that are yet to come. Not that Star Wars lacks value.

 

But there's the problem, because it probably all - or at least most of it - should have been in one movie. Maybe have Luke and Snoke detect an "awakening". Maybe have Kylo and Leia both go out to discover the source. Han gets involved as transport. The rest of the film could somewhat flow as it did.

I'd get rid of the Starkiller Death Star Mk. III McGuffin and come up with something more original, some other First Order superweapon that 2 or three of the original heroes give up their lives in order to stop (Han and Leia would be the most-logical choices, since you might want to retain Luke to continue to mentor Rey). Or just have Rey be the McGuffin.

Yeah, a certain segment of the fan base seems completely delusional regarding how old a) they are and b) these actors are. That ship sailed circa 2010 at best, more like circa 2000. George shoulda shot the sequels before the prequels...

They accomplished very little, which was one of the problems with the script of The Force Awakens.

The more I think about it, the more making Rey the McGuffin of The Force Awakens and having it be a race between the Resistance and the First Order to lay hands on her makes sense. Then you'd have an actual reason for all three characters to be involved, and they'd have a lot to do. You could also have a climax that wasn't just, "Han gets stabbed."

 

Eh, they're still making some bucks. I actually like the idea of seeing a big "spectacle" film with a massive screen, great picture quality, and sound far beyond anything I can get at home. That makes it an experience to me, and it adds a lot of impact to the film. It can't make a bad film good, but it can make a good-to-great film better.

 

I think it's a little late to try to rewrite films that are already produced.

If you want to try to write new Star Wars films, my advice would be:

1) get an agent

2) write some of your great ideas down as treatments or scripts

3) get your agent to get you a meeting with Kathy Kennedy at Lucasfilm in Burbank (or through her office at The Kennedy-Marshall Company on Arizona Street in Santa Monica)

4) pitch your idea and get hired.

Otherwise, you're just a noisy fan with a lot of opinions. For more on that, read these articles that describe and detail the problem of Toxic Fandom, where non-professional fans start believing they and only they know how to write stories and characters better than the people who actually created the franchise or currently run and control it:

How Star Wars Fans Proved My Point About Their Toxic Movie Fandom
Toxic force: The entitlement of the ‘Star Wars’ fandom needs to stop
Star Wars and the Battle of the Ever-More-Toxic Fan Culture
When Fandom Is the Problem
When fan culture turns toxic

 

I'm not saying that at all, and I'm not really sure where you're getting any of that from. I'm saying that the original Star Wars really resonated with (especially young) audiences in 1977 because a big chunk of that audience were white boys from suburban and exurban and rural environments in America (and to a lesser degree Europe) who could immediately relate to Luke Skywalker and his circumstances. It made the film very personal to a lot of people, and help launch them into this fantastic adventure. I don't know if it was intentional or unintentional on the part of George, but it worked brilliantly for then-contemporary audiences.

And it doesn't work at all for today's audience, which demographically is radically different (and global). Do other elements of the story work? Sure. But that particular piece of Luke Skywalker's experience and location? It's not personal to them. For an audience that was used to having its heroes tailor made for them this is apparently terribly upsetting. For the other 95% of the planet, it's business as usual.

This has nothing to do with me. I'm not sure what that point isn't coming across. I'm not talking about my reaction to Star Wars - Luke Skywalker's experience was as close as you could get to my own given that he lived in a galaxy far, far away. He was a white boy in a rural setting surrounded by a vast desert. I grew up on the outskirts of Phoenix. We used to go driving on the weekends thru farmland and desert not all that different from Tatooine, so everything about him made perfect sense to me personally. That was sorta my future up there on the big screen. George's experience was very similar to my own growing up. For me, this shorthand worked perfectly. But I'm not remotely representative of today's moviegoing audience - they're urban, of color, and mostly not Americans. That shorthand does nothing for them - other elements have to sell these stories, and characters drawn with a different shorthand are going to relate more intimately.

 

I think your problem is you're stating your opinion as fact. What is your evidence that the 1977 Star Wars film does not work with today's audiences? Be specific. Just a list of five or six bullet points will do.

I have zero problem with somebody actually stating an opinion like, "I know everybody loves Film Y, but I don't think it works well today anymore. Here's my reasons."

But it's a little like saying, "I know the Beatles were great in the 1960s, but I've listened to them in 2019 and they don't sound that great to me compared to the modern music I like today." There's a point where criticizing classic art just reflects badly on the critic, and does nothing to hurt the (much-earned, in these cases) reputation of the work itself. Artistic at the work of Van Gogh or The Beatles or -- yes -- Star Wars is kind of beyond criticism, because it's such an enormous cultural touchstone. It's like you're criticizing something widely beloved just to buck the tide, be controversial, and call attention to yourself.

There are real rules for film critics, BTW: a big one -- one I know about, because I took two different film-criticism classes in film school -- is you can't impose your beliefs on the film and say, "here's the film I think the director should have made." You can't do that. You have to actually review the film that was made, and then evaluate it on those merits.

For example, you can't review a flat-out fart-joke comedy, and then complain, "yeah, it was funny and all, but I think it needed a romance, maybe a female character or two, and then have them reform the hero and make him whole by the end of the movie." That's not this movie. You want that, write your own damn movie. Just review what's actually there. You don't have the right to rewrite the writer, just as you don't have the right to paint a mustache on the Mona Lisa, or add a sax solo to "A Day in the Life." Create your own painting, write your own song; don't tear down the work of others.

 

I don't think there's anything particularly "toxic" about looking at a film and thinking, "lost opportunity". I don't think The Force Awakens is terrible at all, but it's also not particularly good. Like a lot of modern film it has great "moments", and it looks spectacular, but the story feels disjointed, the original trilogy characters feel shoehorned in for no good reason, it's way too derivative of the original Star Wars, and a lot of what it sets up was frankly boring.

The fact that Rian Johnson either discarded much of that setup or completely inverted it for The Last Jedi just reinforces that. Luke is much better-integrated into his script than Leia and Han were in The Force Awakens, and he feels much more vital to the story. He challenges Rey instead of just providing nebulous moral support. He's a full fledged character, not a plot prop.

It doesn't hurt that Hamill is a better actor now than he was decades ago - for the first time he outshines his original trilogy costars, and not by a little.

Anyhow, I understand why and how The Force Awakens turned out the way it did. Could have been worse - it smokes the prequels. In fact I think that's part of the reason why it was received so well by critics and audiences - it's not a trainwreck, there are no precocious 9 year olds and no Jar Jar. And the acting is great.

 

How do you have the skill to fix this? What's your track record and qualifications as a writer? How are you different from any other fan with opinions? How could a film that's already been produced and released benefit from your fixes? Do they need to be recalled and destroyed, so your artistic vision can be used as a blueprint to reshoot and redo the films? How is this different from Lucas going back and changing films that were already released? What if other fans disagree with you and like them the way they were? What if the other fans also want to change them but go in a completely different direction? Who's right and who's wrong? What if you're all wrong and just a bunch of opinionated idiots?

We started off talking about Star Wars, and you slid into The Force Awakens, which is not what this thread is about. This thread was supposed to be about the forthcoming December 2019 film The Rise of Skywalker, and very few people know what that film is going to be in terms of story and character.

Read the toxic fandom article links I posted earlier, and let them sink in. You need to consider that maybe you don't have any more or less skill than the people that already made the film. Maybe you need to just stay a member of the audience and leave actual filmmaking to people who do that for a living. If you disagree, get some scripts under your belt, get an agent, sell the scripts, and dazzle the world with your brilliant ideas.

 

Again, you keep applying what I'm saying very specifically about the character of Luke Skywalker and his background to the film as a whole and claiming that I'm saying the film as a whole doesn't work for today's audiences.

That isn't what I'm saying. Period. Full stop.

I'm saying that contemporary audiences will not have the same easy emotional attachment to the character of Luke Skywalker that much of the '77 audience had. It doesn't mean they won't like the film or that the film won't work for them. It does mean that shorthand which worked so well to hook a broad segment of the American audience in 1977 would fall flat with most of today's audience - the film will have to hook them thru other means. It's a great film - especially for kids - and has many ways to do so. But that one particular arrow in its quiver isn't so effective in 2019 - Luke's experience carries no particular significance for the vast majority of a modern audience. His circumstances are as alien as the crowd at that Mos Eisley cantina. Today's audiences are not gonna look up at that screen and see their own experience and circumstance reflected back to them from a galaxy far, far away.

Disney knows this, which is why the characters in the sequel trilogy certainly look different. I think a perhaps fundamental problem with the scripts is that they haven't reoriented any of their backgrounds to more closely align with those of a modern audience. Modern audiences can gaze up at the screen and see characters who look like them, but unlike in 1977 they can't also see something like their own experience and circumstance being reflected back at them.

I think emotionally that's why these films aren't clicking the way the original Star Wars did. It's not enough for someone to look more like you and your friends - that's sort of an emotional uncanny valley. They need to mirror your experiences, circumstances and expectations in some way as well for you to feel this innate bond. Luke Skywalker did that for tens of millions of kids back in '77, by accident or by design, and it really helped to flip Star Wars over the top. It made the film spectacular yet relatable, along with its lived-in universe and wisecracking sidekicks. The prequels didn't have this at all - its characters were utterly unrelatable - and the sequels have made only a superficial stab at it. It makes them all feel decidedly more remote, to all audiences.

 

Imagine this opening crawl....


THE FORCE AWAKENS

It had been a time of peace and balance. Then a few years ago from the ashes of the Empire,rose The First Order,a fanatical miltary force led by a mysterious Supreme Leader. Their reign of terror spread quickly across the Galaxy, only to be opposed by the forces of the old Rebellion Alliance,now known as The Resistance,led by former chancellor of the New Republic Leia Organa and her husband Han Solo. With new allies and old,they desperately fight to preserve the fraying peace and freedom they fought to win in their youth.

Where there is darkness ,there is light to meet it. After decades of dormancy, there is an awakening....new force sensitive beings awakening to a calling across the Galaxy. Leia feels this and one strong presence in particular on the distant world of Jakku. She dispatches her most trusted advisor former Jedi Lor San Tekka and her best pilot Poe Dameron there to find this being and bring them to the resistance.

However,Leia is not the only one who felt this awakening. The supreme leader of the first order has dispatched his disciple,Kylo Ren to Jakku to find this being. The fate of the Galaxy rests in the hands of who gets to them first....


Then the most of the rest of the movie sort of happens the same. We eventually find out Kylo is Han and Leia's son who still betrayed Luke. The difference here is that there was no Jedi school because...there were no new force sensitives to find and train.

It seems that when Vader killed Palpatine and balance was restored,the Force reacted by going dormant for a time. Luke did spend awhile searching for those like himself and Leia,but other than a few old Jedi who survived Order 66 like Lor San Tekka (Max Von sydow's character from TFA,who is an old Jedi in this version) and a couple decendents of other lost Jedi, he was fruitless in his endeavors. Until Ben Solo.


Much like TLJ, Luke attempted to train Ben,Ben turned,nearly killed Luke and defected to The First Order. Disgraced and without purpose and believing the Jedi to be truly extinct,he exiles himself to Ach-To , although he tells Leia where he's going this time around.

When in the climax of our theoretical TFA ,Han and Leia both perish ,but not before passing on coordinates to Rey ,that she follows to find Luke.

From here TLJ can largely follow the same ,except without Leia and perhaps with a slightly less fatalistic Luke.

 

I don't think the audience is forbidden from analyzing why a film does or doesn't work for them, or kicking around story alternatives, because they aren't working screenwriters. That's a ridiculous assertion. In fact, I'd much rather see people share ideas about how stories could be different or better than simply saying, "That film sucks." Or, "It's to SJW!" That's boring. Spinning out other ideas is much more interesting. I've read all sorts of ideas that - on paper, anyhow - are much more interesting than the films we've gotten, and not just in the Star Wars franchise. Often these alternatives do a better job than mere criticism of demonstrating why a particular film doesn't feel like it works (for me, anyhow).

I've also noticed that when a film really works, there's little in the way of suggestions that people can come up with where you think, "Yeah, that seems like a much better idea." Whereas when a film falls flat, you can find all sorts of suggestions for changes made by audiences online and think, "That would have been cool. That would have made sense. That would have worked much better. I wish they'd done something like that."

If we live in a multiverse, then somewhere out there every audience-suggested change to every film exists out there as a fully realized motion picture. I'm not sure I'm ready to see the all-midget version of Caligula though, so thankfully travel to parallel universes is currently impossible.

 

So there's no confusion here, this also applies to the so-called "fandom menace" against Star Wars prequels of TPM, AOTC & ROTS, not just ROTJ, then Disney's TFA or TLJ!

 

Except we can't. The movie's already been made. If you want to do a remake, go back and read my previous comments in this thread. The audience does not have the right to rewrite or redo somebody else's film.

Again, you're trying to add trombones to "Let It Be," just p!ssing in the punchbowl (as we say in Hollywoo). I think you wind up just making the film different, not better. You need to respect the filmmakers' intent and get on with life. Always consider that just because you bought a ticket, this does not give you creative input in the film (or play or work of art or song or TV show or anything else). You're just a spectator. You wanna write your own stories, that's cool -- there's 1000 websites out there on which you can post your own made-up Star Wars stories.

I think in the grand scheme of things, the studios don't care as long as the movies make money. In a perfect world, sure, they'd take all three: critical acclaim (including awards), positive audience response, and big box office grosses. But I think the latter is what they worry about most. In fact, I think if the movie got great reviews and audiences loved it, but it didn't break even in terms of profit, they'd be very pissed-off.

There are crazy fan theories and critics on quite a bit of what Disney does, so it applies to Star Wars, Muppets, Pixar, the cartoons, you name it. I think they're keenly aware that they have a vocal audience, and they shrug it off as much as they can and just try to make money. The best way for audiences to register their unhappiness with a studio film is not to see it and not to buy it on home video or streaming.