Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

[elengil]

It's definitely a rough comparison but I did try to look up the inflation so it is hopefully at least in the same ballpark. Not that picking one movie from one director to compare is going to be super useful. Still thought it was interesting though.

I wasn't criticizing or questioning your methods, just the method in general. I always sort of roll my eyes when people talk gross ticket sales (in price) for movies and think of course all these new movies breaks old records, they charge more for tickets!

[RoseMorninStar]

Our daughter took us to see this film as part of our 'Dinner & a Movie' gift. I'm not a Star Wars geek nor am I skilled in critical analysis as some of you are, so I'll not be able to pick the film apart at the technical level some of you can. I had to laugh when (given my extended family situation) my take-away was: this should have been a Thanksgiving film because-

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family.

There is a certain pain in not knowing where one is from or who their 'people' are. Yet there can be pain .. horror even, in finding out who your 'people' are and knowing they are not good people. It can be soul crushing. Can one rise above their heritage? Their genetic birthright? The family business? Is it too much to overcome? In some ways, this isn't much different from the choice Michael Corleone had to make in 'The Godfather'. While Michael was not an orphan and knew who & what his father was, he had intended to stay above the fray, to stay out of the family business, but he allowed it to suck him in. While on the surface there was a part of him that wanted no part of his father's legacy, it came to him fairly naturally. One might say it was in his DNA.

There are a lot of orphans in Star Wars (as there tend to be in most hero myth/legends.) None of us can choose our bloodline, but (the story asks), does Rey's DNA define her, especially if that heritage includes gifts and/or talents, and perhaps a certain disposition? Can one rise above it? Not being a Star Wars geek my understanding is limited, but I gather the sith utilize the force with the passion of anger, hate, and personal desires. The Sith code has several 'I/me' statements, the Jedi code has none. It is selfish vs. selfless. Compassion vs. power-lust, or perhaps even ego, believing that one can use evil for good (which was Boromir's bane). Grandpa Palpatine tried to provoke and draw out that passion/rage in Rey. She chose to focus on the selfless Jedi side of the Force, and with perseverance, risk, good friends and mentors, and a helluva lot of luck, she was able to overcome her heritage with the family she chose.

[RoseMorninStar]

SO... Russians have been meddling in Star wars too, trying to further divide (and conquer) Americans. ‘Star Wars’ Fans Are Angry and Polarized. Like All Americans.
What arguments over the movie series say about our nation.

(...)I’m not the only one who has noticed this obvious parallel to American electoral politics. J.J. Abrams, who directed “The Rise of Skywalker,” noted in a recent interview that the vicious polarization within Star Wars fandom is not a phenomenon restricted to “Star Wars.” As he put it, “This is about everything.”

And a recent study by Morten Bay, a University of Southern California digital media researcher, revealed that over 50 percent of the venom directed on Twitter at Rian Johnson, director of “The Last Jedi,” came from the same sources as Russian election meddling.

Using the analytical tools that other technologists deployed to uncover Russian influence during the 2016 election, Mr. Bay found that “bots, trolls/sock puppets or political activists” were using the “Star Wars” debate “to propagate political messages supporting extreme right-wing causes and the discrimination of gender, race or sexuality” and that “a number of these users appear to be Russian trolls.” So it seems that it was political operatives, not fans, who were denigrating the movie and fomenting some of the virulent racism and misogyny against its cast.

Using “Star Wars” as the vehicle was a canny move by the trolls. Fans, like the American electorate, are polarized and angry. Online and in real life, they scream at one another about how Luke Skywalker would really behave decades after finding out that his dad was Darth Vader. (...)

[Túrin Turambar]

More thoughts (and I will probably have more still) -

When Disney bought Lucasfilm, they made the decision to de-canonise the Expanded Universe – the body of novels, comics and video games outside the six films. This decision understandably angered the fans of the EU, but it made sense given how constricted their writers would otherwise have been, and given only a small minority of fans are into the EU the commercial risk was low.

I was never particularly a fan of the EU, but looking back over the internally- and externally-inconsistent Sequel Trilogy, I think Disney would have actually been better drawing from the EU in the same way Marvel films draw from the comics. I understand (and the Marvel fans here are welcome to correct me) that MCU films are frequently based on comics but not bound to them, and there are known inconsistencies between the comic and film versions of characters. However, the universe of the comics was already extremely complex, with multiple inconsistent timelines and story arcs, so the writers had more freedom when drawing from the source material.

Certainly EU fans are arguing that Timothy Zahn wrote better post-RotJ stories than Disney’s writers, and while it’s been years (decades?) since I read Heirs to the Empire I doubt I could argue against it.

Interesting also to think about how a ‘Tolkien cinematic universe’ would work in light of this. There’s no pressing question, but I understand that by 2050 all copyright on Tolkien’s works will have expired in the U.S.

[yovargas]

In my very unhumble opinion, as far as "canon" goes, SW is a mess - and as I posted earlier I think it's always been a mess. ("Lucas made The Hobbit, fans thought he made LOTR.") To me the only way to really save it would be to do the impossible and the blasphemous - wait a few years and then completely reboot the whole darn thing, scrapping all past canon and starting over from scratch with an eye on maintaining the very cohesive and coherent world building that the core fans really want but will never get.

Of course, the original trilogy is so intensely beloved that saying they were going to scrap it from canon would probably cause enraged superfans to burn Disney to the ground, so instead they'll be stuck with the inevitable mish mash of wildly uneven storytelling set in a neat looking but increasingly tiresome universe.

[RoseMorninStar]

I agree that it's a mess, but if the original trilogy were scrapped, what would be considered canon?

[yovargas]

The new version of whatever story they decided to tell, in my imaginary but highly implausible scenario.

[RoseMorninStar]

So.. same universe but different story-line/completely different characters?

[yovargas]

Kind of like how Batman is still Batman even though every few years we get a whole new take on his story, with a few core idea still in place but a whole lot of different, new ideas.

[RoseMorninStar]

I'm not trying to challenge you yov.. I'm just trying to understand and I am not good at analysis. I get the disappointment or the opinion that something wasn't well done, but I'm trying to grasp the core problem that has 'enraged' some. While I've enjoyed Star Wars I'm not a huge fan.. not in the same way I embraced LotR, and I'm not familiar with the expanded Star Wars universe. In your opinion, was it problematic in the way the story/Star Wars universe expanded/was marketed in a cobbled together sort of way or, if I understand you correctly, is was a problem with the original storytelling.. that fan desire/expectations were more than the original material had to offer? A fault in George Lucas' very creation?

Good analogy, but Batman is a singular character, how would that apply to a story like Star Wars? Who/What would be the 'new take'? There are so many characters in the story and perhaps that is the problem? Jedi, Sith, human (and non-human) characters, droids, and even objects such as the Millennium Falcon. Did Carrie Fischer's untimely death cause issues with the final story? Was Leia supposed to have been the main protagonist all along?

[Túrin Turambar]

It’s difficult to see what problem de-canonising the OT would be solving, as it’s both beloved by fans and extremely commercially successful. Even younger fans who were drawn into Star Wars by the more recent material and who find that the OT doesn’t speak to them personally still have a certain reverence for it. I’d like to see a remake of the Prequels, but this would be for the sake of quality rather than consistency. And it’s be difficult too given there’s a large section of the fanbase which loves them as well.

My view now is that the best approach would be to leave the original characters and era altogether and make more stories at different time periods in the Star Wars universe. I think they should have done this rather than made the Sequels, to be honest, but this is water under the bridge now.

[yovargas]

I mean, this is just me and my thinking. As I've already talked about too much, I've always thought SW was kinda lame so it's not just me reacting to the new trilogy. Like I said earlier, I think the core SW series has the fundamental problem that the ideas of the Force and the Empire, as written originally by Lucas, were childrens-story level simple. Which is fine when he was writing a children's story, but it turned out his creation resonated with a lot of older fans who wanted a grander, deeper epic than the original children's story could really support. People want more mature stories about this universe and it's Force, but that Force was created to tell a fun kids adventure and IMO doesn't work well at all when trying to make it more than that.

IMO the only real way to fix that is to go back and rewrite the story of these rebels fighting an oppressive Empire from the get go so that it has a sturdier, stronger foundation to build upon. What would it have looked like if Tolkien had gotten the opportunity to rewrite The Hobbit with in the style of LOTR, with the full knowledge of the grandeur it would become connected to?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

What would it have looked like if Tolkien had gotten the opportunity to rewrite The Hobbit with in the style of LOTR, with the full knowledge of the grandeur it would become connected to?

If you read The History of The Hobbit you can read the first few chapters of Tolkien's attempt to do so before he abandoned it after being told (correctly in my opinion) that this was good, but it wasn't The Hobbit.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Saw it today. Best comedy I've seen in ages.

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[yovargas]

Burn!

[RoseMorninStar]

The Star Wars story was always had a somewhat heavy handed corny element (intentionally so?)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Of course, but to me at least this film took it to such extremes that it almost seemed like a parody of a Star Wars movie.

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[RoseMorninStar]

Not being a huge Star Wars fan I'm not terribly invested and view the films as cultural entertainment, not so much as something from which I'm expecting deep moral or philosophical meaning. I do feel they were trying too hard to serve 2 audiences; paying homage to the original fans/story and catering to a new generation of fans -and I say that as one who enjoys seeing things come 'full circle'. I cannot help but wonder how it would have changed the story would had Carrie Fischer been able to complete this film

[Frelga]

I was going to see it on Christmas, but Mr. Frelga for some reason was opposed. In the meantime, I got so spoiled for this movie that I don't even know if I want to see it at all.

[RoseMorninStar]

Frelga, I think it depends upon your reason for seeing it and how dedicated a fan you are. While the critics only gave it a 55 on Rotten Tomatoes, the audience gave it an 86.

As an aside:

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the roiling seas toward the end reminded me of our crossing on the Cook Strait.