Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) Non-Spoilers! (1 Viewer)

[Tommy R]

For what it’s worth...

If Episode IX reveals that Rey had important parents, that’s not a retcon Of TLJ. All we have in TLJ is Kylo Ren telling Rey that she knows her parents were garbage people who didn’t care about her. We have absolutely no objective confirmation one way or the other as to whether that’s the actual truth.

Very true! I’m certainly open to anything if done well and organically. But on paper, Rey having been specifically a Kenobi or a Skywalker has always sounded contrived and ill-conceived to me ever since immediately after TFA was released. But I’m certainly interested in what they have come up with assuming they are exploring Rey’s family more.

And in general, I have nothing against a little “retconning” or “development” here and there. Lucas essentially did it with both of the original sequels, first by making Vader Luke’s father and then making Leia Luke’s sister, both of which were not a part of his vision when making the first film.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Very true! I’m certainly open to anything if done well and organically. But on paper, Rey having been specifically a Kenobi or a Skywalker has always sounded contrived and ill-conceived to me ever since immediately after TFA was released. But I’m certainly interested in what they have come up with assuming they are exploring Rey’s family more.

And in general, I have nothing against a little “retconning” or “development” here and there. Lucas essentially did it with both of the original sequels, first by making Vader Luke’s father and then making Leia Luke’s sister, both of which were not a part of his vision when making the first film.

There are many of us that wouldn't find such a storyline contrived at all.

 

[Bryan^H]

If Palpatine is back, which I think may actually happen going from the end of the teaser, screw this movie!
That story has been told. The Emperor was killed by Vader, and the Death Star blew up.

 

[Mrs. Carab]

Lucas essentially did it with both of the original sequels, first by making Vader Luke’s father and then making Leia Luke’s sister, both of which were not a part of his vision when making the first film.

I don't know precisely what retconing means, so let me be clear what I am talking about.

What Lucas did is different, since Lucas never said Vader wasn't Luke's father and then in a later movie changed it because it didn't work with the story he wanted to tell. My husband informs me that there is good evidence that Lucas planned Vader being Luke's father before he started writing TESB, but that's beside the point. In any case, as far as I can tell, Lucas didn't do what I'm wondering if episode IX will do based on my impressions of the trailer.

If Episode IX reveals that Rey had important parents, that’s not a retcon Of TLJ.

Not by itself, no. But if a pattern emerges where multiple plot devices established in episode VIII are getting refitted in IX, then you'll have a harder time convincing me of that.

I'll post again after the movie and we can see what happens. Until then may the Force be with you!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Not by itself, no. But if a pattern emerges where multiple plot devices established in episode VIII are getting refitted in IX, then you'll have a harder time convincing me of that.

It still wouldn’t be a retcon.

A retcon (or “retroactive continuity change”) is when you tell an audience that something they’ve already seen portrayed onscreen in an indisputable fashion didn’t happen.

The Sam Raimi Spider-Man films have a great example of this. In the first film, we see that Uncle Ben is murdered by a character played by Michael Papajohn. Then, in the third film, we’re shown that Uncle Ben was killed by a different character played by Thomas Haden Church. The third film changes the event that was portrayed in the first film but acts as if it is actually the same event. That’s a retcon.

By contrast, in The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren tells Rey that her parents were worthless junk dealers, but the film itself gives us no objective view of what happened. Kylo could be telling the truth or he could be lying, but the film itself simply never reveals if what he says is true. So, if the new film shows that Rey is actually the child of another character, it doesn’t change anything in The Last Jedi. It doesn’t invalidate anything that we’ve seen onscreen. It simply reveals a different answer than we were led to expect. But it doesn’t tell the audience “that thing you saw onscreen right in front of your own eyes didn’t happen and forget you ever saw it”.

 

[TravisR]

If Palpatine is back, which I think may actually happen going from the end of the teaser, screw this movie!

I think that may be like a situation on an episode of the Rebels TV show where a character is in a place where he hears voices from the past and future. Or, perhaps more likely, it's part of a vision like Luke in the cave on Dagobah.

 

[Carabimero]

IMO a writer creates a theme through creating patterns that speak to the same idea, though those patterns in themselves may not resemble the same thing on the surface. Johnson did a great job of this in TLJ, IMO, first castrating the symbolic significance of Luke's light saber, then suggesting Rey's parentage is nothing special, finaly demonstrating a lowly stable boy could be strong with The Force. There are other patterns in TLJ that bolster this idea, as well. Theoretically the more patterns a writer is able to dramatize, the stronger and more powerful the thematic revelation. TLJ was particularly powerful at this.

The problem occurs in a serial from episode to episode when one writer ignores or undermines a previous writer's patterns because they want to develop a different theme. So intentionally or not they undermine what was previously dramatized, and the results are usually unfortunate. The overall power of the serial suffers.

From her nodding at this post, that is what Mrs. Carab is concerned about, not retcons at all but rather that Abrams and Johnson are working at cross purposes thematically, whether consciously or not, and her concern that the trilogy is ultimately going to suffer because of it.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Anything is possible, but I’m not expecting a literal reprisal of the old book story where Palpatine’s mind was transfered to a cloned body or anything crazy like that.

It’s probably a scenario like in TFA where there was a chance to hear Obi-Wan again.

But I love Ian McDiarmid so much as Palpatine that I’ll accept any appearance without needing it to be even remotely plausible.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

(Apologies to everyone who just wants to talk about Episode IX; Alan and I have been debating The Last Jedi since it came out, and even though both of us have made our points several times over at this point, I think we both enjoy the back and forth too much to let it drop.)

I completely agree. And this is a big part of my point. We never see an "objective" telling of what happened. So this makes the lack of motivation on Luke's part even worse for me.

I definitely understand where you're coming from, and if Star Wars were, say, "Game of Thrones" -- or even the Marvel Cinematic Universe -- leaving out those events would have been inexcusable. But the Saga format doesn't allow for it; or rather, if it did, the sequel trilogy would have had to start much closer to Return of the Jedi, with Luke's burgeoning new Jedi order still doing well at the beginning.

There's an argument to be made that if that story needed to be told, that Abrams should have never placed Luke in that position at the end of The Last Jedi. I remain sympathetic to both filmmakers; if Luke had been a full-on Jedi Master in The Force Awakens, there's no way you bring the new generation to the forefront because he's the one everybody's going to care about. Leaving him to the end was a way to get audiences invested in Rey and Finn and Poe.

This is true and not true. If Johnson had started VIII with the Kylo/Luke falling out, then that would be present tense. It never had to be a flashback at all.

It would still violate the established format of the movies, because the events took place before Episode VII. The crawl catches you up to what happened between movies, and then once it's done you're thrown right into the action.

I would be up for "A Star Wars Story" telling that story, though.

If you read my posts carefully, I've said I have no problem, theoretically, with Luke falling. I've even said it could make Luke more interesting and more believable. But that presupposes that the writer has the chops to motivate that fall believably.

It's not that I missed your point, it's that you and I disagree about whether Luke's journey to the point where Rey finds him is believable. It doesn't work at all for you, as presented, based on your experience with the character.

Whereas it works incredibly well for me, as presented, based on my experience with the movie. There are other areas of The Last Jedi that fall short for me -- structurally speaking, it's a bit of shaggy dog, and Finn and Rose's adventure needed WAY more of a plot payoff -- but everything with Luke is pure magic for me.

I wish Rian Johnson had done all three. To me he is a much better writer/director than JJ.

My experience is that they have very different strengths and weaknesses. Abrams is more of a crowdpleaser; Johnson is more of a risk taker. Both of them write dialogue better than George Lucas. Neither of them structure a movie as well as George Lucas. There is an elegance to the structure of the first six Saga films that isn't present in The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi.

The thing I absolutely love about TLJ is what Johnson did with The Force. The way I took it, the elitism of being a Skywalker didn't matter. You could be an obscure stable boy and still the Force could be with you.

I thought the democratization of the Force was important -- after all Luke was just a rural farm boy in A New Hope -- but the bigger thing I liked about the Force in The Last Jedi is that the movie made it feel vast and mysterious again. The danger as the series has worn on is that the Force gets reduced to a series of superpowers. The Last Jedi gave me the same feeling that the original Star Wars gave me: That the cool magic tricks that the Jedi and Sith can do are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the immensity of the Force.

Here are my two predictions:

1. Rey, having no last name (because her parents abandoned her), adopts the name "Skywalker" OR
2. Rey starts a new order--something "in between" the Jedi and the Sith--and calls it the "Skywalkers".

My feeling since the title was announced is the former. I'll be happy to be wrong, though, as long as whatever they've come up with makes sense and feels satisfying.

Heck, technically speaking from what we know to be true thus far, Kylo Ren is actually the only character in the film aside from Leia that carries Skywalker blood.

So does the title hint at ultimately the dark side winning?

I don't think so, but its another amongst the many possibilities for the title.

I doubt it's referring to Kylo Ren; he has Anakin Skywalker's blood, but he's a Solo who ultimately rejected that identity, too.

Final John Williams Star Wars score too!!

It's definitely one of the all time great achievements in film music, nine films over 42 years telling one story.

If Episode IX reveals that Rey had important parents, that’s not a retcon Of TLJ. All we have in TLJ is Kylo Ren telling Rey that she knows her parents were garbage people who didn’t care about her. We have absolutely no objective confirmation one way or the other as to whether that’s the actual truth.

It's a retcon in the sense that Johnson earnestly felt that his provided answer was "the" answer. But there's definitely plenty of wiggle room to provide a different answer, for the reasons you've stated. It's certainly less of a hand wave that Obi-Wan's "certain point of view" explanation of his history lesson in A New Hope.

Very true! I’m certainly open to anything if done well and organically. But on paper, Rey having been specifically a Kenobi or a Skywalker has always sounded contrived and ill-conceived to me ever since immediately after TFA was released.

I would agree if it weren't for the fact that these films are the story of the Skywalker family. If Rey does end up being a Skywalker, then it's not so much a matter of the one scavenger from a backwater world happening to be related to the most famous man in the galaxy, it's that the new trilogy told her story because she's related to the most famous man in the galaxy.

And in general, I have nothing against a little “retconning” or “development” here and there. Lucas essentially did it with both of the original sequels, first by making Vader Luke’s father and then making Leia Luke’s sister, both of which were not a part of his vision when making the first film.

Exactly. Retconning needn't necessarily be a bad word if it's done well.

 

[Bryan^H]

My experience is that they have very different strengths and weaknesses. Abrams is more of a crowdpleaser; Johnson is more of a risk taker. Both of them write dialogue better than George Lucas. Neither of them structure a movie as well as George Lucas. There is an elegance to the structure of the first six Saga films that isn't present in The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi.

Well said. You nailed it.

 

[MattBradley]

I want to throw my wild and crazy theory out. I watched the trailer as it was streamed live from the panel at Star Wars Celebration. Seeing the title for the first time and hearing that classic cackle laughing made this thought pop into my head. What if the events in this movie lead to the creation of Anakin? I know that sounds weird and I don't think I'd want to see that happen, but what if all this "let the past die" actually leads to some event in the Force that leads to Anakin's birth in the past thus completing a circle? Alright, said it out-loud so I can sleep now.

 

[benbess]

If Palpatine is back, which I think may actually happen going from the end of the teaser, screw this movie!
That story has been told. The Emperor was killed by Vader, and the Death Star blew up.

What if, somewhat like Voldemort, Palpatine was obsessed with defeating death. Maybe as protection Palp already had a clone ready with his downloaded consciousness, just in case....Or maybe that's just a force ghost laughing?

 

[Tommy R]

I want to throw my wild and crazy theory out. I watched the trailer as it was streamed live from the panel at Star Wars Celebration. Seeing the title for the first time and hearing that classic cackle laughing made this thought pop into my head. What if the events in this movie lead to the creation of Anakin? I know that sounds weird and I don't think I'd want to see that happen, but what if all this "let the past die" actually leads to some event in the Force that leads to Anakin's birth in the past thus completing a circle? Alright, said it out-loud so I can sleep now.

Hell, why not? I’ll list that under the “if it’s done well” category.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I think one of the reasons that the title sounds odd to me is because they have the "The" in front of it.

"Revenge of the Sith" wasn't "The Revenge of the Sith." "Return of the Jedi" wasn't "The Return of the Jedi." Both of those refer to actions. The Sith take revenge; the Jedi return. Here, the Skywalker rises, whatever that means, but they have the "The." I think it would feel less out of place if it was just "Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker."

 

[Wayne_j]

Theory: Rey is a female version of a clone of Luke with genetic material obtained from the hand that was floating through space in the original draft of episode VII. This film shows the rise in power of Rey, the clone of "Skywalker". I wouldn't go in this direction, but cloning being involved in the story could explain the presence of the Emperor. Rey was raised by the "nobodies" who abandoned her on Jaku.

 

[Simon Massey]

I don’t think it’s as much a retcon of the plot so much as a retcon of the idea behind it and a dilution of the purpose of making Rey someone who is not necessarily tied to the Skywalker line but can still make a difference.

But still it doesn’t really change the intent of the film itself just what TLJ will represent in the saga as a whole. I’m just as interested in where Abrams takes it eventually. At least so far we don’t seem to have a large planet sized weapon that needs destroying at the end. I really hope we don’t go down that route.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Theory: Rey is a female version of a clone of Luke with genetic material obtained from the hand that was floating through space in the original draft of episode VII.

Ew. I hope you're wrong. I would hate that.

 

[JimmyO]

In this movie, Rey makes a souffle that she calls Skywalker.

 

[Greg.K]

I think one of the reasons that the title sounds odd to me is because they have the "The" in front of it.

"Revenge of the Sith" wasn't "The Revenge of the Sith." "Return of the Jedi" wasn't "The Return of the Jedi." Both of those refer to actions. The Sith take revenge; the Jedi return. Here, the Skywalker rises, whatever that means, but they have the "The." I think it would feel less out of place if it was just "Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker."

The Force Awakens? The Last Jedi?

 

[Jake Lipson]

The Force Awakens? The Last Jedi?

Yes, but i was thinking more in terms of having the third chapter of each trilogy match.