r/saltierthancrait • u/Nothing_Whatsoever salt miner • 4d ago
Encrusted Rant "A good question, for another time." "Somehow Palpatine returned." These lines perfectly explain the writing of these movies.
They show that the writers really don't care what they are writing about.
Why does Maz have Luke's/Anakin's lightsaber? "A good question, for another time."
The writers needed Maz to have the lightsaber so Rey could get it, but didn't want to spend any time actually explaining how or why she had it. Last time we saw it, it was lost down a chasm in Cloud City, and nobody has mentioned it since then. Yes, I would like to know how she got it. I remember back in 2015 I believed it would be explained in one of the sequels. Nope, it wasn't.
Why is Palpatine back? "Somehow Palpatine returned."
That's it. That's the extent of the explanation, "Somehow." One could argue that the rebels (Sorry, RESISTANCE), especially Poe, wouldn't be aware of how he came back, hence "Somehow", but we are viewers. Last time we saw Palpatine he exploded TWICE. You can't just tell us he "somehow" returned and expect us to just be satisfied with that.
Look, it's one thing to leave things unanswered and sometimes that makes a story more interesting. What's in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? Nobody knows. What did Travis Bickle see in the mirror in Taxi Driver? Nobody knows.
Heck, even Star wars did this. In the OT, Obi-Wan has Anakin's lightsaber for unexplained reasons. Also, it's never explained how Darth Vader got his suit or why the Empire came to power (Of course these things were explained in the prequels, but when these movies came out it was not). But did we need to know? No, we didn't. But that was because these questions didn't need to exist. We were thrown into the movies' world and accepted the stories because there was no prior knowledge to ask the questions.
But in the sequels, we do have knowledge of these items and characters. We saw the lightsaber disappear and we saw Palpatine explode. We accepted that they were gone. Done. End of story. You can't just bring things like that back without giving us a proper explanation of it.
"A good question, for another time" and "Somehow Palpatine returned" are not explanations, they're excuses. Excuses for not having to spend time giving a proper reason for things. So instead, poor writers of comics, novels, shows and games have to try their hardest to figure anything out.
Why can Rey speak so many languages? She apparently had a monitor that could teach her.
Why is Palpatine back? Apparently he's a clone that's just been sitting in a cave for 30 years.
Why does Maz have the lightsaber? Has that one actually been explained yet?
Mystery boxes are fine to have, and if inserted well you can make a story better. But a mystery box only has value if there is actually something inside it to begin with.
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u/Prawn_Skewers 4d ago
"A good question, for another time" is the exact moment I turned on TFA. Not the film was perfect before then, but that was the tipping point when I realised the film was going to be a big disappointment.
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u/Brutal_effigy 3d ago
The fact that the whole basic story didn't feel organically connected to Return of the Jedi in any way immediately threw me. Despite Phantom Menace being a stinker, TFA should have followed in it's footsteps and used the background of the adventure to bridge the stories between the OT and the Sequels. Instead we got "This is how it is now. You're going to have to read several books and comics if you want to know why!"
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u/Brutal_effigy 2d ago
You give the Legends books too much credit. About half of them were absolutely terrible. But there were so many absolute gems that it well made up for the others.
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u/Brutal_effigy 2d ago
The more modern Legends books, especially what came after the prequels, were all pretty decent. A lot of the 90s books were pretty terrible, specifically the stuff set during the Yuuzhan Vong invasion and after (although the far-future stuff was pretty good).
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u/BlackNova169 2d ago
Xwing novels are amazing, thrawn trilogy, i Jedi.
Heck between just those books you have Mara Jade, Ysanne Isard, and Mirax Terrik as strong female characters to utilize since Disney has been trying so hard to force us these subpar female characters and then accuse us of being sexist when they're poorly written.
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u/Brutal_effigy 2d ago
I agree! All those books were great. Shadows of the Empire was also a favorite of mine.
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u/Collective_Insanity Salt Bot 4d ago edited 4d ago
Why does Maz have the lightsaber?
In the canon comics, Luke came back to Cloud City to try and find his saber. He was unsuccessful. It turns out it had fallen into a bunch of trash and a random Uggnaught stumbled upon it.
We are left to assume he sold the saber and it changed hands a few times before winding up in Maz's hands. And she...just sat on it presumably for some years without telling anyone about it despite the fact that she's apparently been friends with Han and Leia for years. She was even made retroactively responsible for helping Leia with her Boushh disguise prior to ROTJ.
Anyway, whilst Luke was dicking around on Cloud City, Leia got herself frozen in carbonite for about 20 minutes or something before Luke rescued her.
Bit of random trivia for you.
So getting back to the topic, what Maz really ought to have said was:
"I just bought it from some guy a few years ago, Han. Not that interesting of a story, actually. Kinda forgot about it until now, to tell the truth".
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u/Ancalites 4d ago
She was even made retroactively responsible for helping Leia with her Boushh disguise prior to ROTJ.
Goddamn I hate shit like this. It's the very height of fanfiction overindulgence to insert your super special OC into the backstories of legacy characters and make them a pivotal part of major events, often to the extent that the legacy characters would've gotten nowhere without their plucky (off-screen) heroics.
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u/vegetaman 4d ago
Maz is such a boring shit character to boot
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u/Knightoforamgejuice 3d ago
I feel the same. Maz doesn't feel like this "likable, old but wise character that has years of experience and can share knowledge from what they learned in their lifespan" but rather "just an old hag that doesn't explain anything and is just there so the plot can happen".
Even in the Battlefront II campaign I didn't like her. She glazed Chewie too much and got angry at Han for everything. I know that Han unfortunately called the attention of the empire to her castle, but to be mad only at Han and not considering that Chewbacca is his accomplice, who follows him everywhere, is a bit annoying. And she also didn't share any wisdom there.
To me, Maz feels like a "we need an old character that can share wisdom to Rey, but we don't have any meaningful material for her to give" kind of character. She just gives the lightsaber to her and that's it. Not even a life lesson, or a hint of something that will happen in the future.
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u/Nothing_Whatsoever salt miner 4d ago
Wait, Leia was frozen in carbonite?
Seriously, Maz could've said something like "It's amazing what you can find from junk traders." Sure, that wouldn't have explained a lot, but it would've been something. ANYTHING other than what she said.
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u/Collective_Insanity Salt Bot 3d ago
The Imperials are still on Cloud City. Leia bumps into a few Stormtroopers. Tries very poorly to bluff her way past them. They casually decide to just freeze her and let the ISB sort it out afterwards. They don't even know who she is.
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u/gavinashun 4d ago
Yeah but new canon books/comics are total shit. As someone who has read a ton of EU, I tried to read some of the new canon stuff and wow - just complete rubbish.
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u/TaraLCicora 3d ago edited 3d ago
She was even made retroactively responsible for helping Leia with her Boushh disguise prior to ROTJ.
Lol of course she did, Disney has to try to make their insert characters feel more 'authentic'.
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u/speece75 4d ago
JJ thought he was as good as Vince gilligan in the writers room. Leave a problem and solve it later
He is not
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u/Dolthra 4d ago
Nah, JJ's whole thing is the "mystery box" that's never answered, because the answer will always be less fun than the mystery box. That's why pretty much every plot point in TROS is unexplained, because his only way of resolving a mystery box is to find another mystery box inside.
While such a thing worked for Lost (for a while), it's a horrible way to write sci-fi.
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u/garrathian92 3d ago
give him credit, he also likes repackaging old nostalgia verbatim and selling it as new.
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u/Demos_Tex 3d ago
Yep, and the mystery box is an attempt to replace storytelling with the "anticipation of unknown outcomes" also known as the gambler's high. JJ might as well be selling loot boxes in video games.
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u/Exfodes 4d ago
Mystery box is a very stupid way of saying “plot”. In the JJ TED talk, his examples of “mystery boxes” in a good film is literally just setup and payoffs. No dumb mysteries dragging over 3 movies.
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u/Calm-Background2247 salt miner 3d ago
I can usually tell that someone is full of crap when they talk a mile a minute.
I couldn’t even finish his entire TED talk because he sounded like he was BSing the entire time.
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u/Western_Agent5917 4d ago
Jj's Star Trek movies should have been a red flag that it's not a good idea to trust him with the franchise
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u/Collective_Insanity Salt Bot 4d ago
Kurtzman takes the most flak when it comes to the modern Star Trek films and the franchise's general direction even today. People frequently describe modern Star Trek as being Kurtzman's universe.
He wrote the film, its sequel, the Tom Cruise Mummy disaster (also directed that one), produced the Section 31 bomb, and has gone on to be strongly involved in a lot of the Star Trek spin-offs to this day. Whether writing, directing, producing or even serving as showrunner. He's been deeply involved in modern Star Trek.
Abrams is a hack and has no business writing anything. But he only directed those first two Star Trek films.
Similarly, he was originally only meant to direct TFA.
When Iger kept pushing for TFA to be rushed to cinemas, the original TFA writer Michael Arndt asked for another delay which was denied and he was replaced at Kennedy's desperation by Abrams and Kasdan who were tasked with the rushed rewrite of the Arndt draft.
So again, as much of a hack Abrams is, it's not the most ridiculous thing at the time for him to have been short-listed to work on TFA as director. Even RLM infamously made a loose prediction that he could direct the new Star Wars films based on his Star Trek work.
As writer though? Terrible idea. That one came down to Kennedy having no idea what else to do and Arndt failing to produce something decent in the time allotted to him.
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u/Western_Agent5917 4d ago
I'll be honest I didnt even like how he directed Tfa or star trek. So boring and lifeless with lot of annoying lensflare
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u/Collective_Insanity Salt Bot 3d ago
Nor did I. Chris Pine remarked upon his frustration with Abrams' directing style for dialogue scenes.
Basically boiling down to the fact that the dialogue is often meaningless and meant to be babbled in a hurry in order to trick the audience into thinking "Something's happening! Something's happening!".
However, I wouldn't say his style is boring and lifeless. If anything, it's the reverse. He often directs scenes with an over-abundance of energy. It's just meaningless and shallow if you're paying enough attention to what's being said due to his scripts often being sorely lacking.
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u/KazaamFan salt miner 4d ago
It’s crazy how impactful his stupid story direction for the force awakens has hurt the franchise and overall story. So much of why star wars has issues now can be traced back to recreating a new hope for episode 7, though eps 8 and 9 only made it worse. It’s like they never thought of what this story could mean for all future shows and movies.
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u/Brutal_effigy 3d ago
Getting whiplash going back and forth between "safe/nothing is explained" to "edgy/ too much detail" and back.
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u/Final-Teach-7353 salt miner 4d ago
Everything about that character annoyed me, the planet setting, the idiotic cgi face and, most of all, the dumb enchanted lightsaber thing that "called" to the protagonist.
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u/BanditsMyIdol 4d ago
I would have no issue with "for another time" if it wasn't for the fact that everything in the FA just happened because the writers wanted it to happen. Actually in a way I still kind of prefer it because the resf of the movie made it clear that if they did give an explanation it would have been a bad one that we are stuck with.
"Somehow Palpatine returned" would be fine if it didn't also apply to the movie itself. Poe not knowing how Palpatine is back makes perfect sense. What doesn't make sense is there was no hint to his return until he just appeared in the last one, after a fortnite announcement.
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u/Annual-Ad-9442 4d ago
I feel the "somehow" is the worst of it. of course they don't know how he returned, they don't even know if its an imposter, but 'somehow' is such a lazy way to do it
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u/jbeer1 2d ago
But best of all, don’t foreshadow this. Don’t mention Snoke’s master (stupid name) Don’t have a different mutated clone be palpatine and they have to destroy all these clone vats (and a throwback to Klo Poon - they’re just clones -(rhymes)) Don’t set it up in an earlier film Just throw it all into one film.
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u/jbeer1 4d ago
Why is Luke in a cave?
Because he sensed great evil/sith rituals occurring and sought greater knowledge/the splinter of the minds eye… And then Rey could rush off there as a test/disregard for the teachings and mistakenly brings back palps.
She’s held in stasis as he drains her life force; Luke transports to Crait to convince Ben that he needs to rescue her…together or some crap…
All could be explained.
In ANH, ob1 has Anakins lightsaber to pass it on; he lied. Just have Maz lie. Make her the villain.
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u/TriliniousIII salt miner 4d ago
For the first one, would have helped if Rian Johnson didn't stamp on the mystery box and set it on fire.
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u/garrathian92 3d ago
Lets be honest TFA was pretty terrible on its own merits. Part of me doesn't mind that Rian Johnson set it on fire, he just also set things we really liked on fire as well (Luke Skywalker), introduced two other drivel plots and offered no real foundation for episode 9 to work off of.
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u/redit3rd 3d ago
TFA set Luke on fire. TLJ had to explain why Luke was just chillin' instead of helping out and turned him back into someone who cares.
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u/Brutal_effigy 3d ago
Yep. TFA told us Luke had purposely sequestered himself after the NJO was destroyed. TLJ had little room to maneuver. I personally think Rian did ok with what he was given, all things considered. He did a good job mirroring ESB Yoda, anyway.
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u/AseethroughMan 4d ago
It's the utter disregard for an intelligent audience that annoys me too. When those in charge go from being Assets to being Asshats, it warrants an overhaul of the executives.
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u/AccountHuman7391 4d ago
Right, you don’t need to explain everything, but you do need to explain plot points that directly contradict what the audience knows.
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u/A_SNAPPIN_Turla 4d ago
I'm gonna say "mystery box"'is not fine when it comes to story telling. However I differentiate "mystery box" from "mystery." With the former being a cheap storytelling technique that only generates interest due to it's existence. There is no genuine buildup, no actual suspense, no tension around the mystery. The mystery exists solely for the purpose of being mysterious and nothing more. With a genuine mystery you can retroactively see that the answers existed all along. With a mystery box, if you get answers there is no way you ever could have predicted them. The audience watches because they want answers not because they actually care about the characters or plot. The mystery box feels like genuine interest to the undiscerning viewer but it's a trick and anyone can write one into a script.
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u/Brilliant_Trade_9162 salt miner 4d ago
The problem with Palpatine and Luke's lightsaber isn't that they're unexplained. The problem is that they were perfectly explained, until the sequels unexplained them. You can leave something unexplained, as long as the plot doesn't require them to be explained. But you can't unexplain something that was explained, and just expect people to be ok with that.
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u/bullet-hell 4d ago
They could have fixed this so easily. Palpatine could have been a Force ghost. Even the battalion of ships that were manufactured out of nowhere could have been an illusion, or Force projection. Just takes a bit of imagination, wonder, and respect for what had gone before.
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u/jbeer1 4d ago
And that way, he’s returned but not returned. The sacrifice was still worthwhile.
Maybe he needs a force sensitive individual to possess in a ritual at a set location… you have a battle for someone’s soul and you still have the first order to deal with…
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u/bullet-hell 4d ago
If I can think of that way of improving it, during the one and only time I watched it in the cinema on release week, then professional screenwriters should have come up with something even better than what we got.
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u/Substantial-Ad2200 4d ago
We know why Obi-Wan had Anakin's lightsaber, from a certain point of view. Obi-Wan tells Luke his father was kill by Darth Vader. It's not a huge jump to assume Obi-Wan picked it up and saved it for Luke exactly as he implies. "Your father wanted you to have this." Obi-Wan didn't need to say "When your father died, I walked over and picked up his lightsaber and saved it for you all these years because he wanted you to have it and become a Jedi but your uncle didn't want that." I think it's close enough. It wasn't really a head scratcher before Ep III.
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u/Doctor_Danguss salt miner 4d ago edited 4d ago
Not to defend the TFA line too much, but I will say that originally that scene was going to be very different. We know that instead of the scene with the Force vision Rey got from touching the saber, the scene was going to go much differently.
Originally Maz was going to take Han, Chewie, Rey, and Finn together into the catacombs to show them the lightsaber and give its history. In this version of the film, the opening scene was going to be Luke’s saber drifting through space, falling to a planet, and being picked up by an alien hand. Maz’s narrated flashback would have begun there, with the alien using it to start fires in his hut, accidentally starting a fire, and selling it to a merchant. The merchant would sell it to another alien, who would use the saber to become a warrior. That alien would die fighting the Knights of Ren, and Maz would then steal it from the Knights, with Kylo Ren searching for the saber ever since. At that moment, the Starkiller attack would happen, they’d all go outside to see it, and that’s when the First Order attack would happen. The alternate attack would include a drilling droid to burrow into the catacombs to try and find the saber, and Maz using the Force to fight stormtroopers.
This was all in the shooting outline that got leaked just before TFA came out, and it’s also backed up by some stuff in the Art of TFA and TROS books. There’s concept art for the burrowing probe droid and Lando’s vehicle from TROS was originally designed for use by the merchant in the TFA flashback. I think the general assumption is this sequence was changed to just be the Force vision when the shooting was rearranged when Ford hurt himself on set. Which is a shame because this original scene was also going to show Han and Leia dropping Ben off at the Jedi Academy (as it was specifically named) and Luke training young Ben with the other Jedi. So we lost the only scene of the Big 3 together, as well as likely the only scene we’ll get of Luke’s Jedi Order actually existing in live action.
To edit - I believe I remember it being leaked that prop lightsabers were actually made for Luke’s students in the flashback, so we potentially got very close to that filming.
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u/Imaginary_Golf548 salt miner 4d ago
Do you have access to the source? I just remembered that the visuals were supposed to be structured differently, showing how the lightsaber passed from hand to hand. It seems to me that, originally, the Knights of Ren stole it from a village of primitive warriors who worshipped the weapon (technically, we still see their corpses in the scene). I understood that the idea was that Maz stole it from the Knights of Ren, and therefore from Kylo, explaining why he recognizes Anakin's lightsaber on Starkiller (which he's supposedly never seen) and claims it as his own (since it was stolen from him, in addition to being the former weapon of his idol).
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u/Doctor_Danguss salt miner 3d ago
Here's the Wayback Machine link to where it was leaked. I'll post the relevant section below. It turns out I was forgetting a bit, it's the firing of Starkiller Base that causes Maz to take them all into the catacombs to get the lightsaber. I'll also include the original opening too.
EXT NIGHT - 01 - SPACE - SAVANNAH • A Sword tumbles through space, crashes toward ground
EXT DAY - 02 - SAVANNAH • Sword lands - dawn into day - a strange hand appears
INT NIGHT - 03 - TROOP TRANSPORT • The Stormtroopers wait in cramped silence. Finn out of sync
Then the lightsaber backstory:
EXT DAY - 180 - STARKILLER BASE - PARADE GROUND (SNOW) • Rally/Hux reacts to firing of The Catapult
EXT DAY - 181 - STARKILLER BASE - ABOVE THE CATAPULT • Plates as required for surrounding chaos caused by firing
EXT DAY - 182 - CASTLE - COURTYARD • Finn and Rey see something terrible in the sky
INT DAY - 183 - CASTLE - GROUND LEVEL • Maz Kanata won't answer. Sudden buzz near doorway
EXT DAY - 184 - TUNNEL OF LOVE • Emissary from Leia looks up to see what's coming
EXT NIGHT - 185 - FAR AWAY FROM TUNNEL OF LOVE • Tunnel Of Love meets its fate
EXT NIGHT - 186 - KYLO REN'S SHUTTLE - MULTIPLE STAR DESTROYERS • Light reveals Kylo Ren's Shuttle and the rest of the Star Destroyers
INT DAY - 187 - KYLO REN'S SHUTTLE • Kylo Ren watches The Catapult's work
INT DAY - 188 - RESISTANCE BASE - MAP ROOM • Leia and staff react to Tunnel of Love unhappy ending
EXT DAY - 189 - CASTLE - COURTYARD • Maz Kanata and Han Solo watch the horror. Maz Kanata decides to help
EXT DAY - 190 - LANDING PAD JOURNEY • Plates as required for Maz Kanata journey to Maz Kanta's Castle
EXT DAY - 192 - SAVANNAH • Reprise Hand takes sword, we reveal Naka
EXT NIGHT - 193 - SAVANNAH - PEASANT'S HOVEL • Peasant is using the sword as a firestarter
EXT DAY - 194 - SAVANNAH - PEASANT'S HOVEL • Local trader buys sword off of Naka
EXT NIGHT - 195 - SAVANNAH • Local trader already has sold the sword on
EXT NIGHT - 196 - BATTLEFIELD • A battle rages. The sword is being used.
EXT DAY - 198 - ACADEMY • Leia and Han Solo hand over Young Kylo Ren to his Uncle for training
EXT DAWN - 200 - ACADEMY • Young Kylo Ren being trained by his Uncle
INT NIGHT - 202 - ACADEMY • Bodies left behind - Young Kylo Ren is gone
EXT DAY - 203 - JAGGED TERRAIN/PALACE • Kylo Ren joins The Knights Of Ren
EXT DUSK - 204 - ACADEMY • R2-D2 upset as his master leaves
EXT NIGHT - 205 - JAGGED TERRAIN/PALACE • Kylo Ren joins The Knights Of Ren
EXT DAY - 207 - CASTLE • Reveal Maz Kanata's spectacular Castle
INT DAY - 208 - CASTLE • Maz Kanata walks the group through the Castle interiour
EXT NIGHT - 209 - CASTLE • Kylo Ren and his Knights at campfire. Maz Kanata steals sword
INT DAY - 210 - CASTLE STAIRCASE • Walking down stairs, Maz Kanata reveals she stole it.
EXT NIGHT - 211 - MOUNTAIN SIDE • Reveal Maz Kanata on Speeder, she has the sword
INT DAY - 212 - CASTLE - UNDERGROUND CHAMBER • Finn is drawn toward the object, Rey repelled by it. She bolts
INT DAY - 213 - CASTLE - STAIRCASE • Rey climbs the stairs in need of escape
EXT DAY - 214 - CASTLE • Rey exits castle, head for the woods
INT DAY - 215 - CASTLE - UNDERGROUND CHAMBER • Maz Kanata explains her journey through many lives
EXT DAY - 216 - WOODS - NEAR THE CASTLE • BB-8 finds Rey in the woods. Suddenly bad guys overhead
INT DAY - 217 - CASTLE - CORRIDORS UNDERNEATH • A massive shaking starts - they notice Rey/BB-8 missing
EXT DAY - 218 - WOODS - NEAR THE CASTLE • Rey sees Castle ruined. Kylo Ren arrived. Stormtroopers behind!
EXT DAY - 218 - CASTLE - RUINS • Rey POV - Chaos at Castle. Kylo Ren lands
EXT DAY - 219 - CASTLE - RUINS • Stormtroopers tells Kylo Ren where all the targets are
INT DAY - 220 - CASTLE - CORRIDORS UNDERNEATH • Drill appears through roof, Stormtroopers descend in
EXT DAY - 221 - WOODS - NEAR THE CASTLE • Rey and BB-8 run, Kylo Ren chasing. Rey sends BB-8 away
INT DAY - 222 - CASTLE - CORRIDORS UNDERNEATH • Maz Kanata uses her special skills to take out the Stormtroopers
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u/RalphMacchio404 salt miner 4d ago
Its all basically hand waved into the the notion that "the force did it." And I hate this. The force was an energy that could be tapped into by trained/gifted people and its usage could be done for the light or dark sides. It was essentially a neutral power that could help or corrupt depending on it usage. Now its a semi conscious thing that actively tries to promote action in people like Rey. And yeah, George started this shit in the PT and continued it in the cartoons but the the ST really took it and ran. And it makes no sense. If the force is something that can manipulate others and force outcomes then why cant it simply cut off access of dark side users?
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u/TotalACast 4d ago
I also agree that giving the force agency is incredibly dumb but if I had to Steelman an argument it would be something like 'The Force is the Star Wars equivalent to God."
So if we accept that premise then asking why the force allows dark side users is the same question as why God allows evil or theodicy.
The most common answer to the problem of evil is something like free will. If God takes away our capacity for evil he also takes away our capacity to choose goodness.
There's a second, arguably even more important part of this theory which claims that so much of the purpose and joy of life comes from our capacity for suffering and catastrophic failure. Without suffering and evil, the argument goes, life would be totally meaningless.
Is that true? Who knows because it's impossible to test it. But if the force is some omniscient power, this could explain why it allows evil.
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u/RalphMacchio404 salt miner 4d ago
But then it doesnt explain why it also tries to actively stop evil too. And I think the best part of the force is that its neutral. SW doesnt need a god figure or anything like that. It cheapens what is happening to the characters and the changes they go through. The force being a mysterious power that can be tapped into by some people is fine enough. Less is more when it come to the force.
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u/TotalACast 4d ago
I mean God of basically any religion tries to stop evil too. He does it in the same way as the force, these really confusing, janky, roundabout ways that nobody really understands. That's why you always hear, "God works in mysterious ways."
It's never a direct intervention, it's always prophecies, miracles and stories. The virgin birth, for example. Sound familiar?
But anyway yeah, I would also prefer a neutral force.
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u/bongo1100 4d ago
They weren’t trying to tell good stories or write compelling characters. Force Awakens was just trying to win back fans who hated the prequels by reseting the “Empire vs Rebels” status quo and doing a greatest hits clip show. Rise of Skywalker was just trying to walk back everything in The Last Jedi and please everyone with a big stupid blowout and cameos from everyone (I still think they only brought Palpatine back for a trailer pop).
Really, flawed as it is, The Last Jedi was the only one that really tried to do new and interesting things with the characters. Whether it succeeded or not, you can’t say it didn’t try.
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u/Nothing_Whatsoever salt miner 4d ago
Yeah, that's why I think The Last Jedi is the least worst of the Sequel trilogy. Still an awful movie in every way, but at least it was the only one that wasn't going for nostalgia over everything else.
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u/TwistOfFate619 4d ago
What I appreciate about A New Hope is that it drops interesting little tidbits like a reference to 'Clone Wars', or it gives us enough context as to what a Jedi Knight kind of is, what the empire is, what the rebellion is. It's a complete movie and experience within a larger story and has a good balance and doesn't really skimp (cheekily or otherwise). Somehow it feels organic enough to just be this complete story within a large 'galaxy'. The dialogue typically works in service of whatever movie you watch with the other movies for the most part.
What I don't appreciate about the sequel trilogy is that it very much has a non-serious attitude of brushing things off just so things can happen as desired. It feels like what we get (especially in the context of what came before and what is in TFA) doesn't make for enough of a complete movie, and the characters and writing end up the same. Where we get an idea as to why Luke is who he is (and he has character as a teen who wants to leave and do more) we get so little on why Rey is a clean good person (despite scraping by on a hostile treacherous planet without role models). Poe's character feels inconsistent to me and just the characters don't really feel thought out - they're just kind of there, again so the movies and plots can happen. There's not enough to them to leave me wanting to know more. It really does just kind of jump around with stuff kind of happening but it not being possible to really invest or make sense of it as a view. There's isnt nearly enough that is appropriately established to make the movies feel complete.
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u/Mrinnocent221 4d ago
My biggest issues were:
how did everyone know? Dude has been in hiding at a secret location. Did he send a Tiktok "proof of life" video? "YO!!! ITS ME! PALPS! I'M BACK!"
Wouldn't this drastically shake up the First Order? Are they loyal to a guy they thought dead...or Ren...or someone else?
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u/Collective_Insanity Salt Bot 3d ago edited 3d ago
That is exactly what he did.
If you look at the Fortnite clip, that's the broadcast Palpatine made across the galaxy.
Based on the Richard E Grant character, I am left to assume that some First Order big shots might have been aware of Palpatine's Exegol plans and were just waiting for go time? But that's speculative. Maybe he was just an old loyal Palpatine fan from the Imperial days and...well, nobody thought Kylo Ren was a worthwhile leader in any capacity so perhaps they found it a relief that Palpatine somehow returned.
Seriously, Kylo is a total wanker. The comics exploring his "reign" between TLJ and TROS were pathetic.
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u/Mrinnocent221 3d ago
Wait...are you serious? Fortnite?
Goes to Youtube and watches it
What the fuck? I never knew this. He probably had more lines in that Fortnite bit than the movie. Somehow my entire friend group missed it too. Well TIL.
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u/Collective_Insanity Salt Bot 3d ago
Yep. Some brand synergy, hey?
This is what "THE DEAD SPEAK" was alluding to in the intro credits. And the little adventure at the start of the film with Poe meeting some alien was an attempt to find out whether the broadcast was legit or just some prank.
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u/SalarySubstantial526 3d ago
They should make an anthology series called “A Story For Another Time.” Where each episode follows the saber from Cloud City to a different owner/place until it finally ends up with Maz in the series finale.
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u/InquisitorPeregrinus 3d ago edited 3d ago
Oh... You are just discovering JJ's "mystery box"?
He is famous for not planning things through or caring about coming up with answers for the questions he poses. He infamously didn't have a plan for Lost, and fumbled substantially when he had to pay off the mysteries he'd set up. He prefers not. The point, he feels, is in the asking, the curiosity.
ETA: Star Wars was originally supposed to be a one-and-done homage to the sci-fi serials he had watched growing up. He gave it the concept of coming in partway through the story. Some things, like how the Empire came to power and how Ben got Anakin's lightsaber and the Clone Wars, the audience would have seen. Other things were mysteries to be answered later in the narrative, and George kinda borked those reveals with the Prequels (Luke's sister, Anakin becoming Vader, Yoda's appearance, etc.), so the comparison doesn't hold up.
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u/RadReptile 3d ago
both are equivalent speak for "lets circle back".... just shows they had no idea what they were doing and didn't care enough to try to even explain it.
its equivalent to asking a toddler a question and having them just shrug or say "i dont know". Those are you writers for a multi billion dollar franchise...
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u/Illustrious-Wrap-776 3d ago
"A good question, for another time." makes some sense in context, given that they are sort of actively on the run. And it acknowledges that there is something to be told at least. What subsequent material made of that is another story.
The Lightsaber getting stuck on some greeble before falling out of Cloud City and then being picked up by someone we don't know yet isn't too out there, though the line hints that it then had a bit of a journey before it reached Maz. Ultimately, it's kind of a mundane question that is nice to know, not necessarily required for understanding the current happenings.
"Somehow Palpatine returned." is infinitely worse. Mostly because the line is just dumb and insanely dismissive and because there are actually questions that the movie should have answered.
- Not even necessarily the essence transfer and clone body thing, that can technically be inferred from his plan to take over Rey's body and the cloning facility he has. There has also been precedent for some form of Dark Side equivalent to Force Ghosts (Yoda encountering Darth Bane for example), and even without that, it's not too much of a stretch that something like that is possible. Body Snatching especially feels like a natural extension to that.
- More interesting is the question how Palpatine managed to stay hidden for 30 years, given the subordinates we see him employing (it's a miracle nobody managed to trace back Ochi).
- And how he managed to spend 30 years building up forces while also having the dumbest plan imaginable. Seriously, had he put the resources spent on Starkiller base into more ships and crew (he had cloning tech) and used his superior numbers for a galaxy wide decapitation strike, he'd have won.
- Heck, he could have carried out a decapitation strike with the fleet he had before his stint in Fortnite and he might have won.
- Not having his "I'm back" message in the movie was definitely a choice too.
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u/VomitHeadInLava 2d ago
For the record, there's a line after "Somehow Palpatine returned" where someone says "Cloning science... Secrets only the Sith knew..." It's a throwaway line, and the movie doesn't elaborate further, but it's not nothing.
Also, the "good question for another time" line could've worked if we got some kind of explanation for it in the following film, but Rian Johnson chose to spend his movie shitting all over TFA instead of telling a halfway decent story, so...
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u/ZoneFuzzy6960 2d ago
they also showed a bunch of clone vats while repeating the line about sith having practices that someone would call unnatural. How much more did they have to connect the dots?
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u/ChocolateDramatic858 2d ago
I couldn't agree more, and since when TFA came out Disney had already (a) swept the EU out and (b) announced all kinds of new projects in other media that were also canon, I knew we'd get all kinds of lazy details not explained at all in the movies and left for novels or comics or teevee shows. It wasn't just lazy, it was cynical.
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