Star Wars -- ONE thread for all Star Wars - ALL Star Wars here

Which is your favorite?

  • Episode IV: A New Hope

  • Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

  • Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

  • Episode I: The Phantom Menace

  • Episode II: Attack of the Clones

  • Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

  • Clone Wars Animated

  • Episode VII: The Force Awakens

  • Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

  • Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

Results are only viewable after voting.
I had a question for those of you who understand the Star Wars cannon better than me:
What do you think is the real backstory of Rey's parents? What could have persuaded them to abandon their daughter? What were they trying to do?
I guess I totally missed it.
Thanks,
Bénisse
p.s. Copperfox,
I enjoyed reading your redo of The Last Jedi.
 
The sequel trilogy is really lame. Maybe I was happy with The Last Jedi originally because it wasn't as dark as The Force Awakens. This new trilogy is so visually boring and the story is fraught with errors. Nobody knows the Emperor is alive for so long, yet his children keep their child hidden from him. Huh? Strange movies. I really don't care for The Rise of Skywalker. I like the prequels. So much more elegant and visually stunning. I would actually enjoy rewatching the prequels. The sequels are pretty terrible. Rogue One was great! I have lost so much interest in Star Wars as a result of the sequels.
 
"Rogue One" was indeed a moving, heroic film. The best moment was when Donnie Yen as the blind kung-fu master walked right through a barrage of blaster fire, KNOWING that the Force would not LET him die before he accomplished his part of the mission.

As for "The LEAST Jedi," I would rather have EVEN a dark story, than a story which says that Luke Skywalker was a useless loser.
 
Yes. His granddaughter, apparently. Her father was a clone of Palpatine's who lacked Force-sensitivity. He and Rey's mother abandoned her on Jakku in hopes of keeping the Sith from finding her. They were both subsequently killed by a Sith assassin.
 
Glenburne, could you explain what you mean by "her father was a clone of Palpatine"? Does this mean her father was created from Palpatine's DNA artificially?
 
I haven't been a part of this conversation, but I'm going to say my piece. You might think I'm crazy, but that's okay. This is my opinion, and I'm sticking to it. And let me say, I've been a Star Wars fan since middle school. My first experience of Star Wars on the big screen was when my class watched A New Hope at a nearby college. After that, officially, was the special edition trilogy, followed by the prequels, the clone wars animated film, and then the sequels, Rogue One, and Solo. I've been around the saga long enough to know that every time they do something new, there will be a contingent of fans that hate it so much they want it stricken from the record. The Ewoks were hated for over a decade before Jar Jar Binks became the new Ewok. The People vs George Lucas documentary was born of hate for Lucas's prequel trilogy, which I spent a long time defending. I thought about them a lot and even came up with ideas for how I might handle a reboot of the prequels, and wrote about it. (In it, I attempt to cover up who Darth Vader is behind the mask, something that would be a gargantuan task now that the Clone Wars animated series also exists to spoil that.)

I watched as those that were 8 years old in 1999 were 20 in 2011, and suddenly the prequels were not only accepted but somehow celebrated. After over a decade of feeling like I was alone in enjoying those movies, I was pleased to find that others enjoyed them as well. And like many other things, history is repeating itself. We have a new trilogy, and the response started out celebratory, before turning to hate. Why? I don't know. I stayed out of the conversation. I had a new daughter at home, and I knew that I loved the movie that I saw the night before she was born. When the Blu-ray showed up, I watched it over and over. It became my favorite Star Wars movie. Sure, I was sad that Luke said nothing in the movie and upset about the fate of Han Solo, but that is to be expected. Our minds don't differentiate between people we know in person and people we know through screens, so grief and mourning are perfectly natural and normal responses when characters we've known for an hour or so pass away in a story, and probably more so for characters we've known since 1977, or whenever you first saw a Star Wars film. For me, that was around the early 1990s, so over 20 years. In fact, all three films gave us another character to mourn, with The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, unfortunately, both giving us Leia, because of Carrie Fisher's untimely passing a year before The Last Jedi was released. While it doesn't apply to everyone, I feel that some of the hate directed toward The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker wasn't actually because of the content of those films, but rather, because of the loss of Carrie Fisher. Some, I'm confident, hadn't dealt with the grief that they felt/feel about that. And the scene with Luke and Leia talking in The Last Jedi, to those folks, was like twisting a dagger in their hearts. To me, it was a beautiful moment, and oddly prophetic.

I fully believe that we're about 5-10 years from the entire Skywalker saga being generally accepted. That timeframe makes me sad, because I genuinely love and enjoy each of them.

Anyway, here's where you will think I've gone out of my mind, if you haven't already:

I think the sequel trilogy is the best of the saga. Better than the Original Trilogy, and better than the prequels. Rey is my new favorite character in the Star Wars universe, and I think that J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson did an admirable job of not just continuing the saga, but bringing it to a conclusion that was everything I was hoping it would be.

If anyone has any questions as to why I feel the way I do, feel free to ask.

Also, I have to say this: however some may wish that Disney is going to erase episodes 7-9 from the canon, I would be devastated if they did so. And I can't see them ever decide to erase films that made $4 billion at the box office alone from the canon. I don't read reviews or listen to any others' opinions of any movie before I see it, if I am interested in watching it (if the critics can do that, why can't I?). So I went to each film in the sequel trilogy about as blind as you could, and all three times, I walked out completely satisfied.

I was watching Star Wars, and enjoying it.

Another crazy thing that happened? When The Force Awakens was released, My wife and I had tickets for Thursday, December 17, at 7pm on IMAX, Friday, December 18, at 7pm on IMAX, and Saturday, December 19, but I can't remember what time, or if it was IMAX. We only made it to the first screening. We were in the hospital from Friday to Monday. Our daughter decided that the 18th was a good day to be born. All the nurses were guessing which Star Wars name we were going to give to our daughter, but in the end, we didn't name her a Star Wars name... at the time. We named her Clara Rose, and Rian Johnson seemed to name a character after her. lol

One other thing that I must mention here: at this point, there is enough Star Wars content that there will be movies and shows that not everyone likes. That is completely fine. What we should try to steer clear of is elimination by the erasure of stories that have been made, canon or otherwise (Legends) simply because we don't like this part of it or that. I may love all of the Star Wars movies that have been released so far, but that doesn't mean I love all of the parts of them. I know all of them to have flaws here and there, and that's fine with me. I will give an example, but first, I need to set this up. I have read a LOT of Star Wars books. All of them are part of the Legends timeline, which is fine with me. I knew it would probably happen whenever Lucas or anyone made episodes 7-9, and Pablo Hidalgo even said that all of the books written were considered a separate timeline for a long time before the split. The only true canon until the split was always the movies and TV shows. Until Legends, that meant Episodes 1-6 and The Clone Wars. Of all of the books I have read, there were three that I was probably more excited for than any others: The Bounty Hunter Wars by K.W. Jeter. Boba Fett used to be my favorite character (still up there, just not #1 anymore). But I don't remember reading a more boring Star Wars book, let alone three. It got so bad, that all I had to do was read the dialogue between characters, without descriptions, and I knew what was going on. The inner monologue and descriptions of the locations didn't inform me of anything important to the story the way a Timothy Zahn or Tolkien novel does. At least reading those, you get a sense for the scale of the location, and it informs your reading. But I digress. I mean all of this to say: I do not like those three books. Should they be stricken from the record? No, I would never tell Disney "remove these from the Legends timeline, for I did not agree with the content." Does my hate for these Star Wars books make me less of a Star Wars fan? No. Not at all. Does their existence make me hate Disney or Star Wars or Lucasfilm or Bantam Books? No, nor does their continued existence. But why am I saying this? Because the movies are the same way. You can choose to love or hate any part of the Star Wars universe and that doesn't make you more or less of a Star Wars fan than anyone else. Period.

I'm open to any questions, even the difficult ones about Luke in Last Jedi.
 
Benisse said:
I had a question for those of you who understand the Star Wars cannon better than me:
What do you think is the real backstory of Rey's parents? What could have persuaded them to abandon their daughter? What were they trying to do?
I guess I totally missed it.
Click to expand...
Palpatine was a fan of cloning as a way to live forever. He'd orchestrated the creation of the Clone army, and in fact, the Clone Wars as a way to rise to power. When he reveals how he became Darth Sidious to Anakin Skywalker (without really revealing his origin to Anakin directly), he says "The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.” This is a line that the clone of Palpatine recites in The Rise of Skywalker. The fact that he'd created the strand-cast Snoke as well was an interesting way to keep focus away from himself as he attempted to re-build the Empire, and re-build a body that he could inhabit. (Afterall, if everyone thinks Snoke is the guy, and that Palpatine was gone forever, then no one will go looking for him.) One reason why he wasn't able to really walk around was because the body they were cloning for him wasn't ready for him to inhabit yet. It was probably younger, but incomplete. Because it was flawed, and decaying, they continued to experiment with cloning more strand-casts. One of those was biologically human, but that clone could not use the Force and was considered a failed experiment. That was Rey's father.

He was only allowed to live because Palpatine saw an opportunity for him to continue the bloodline and perhaps produce a force-sensitive child. However, he and his wife escaped into hiding, knowing Palpatine's nefarious plans. They became junk traders, and eventually sold Rey to hide her from Palpatine before Ochi could get to them. Ochi had been sent by Palpatine with a plan to bring Rey back. What they were trying to do was to save their daughter from Palpatine by hiding her. And they would never reveal that secret to Ochi.
 
Spoiler Alert
Oh now I see. A few more questions:
1. So could someone help me make sense of al those scenes in Return of the Jedi in which Kylo and Rey are telepathically communicating? Is that just a part of Jedi culture?
2. And also, how did Kylo and Rey end up fighting Palatine together to the extent that Kylo pours his life into Rey to revive her at the end? I did not see that coming.
3. Finally, at the end, what is the significance of Rey choosing to bury the light sabers where she buries them?
 
Benisse said:
Spoiler Alert
Oh now I see. A few more questions:
1. So could someone help me make sense of al those scenes in Return of the Jedi in which Kylo and Rey are telepathically communicating? Is that just a part of Jedi culture?
2. And also, how did Kylo and Rey end up fighting Palatine together to the extent that Kylo pours his life into Rey to revive her at the end? I did not see that coming.
3. Finally, at the end, what is the significance of Rey choosing to bury the light sabers where she buries them?
Click to expand...
1. Guessing those scenes you are referring to are the ones in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. This isn't the first time we've seen something like this in a Star Wars film, but it is the longest we've seen it in use. Yes, it is part of The Force to be able to do this. The first time we, as filmgoers, saw a conversation in the Force like this was in The Empire Strikes Back. First, Luke reached out to Leia through the Force, and she knew they had to go back for Luke. Then, Luke and Vader communicated through the force.

INT. VADER'S STAR DESTROYER - BRIDGE

Vader stands on the bridge, watching as the Millennium Falcon is chased
by the TIE fighters. As his Destroyer draws nearer, Vader's breathing
gets slightly faster.

VADER
Luke.

INT. MILLENNIUM FALCON - SLEEPING QUARTERS

Luke realizes that Vader's ship is very near. He feels resigned to his
fate. He senses that he is beaten, more emotionally than physically.

LUKE
Father.

INT. VADER'S STAR DESTROYER - BRIDGE

VADER
Son, come with me.

INT. MILLENNIUM FALCON - SLEEPING QUARTERS

LUKE
(moaning)
Ben, why didn't you tell me?
Click to expand...
INT. MILLENNIUM FALCON - COCKPIT

Luke enters the cockpit and looks out the window. He is almost
unconscious with pain and depression.

LUKE
It's Vader.

INT. VADER'S STAR DESTROYER - BRIDGE

VADER
Luke... it is your destiny.

INT. MILLENNIUM FALCON - COCKPIT

LUKE
Ben, why didn't you tell me?
Click to expand...

You might also say that Luke communicating with Obi-Wan who had already passed away, and Yoda also communicating with Obi-Wan through the Force was an example of a similar type of communication. Not exactly the same though. This communication between Vader and Luke was pretty much exactly the same. Vader was clearly speaking directly to Luke, but the only thing that Luke said to Vader in return was "Father."

Rian Johnson and Carrie Fisher (who helped with the script) going through it line-by-line with Johnson put that ability to use with Rey and Kylo. This ability was also used a lot in the books. Jaina and Jacen Solo used it a lot when piloting their X-Wings in battle, and there were groups of Jedi that would do something of a mind-meld that went even further, allowing all of them to be controlled by the Force, so they would fluidly move together through the battle.

2. Kylo and Rey do battle on the large piece of the Second Death Star in Rise of Skywalker, among the waves on the planet. During that battle, Rey stabs Kylo, but that's when she feels Leia's presence through the Force and stops. Moments later she brings him back, using some of her own life force to do it. After she leaves, Kylo Ren begins having a conversation with a vision of Han Solo, and Ben Solo finishes it.
HAN: Hey, kid. I miss you, son.
KYLO REN: Your son is dead.
HAN: No. Kylo Ren is dead. My son is alive.
KYLO REN: You’re just a memory.
HAN: Your memory. Come home.
KYLO REN: It’s too late. She’s gone.
HAN: Your mother’s gone. But what she stood for, what she fought for.... that’s not gone.
HAN: (sighs) Ben.
KYLO REN: I know what I have to do.... but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it.
[Han touches Kylo’s face and smiles]
HAN: You do.
BEN SOLO: Dad...
HAN: I know.
[Ben throws Kylo Ren's lightsaber into the water where it sinks forever and turns to see Han gone]
Click to expand...
This moment is where Ben Solo is no longer Kylo Ren, and he is once again the man that he was before he turned to a path of evil. You can see this in his actions in the fight on Exegol. His mannerisms are suddenly different. He runs and shoots like Han, he shrugs his shoulders like Han, he relishes the danger of the situation like Han. He is his father's son. He also knows that Rey could have left him to die there, but she didn't, and in doing so, he was able to reconcile with himself and become Ben Solo once and for all. So when Rey needed him in the same way, he gave her that gift right back, and laid down his own life to save hers. He sacrificed himself to save her life.

3. Rey buries the lightsabers at the old Lars Homestead, the moisture farm where Luke grew up. It was back on Tatooine where the entire adventure started. Anakin Skywalker was from Tatooine, Luke Skywalker grew up there, and though Leia did not, her home planet of Alderaan had been destroyed (or her lightsaber may have been buried on that planet, but we can only speculate). Plus, Luke and Leia were twin brother and sister. So burying the lightsabers together made sense, and burying them where Luke grew up made sense as a way to protect them. Kyber Crystals are extremely rare, and keeping those lightsabers safe is important, so rather than burying them in a Jedi temple, she puts them in a place that is important to Luke's history, but that has no significance to the Jedi outside of "Luke lived here once." They're well protected in that way.
 
Specter, while I agree with many of your points, I just really struggle with the Sequel Trilogy. First, though, I agree erasing or rewriting the sequel trilogy would not be helpful. There are some beautfiul things about it, like you mentioned, such as Luke and Leia's interaction. It is certainly successful in being different from the other two trilogies in many ways.

I'm still having several hangups with the sequel trilogy, and maybe you can help me with them. Honestly I am open to different perspectives, and perhaps people see strengths where I see weaknesses.

What's really hard for me are the lazy story writing, empty visual mediums and lack of classic character interactions.

The whole process of hiring and firing multipe, uncoordinated directors and writers with competing visions for the sequel trilogy was, I thought, rather unfortunate. While JJ Abrams brought an inital vision to the board, that dissolved or mutated rather quickly.

Having such an empty, cold and broken galaxy WAS one approach, but I feel many opportunities were completely wasted. While I was greatly delighted at the degree to which Han, Luke and Leia returned (initially we were led to believe they might have mere cameos), I would have greatly appreciated some classic reunions. Something along the lines of their reunion in The Return of the Jedi would have been absolutely refreshing in a galaxy some odd 30 years later, and having them instead so separated and estranged was an unnceccessary tragedy.

Having Finn be an unsolved mystery was a disapppointment. No amount of workup to Rey's origin could really pay off in this day and age where speculation and theories simply abounded. And Kylo just got old to me really fast. Although his acting was impressive in many instances, his storyline was rather disappointing. His return to the light side was sudden and unconvincing.

Visually, there is little in the Sequel Trilogy that impresses me. Some excellent locations were chosen, but the worlds lack life, creatures and that surreal quality I often found in the Prequels.

Hardly anything ties this separate trilogy to the other two. If I'm not mistaken, an extremely brief and obligatory stop at the end on Tatooine is the only planet connecting these films to the others. A balance of new and established worlds would have been nice. Moving the capital to Hosnian Prime was pointless. Blowing up Coruscant, which is what I thought happened at first, though it angered me would have been much more impactful. R2 and 3PO are GROSSLY sidelined. The soccer ball (and wheel chair/lamp light droid in The Rise of Skywalker) are cute, but come on! The other six films, one could argue easily, are the classic droids' stories. Again, the original three as well as Lando could have been SO much better utilitzed.

To be fair, there are things I think could have been different about each trilogy. There was a time when it was considered heresy to speak negatively about the original triolgy but I have always found the intensity with which the original characters yell and bicker at each other quite annoying. There is a lot of repetition from the get go what with endless stormtroopers and repitious death stars. The prequels have the best and the worst visuals at the same time, lol. The pacing is generally amazing yet at times terribly edited. Having so much mystery and a variety of villains and heroes in the prequels was refreshing, but a bit of that could have been replaced with some more character tie-ins to the original trilogy. Personally, I loved the large-scale political backdrop satire in the prequels. Goofy, self-absorbed power-hungry conformists in the Senate (except with pronounced alien features and expressions)?! I mean, come on, it doesn't get any better than that! I also loved JarJar because he was at times clueless to the extent of not recognizing maleficience and corruption around him but also simple, fun-loving and unbothered by it too. In some ways, better than a brown hairy wookie saying "ARGHURGHARGURG" to every, every thing in the original trilogy? I know the prequel concept isn't for everybody, but vacuuming EVERYTHING out of the Star Wars universe to show us a baggage-ridden and empty consequential galaxy in the sequels was super meaningless. Also, the sequel trilogy lightsaber fights and battles are beyond boring. A real (both characters actually physically present), methodical, long, drawn-out lightsaber duel between Kylo and Luke would have stunning. In the duel in The Rise of Skywalker, Rey and Finn look like they're dancing in the rain mindlessly swinging their swords. I know I am opinionated but the films have just been on my mind lately and I need to vent a little.
 
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A few scattered, VERY small nice things in the sequel travesty are like putting band-aids on a corpse. Nice interaction between Luke and Leia? I'm pretty sure that Luke and Leia could still have had a sweet moment WITHOUT Luke having to be changed into a pathetic failure, WITHOUT a malicious retcon which had Leia with NO Jedi combat experience easily defeating Luke who DID have the experience, and WITHOUT Leia's marriage to Han having crashed and burned.
 
You all know the lore so much better than I do! I enjoyed Specter's thoughts, and the rebuttal of Tirian very much. I liked all the films, found the prequels kind of goofy and hated Jar Jar, but I think the sequels are quite good. The only thing that made me sad was Finn's character, which was awesome, never really got enough development or resolution, did it? I loved that we actually got to meet a Storm Trooper and see that they're real people and can escape (if at great cost) and do right. I really liked him. I like Rey, too, she's a fantastic heroine. And I loved Kylo Ren's arc.

You know what I hated in the prequels, and kind of hated in the sequels, was the case was never made strongly enough why Anakin and Ben Solo were pulled into the dark side. In the prequel films, it just seemed like Anakin was just like, "Oh, Padme might die, and maybe the dark side can save her," which was really flimsy. And we never really do see what pulled Kylo Ren that direction ... we just kind of hear about it. I love that they both are transformed by their end, but I wish it had been a little more clear what turned them to begin with.

Also you know what's a fantastic film, Rogue One. I saw it for my birthday weekend, and Carrie Fisher had just passed, and when we saw her at the end -- "They've given us hope" or whatever she says -- I was crying my eyes out. That film stands alone, right, it's not part of the sequels? Or is it? I get them all mixed up. That one is a stand-out to me.
 
There are two very different ways for a movie to be "good." It can be "good" simply in the sense of production values and acting talent. But it's a separate question whether these merits are APPLIED to any good PURPOSE.

"Prince NON-Caspian," and "The LEAST Jedi," both did a masterful job at what their directors desired to accomplish. The directors of both films consciously desired to degrade, insult and ruin fictional heroes. Peter Pevensie and Luke Skywalker were both maliciously changed into what they never were: useless losers who needed much-younger females to show how inferior they, the males, were. "Prince NON-Caspian" was in fact a great movie-- it just wasn't a Narnia movie. "The LEAST Jedi" was a great movie, too-- it just wasn't a Star Wars movie.

Don't anybody even start to say, "But it's boring if heroes are impossibly perfect!" Both Peter and Luke, as originally written, WEREN'T impossibly perfect; they both spent more than enough time having flaws and weaknesses. In Luke's case, he didn't attain full Jedi-hood until he had struggled onward through three entire films. But it wasn't enough for Andrew Adamson and Kathleen Kennedy that Peter and Luke had to earn success the hard way; they desired for Peter and Luke NEVER to arrive at success.

By contrast, we have Rey Palpatine, "The Best-est EVVAH." In Greek mythology, the goddess Athena was born already adult, already possessing enough power to be among the five mightiest Greek deities. Athena never had to work to achieve anything; she literally was awesome from her very first moment of existence. Thus with Rey Palpatine, who doesn't need ever to have piloted a starship before, to be qualified to TEACH HAN SOLO about starship maintenance.

Switching to "Rogue One," it is what I call an "interquel." It was made later than any of the first six Star Wars films, but it FITS in the timeline between Episodes Three and Four. The central character in "Rogue One" was a strong female; but her being strong DIDN'T require every male character to be trampled on by the script.
 
Suppose that I create a comicbook series, which I specifically claim is a Superman series. Then you discover that my comicbook series WILL NOT EVER depict Superman himself, NOR depict Ma and Pa Kent, Lois Lane, Supergirl, Power Girl, Jimmy Olsen, Lana Lang, Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Bizarro, the town of Smallville, the city of Metropolis, the planet Krypton, the Justice League, or kryptonite. But I insist that it still IS a Superman series because I say it is.

Kathleen Kennedy has publicly declared that she can CONTRADICT all of George Lucas' ideas, yet still pretend that something she produces nonetheless IS a Star Wars production. She just wants to enjoy the advantage of name recognition, at the same time as she DISRESPECTS the name.

 
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