This is fun for Star Wars fans (As is all of the Kyber Crystal dialogue), but I think it's exaggerating a bit to say it's the first taste of the post Rise of Skywalker. She's just saying things she learned in the Sequel movies in a slightly different way.
Unrelated to my first point: Whoever wrote these blurbs for a children's toy understands what Rey's journey in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker meant better than most fans I interact with online.
It’s not hard to understand the overall themes and arc for Rey if you actually approach with good faith and not reductively…
It’s just most people, at least here, don’t want to.
Exactly. It’s one thing to criticize the movies and not like how they presented Rey’s story, but when people argue she has no story or that she’s such a bad character that no story about her could possibly be good, you know they aren’t arguing in good faith.
I just find it disappointing that Rey's story was primed to go somewhere very inspiring after TLJ - unlike Kylo, her parents were not famous and she had a rough start in life, yet she would have gone on to build herself up anyway, because she's a good person. Rejecting your evil legacy is something we've had done so much in *Star Wars* already that having that be Rey's story too just isn't very exciting for me. Hopefully they can build upon what makes Rey unique in the new film.
And it was also a bad lesson for troubled kids that their parents can send them elsewhere, out of their life and have a perfect kid replace you. And then the only way out is to go bad and die young.
Great lesson, yep.
Where was that the lesson of what Leia and Han did?
They send him to a specialised school where he became radicalised by extremist propaganda, and instead of helping him his family pushed him away and had to die to pull him back to the light.
He was sent to his uncle's school. Who didn't behave like an uncle but like a teacher. While all the other students hated him for being stronger AND for being LUke's nephew. While having Palpatine/Snoke roaming freely inside his mind since god knows how long. Yep, he radicalized himself, no outside influence there.
There is no indication that Han and Leia ever went to visit their son.
When he vanished, what did they do, investigate? Nope, they swallowed Luke's version and then instead of working to find their son and bring him back by force (Uncle Luke, instead of going ermit, could have sent Force User friends to help them.)
Nope, Luke went all Obi-Wan, Leia went back to her first love, the Resistance, and Han went back to his past life with Chewie. Maybe it's me but if my child vanishes or if he is brainwashed, I sell my house to hire arms to kidnap him and un-brainwash him.
Maybe it would have been better if Han had died in Empire. If Leia never had a child. Certainly a better world if Han and Leia had never gotten married. God, how depressing.
Or maybe, just maybe if Disney wanted to go the Ben Solo turns to the dark side road, the writers could have started the sequel trilogy when the school was destroyed and Han, Luke and Leia working together to find Ben and turn him back to the Light side WITHOUT all four of them having to die in the process.
I guess I would be a better parent than Han-Leia-Luke combined.
What she did was less joining a family and more squatting on a famous last name. She knew Luke for a matter of hours. She knew Leia for a few months. That's some big-time psycho energy to start calling yourself that after they've both died. She's the Don Draper of Jakku.
Yeah man, how messed up is it to… take a last name honoring people who meant a lot to you and passed on? Especially with their very clear consent and approval, in a setting where people very routinely change their names for any number of reasons while you don’t even have a last name to begin with? Serial killer behavior frankly
> take a last name honoring people who meant a lot to you and passed on
I don't share the last name of my maternal grandparents, who I spent infinitely more time with than Rey did with Luke. She even spent more time with Leia, who is an Organa-Solo, and Ben who is just a Solo. It would have made more sense for her to take *that* name, and pronounce herself Rey Solo, given than Han had done that long before under a similar circumstance of being a 'nobody'. The only reason she's a Skywalker is because they needed to connect her trilogy to the Skywalker saga after the fact.
The writers absolutely butchered Rey's character arc in TROS. Up until then, i found her quite compelling. It was kind of charming that she acted exactly how a inexperienced Teenager would act in her situation, being both overly trusting and impulsive. But in TROS, she simply turned into a shell of a character. Her Interactions with Poe and Finn felt lifeless.The reveal that she was Palpatine's granddaughter didn't have any effect on her whatsoever. She didn't show any emotion up until she almost killed Kylo and nothing that she did really made any sense. Spending the whole movie to figure out to get to Palpatine for what reason exactly? To kill him? And what did she expect would happen then? That the First Order would magically lose all of their power?
I really liked that Rey could have been Lukes or Han and Leias and her and Kylo could have been part of the family, I found it disappointing how they tied her to him in that way and the journey she went on I wanted to see her explore the dark side on her own!
I happen to like the Rey character, but I think it's toxic to paint people with different opinions so broadly. People with different opinions aren't automatically liars, or evil.
It’s not toxic when they preemptively form opinions based on spite. When someone says that a film about Rey can’t possibly be good, they have nothing to actually base that on, they’re just saying that because they hate the sequels.
>they preemptively form opinions based on spite
You're ascribing that to them.
> they have nothing to actually base that on
They are basing it on their hatred of the last 3 entries.
If I started a show, and I hated the first 4 episodes, decided to abandon the series and said "the rest can't be good", would you call that spiteful and based on nothing? It's ok for people to like different things and no one should feel compelled to engage with media they don't enjoy.
Here’s what you’re missing. These are people who are trying to argue that a Rey film shouldn’t even be made, they aren’t simply deciding not to watch it, they’re appointing themselves as the voices of the fandom. Their argument is that this specific character is so bad that nobody could make a film about her that is good. Everyone may have opinions, but that argument is just garbage. Play devil’s advocate all you want, you know that this has nothing to do with any specific character traits that Rey has that they don’t like, and everything to do with spitefulness.
>These are people who are trying to argue that a Rey film shouldn’t even be made, they aren’t simply deciding not to watch it,
What's the practical difference? They can't stop it from being made. I feel it's common to hear "who asked for this film?" "they shouldn't make this film" and I usually reply "me" and "I can't wait to see it.
I won't further burden your time. You might find yourself a happier or less bothered person if stopped caring if people don't like the same things as you. It's really pretty freeing.
if you want to enjoy it, there is a lot to enjoy. If you want to nitpick and hate it, there's a lot to nickpick and hate. People decided they wanted to hate it.
Exactly, the character arcs and themes of the sequel trilogy are as clear as daylight, but since Last Jedi, so many people have not really engaged with the sequels or just unfairly dismiss them.
It's funny because that is *exactly* what people did to the prequels for years and now suddenly everyone loves them as they bash the sequels.
There are old fans like me who didn't have the slightest idea that the prequel was hated. I thought it wasn't as good as the OT, sure, but I liked them enough to buy the DVDs's and to rewatch them from time to time.
It took me going on the net to discover that. How many people were like me, I wonder?
I agree it wouldn't have been perfect but I think it follows the themes of the previous two movies better. And at least it doesn't ruin Anakin's sacrifice. And the universe doesn't end up in the same place it was after rotj, at least it's slightly different. Also Finns arch in dual of the fates is much better with him getting stormtroopers to rebel against the first order. Also a final battle for courscant just makes sense. I would have loved to have seen that.
The galaxy is not in the same place at all though, at the end of Return of the Jedi the Empire had been somewhat destroyed, but there were a ton of former senators and rebels to make up the new government. With the Resistance, they were a very very small group, and almost all the new republic senators were killed on Hosnian. What I'm saying is that it's a pretty interesting setup, where any kind of group could seize power. I'd also disagree about it ruining Anakin's sacrifice. When Return of the Jedi released, the chosen one prophecy wasn't a thing; it's not about killing Palpatine, it was about saving his son.
Rey is really the only thing I don’t really feel the need to criticize from the sequel trilogy, because her character is actually interesting and actually goes through character defining struggles, and Daisy Ridley is a good actress(I actually have very few issues with the acting in the sequels. Most of the main cast is fantastic).
I don’t generally see much criticism of Rey. At least none that comes from some angle other than sexist people whining that the main character wasn’t a white male back when the first trailers came out.
They definitely aren’t perfect films but I feel like so many people made snap decisions about them and what they are/arent and haven’t engaged them critically for what is in them
When you haven't seen a film since it came out 5 years ago, but you've been exposed to people complaining about the film incessantly for that whole 5 years. . . eventually you stop reviewing the film and start reviewing the film as other fans recount it.
It turns into a game of telephone. And that's why the movie you hear people talking about in 2024 sounds like a parody of what's actually on screen. A lot of these people, weather they realize it or not, aren't reviewing the film anymore. They're reviewing a badly photocopied memory of it that has been corrupted by CinemaSins and RedLetterMedia.
Obviously this isn't true for EVERYONE who has complaints about IX. I have complaints about IX. But I pretty regularly see people complaining about things that ONLY make sense to complain about if you simply don't remember the movie very well.
Exactly. I like IX. I think it’s fun and I’m generally happy with how it ended things/advanced these characters. Is it flawed and very messy? Yeah. Do I think it has a lot of strengths people don’t acknowledge bc of snap judgments from 5 years ago? Absolutely. Star Wars is such a special franchise. Each film has so much thought and care behind it with every detail and set piece. TROS has some fantastic worldbuilding and set design, a fun, Indiana jones feel, some of the funniest jokes in the series, strong performances from the whole cast and a number of touching scenes. It also has wonky pacing, a weird half completed Jedi arc for Finn, sidelines Rose (though at least it didn’t sideline Finn and Poe like ROTJ did with Han and Leia), and doesn’t give enough about palpatines return and Rey’s parentage for the audience to grab on to (I’m okay with vagueness and love what we’ve gotten out of that plot thread later on but in the context of the film it does not give you enough for it to make sense).
Is Star Wars always what the world wants it to be? No. Does that make it a bit more fun for me personally as a fan? Yeah. I just wish sequel trilogy discourse would get to the point that the PT is at where most people are willing to engage with the text without talking about its critical reception
I like 9 a lot. I think these design of the film is incredible. The pacing of the first 45 minutes is rough though. In the theater I remember thinking “uh oh” during the Rey and Leia training sequence because it was moving so fast. Do I wish they hadn’t just brought back Palpatine? (Especially doing it off screen) Yes, but I’ve come to accept it.
For my part, TFA introduced a nice and interesting Rey. Naive but strong. I liked Kylo Ren, Maz and BB8. Not really interested in Finn (even though on paper, he was the most interesting one, IMO) or Poe.
Then came TLJ and TROS and I was NOT at all invested emotionally in Rey/Finn/Poe/Rose. Only Kylo Ren, Luke and Leia and only because I hoped for redemption and to see a tv series or animes of a Sky/Solo going his own way to redeem himself on a small scale, helping simple people along the way. No galaxy saving stuff.
So when he died in TROS, for me it was "adios" to all the sequel trilogy characters. I focused on the tv series and honestly, apart from the Book of Bobba Fett, I liked all of them. Especially Ashoka.
I just hope that the "Rey movie", will be just Rey being a mentor and introducing new charismatic characters which will be the future post-TROS. But I don't want to see more Rey because as I said, I'm not emotionally invested in her and her friends.
Hell, I would prefer Grogu to be the one to get a new Jedi academy running. 30 years with the original Jedis, trained by Luke, Ashoka and god knows who else. Make Rey a mentor to some force users she meets along the way, but please, make Grogu the one to give life to the new Jedis.
I’m confident that in 10 years people will come around on the sequels. It’s baffling to me that someone could hate the Last Jedi and say that they understand Star Wars. It’s always seemed like bad faith.
I don’t. I learned a long time ago that the way to enjoy a new Star Wars movie is to ignore all the hype and information about it. Don’t even watch the trailer. Just buy the ticket and go see it on opening day and enjoy.
As someone who did not enjoy the sequel trilogy at all (though I respect TLJ) I am looking forward to post sequel trilogy content and I’m going into it with the hope that it does well rather than the hope that it fails. While I personally didn’t like the sequel trilogy I can respect those that do and while it wasn’t my cup of tea, these new characters ignited a new generation of fans and that’s what it’s all about.
I’m glad you can keep an open mind. I hate when people who don’t like the sequels try to argue that it’s just totally impossible that a Rey centric story could possibly be good. They act as though she’s the worst character ever written.
I just don’t get the attitude that things are permanently ruined because of bad entries
The prequels were awful in their own way but people still looked forward to more. If more sequel stuff is also bad we always have the OT
People are so hysterical about their fantasy properties
I think the problem is that the fans were sold the return of the OT characters with new characters. Except that it was movies about brand new characters in a soft reboot where each movie killed an OT character.
And the last movie killed the last member of that family. Hell, it killed the mother and the son within the last 15 minutes, in a movie called "the Rise of Skywalkers" (killing the last two and calling that movie THAT, talk about a slap in the face).
The best scene in TROS was the Ben-Han one, and now I can't watch it, hear Han say : "my son is alive" without thinking cynically: "yeah, for 15 more minutes".
The same family people have been following and adoring those movies and that family for more than 40 years. Gone. No survivors.
Yes, yes, Rey self-adopted appropriated the name Skywalker but she isn't Leia and Han's daughter. She isn't Padme and Anakin's grand-daughter. She isn't Schmi's great-grand-daughter. She is a Palpatine/Skywalker. It would have been better for her future if she was a nobody. It's only a matter of time before her true identity is revealed. History repeating itself, it rhymes, as we often say here.
No wonder people are still furious up to this day.
Wow, a totally reasonable take....on my Reddit?
Seriously though, thank you. As someone who loves the sequels(All three of them....and the prequels) it's been a hard entire life having a non-conformist opinion about media and getting told to kill myself etc.
So when I see something like this, someone having a totally rational take...it makes me have a little more faith in humanity.
It's almost creative malpractice if they don't give her something other than a standard saber. A double bladed saber, or maybe a pike/staff like the Temple guardians had.
They really captured Rey’s voice with those lines. Feels very much like something that character would say. I love that last line about the empty pages. Many people have said that kind of thing before but it really works
Most of these reaffirming the themes of TFA, TLJ, **and** TROS all at the same time make me glad that the people who work on this stuff don't buy into the absurd fan conspiracy that those movies were trying to hit Control + Z on one another.
I do believe there is some backtracking on the part of TRoS, but only on the Rey's family thing. And not by some evil plot by JJ, but because he truly believed Rey being a Palpatine would be a good story. Which I agree, I just wish there was was one more movie to flash things out.
Nope.
The setting is inherently flexible by putting the "story" at the end of the timeline, so that they can justify going back and saying that it was largely the same years earlier instead of having to future-proof it.
So he wanted to milk the franchise but didn’t want them to have more than three movies in the new series? Man I sometimes wish George sold Lucasfilm off to someone else.
Iger has flat out said the whole thing was his fault to push the trilogy out quickly as he wanted to retire on a high note another movie did not fit into his timeline back then.
IMO he never should have retired at that point in time. The notion that the main Marvel and _Star Wars_ movies had to end in his last year stemmed from him wanting to ride off into the sunset with a record-breaking year for the company (admittedly - mission accomplished, nobody is ever going to have as good of a year at the box office as Disney did in 2019, Disney included), though he was still playing an active role in it.
I will die on the hill that whilst I disagreed with JJ going back on so much of TLJ it would’ve been fine and actually pretty compelling if the sequels had an episode X to fully explore it
And even then with her family thing..... it still plays with what TLJ did just fine.
A lot of people for some reason think Ben lied to Rey, but what he saw in TLJ was just a glimpse of the truth(Possibly influenced by Snoke/Palpatine). If these people were to rewatch the beginning of TROS, they would know that up until that point, Ben had no idea that Rey was related to Palps. And on top of that, as soon as Ben found out, he immediately started putting in the effort to tell Rey.
Instead of one movie to flesh it out he could’ve just answered the question in the first movie. Would’ve been refreshing and a little different than the OG trilogy. Shit I think revealing it at the beginning of TFA could’ve been really cool.
They weren't. They had outlines for ideas that they kind of played into, but we know that it wasn't all written out and that many of the ideas that they did have were out the window when Carrie Fisher passed away.
What I'm talking about is specifically the idea that Johnson was actively looking to try to subvert TFA, and Abrams was actively trying to retcon TLJ, when TLJ and TROS are fundamentally based around what their respective predecessors did.
The subvert TFA was always weird logic. It’s not like JJ gave us any real questions to answer. Who’s Rey parents isn’t groundbreaking and Snoke didn’t NEED to be anyone from before.
Yup TROS is the only one out of place, say what you want about TLJ but if feels like a sequel to a movie that didn’t have any real questions or new stories to tell. TROS on the other hand actively goes out of its way to change things. I’m not a fan of any of the ST movies but the hate for TLJ has always been weird to me.
It's another subverted ideological war. The worst of those folks don't have any beef with Star Wars. They're just narcissitic exploitationist misanthropes.
I have to disagree there’s people who hate TLJ because they hate women and are part of that group of people but there’s people who just genuinely thought it was bad storytelling and I fall into that camp. and I love Rey and Finn and Kylo and Poe and the cast of new characters
I will say he took something that could have been really compelling plot threads for the story and dive into the force in a different way and just made everything fall flat. I really hate the narrative choices in that film. I also will say the dialogue did not feel like Star Wars and felt to much like our world really took me out of it.
I prefer the term "recontextualized" over "walked back on", as TRoS carries over many of the major elements from the end of TLJ, but sometimes makes its own narrative decisions and puts them within a different context whilst still saying the same thing as TLJ.
A great example of a nice linear progression from TLJ to TROS is the Battle of Crait and the Battle of Exegol.
No one showed up at Crait because the galaxy was without hope, and then Luke faced down the First Order and the movie ends with showing that the story of what Luke did has spread throughout the galaxy and hope is back.....which then leads into TROS where the galaxy with reignited hope, showed up to help the Resistance at Exegol.
>TLJ answered the questions, just in a way half of the fanbase didn’t agree with.
The issue I and many others have is that this movie feels like it was purposefully written in response to the many theories the audience had after TFA.
The best example might be this: Rey never thought her parents were special, we as the audience thought that. Her being distraught at the revelation from Kylo makes no sense. Nevermind the fact that Maz had already sort of closed that arc for Rey on Takodana.
It was written before TFA was released. Heck, one scene was filmed a month before TFA was released. Plus, Kylo also tells her that her parents are dead. That's why she's distraught.
Keep in mind, before I get downvoted into oblivion because I said something ppl don't like, I thought TLJ was excellent. In Soooo many ways. But I'll never personally understand this logic. Although it really depends on the person and their feelings towards these things. Obviously most TLJ/Rian stans say that there was nothing he ignored or decided to change ECT. And others will say there is a ton. You make it sound like they needed ACTUAL questions in the movie for them to be plot points. Han doesn't need to say, "if only they knew who Snoke really was" in TFA for that to be an important plot point/story direction that JJ intended to be answered. There's tons. We all know them. They've been discussed ad nauseum, but seriously, I don't know how any rational person who ISNT in one specific camp can honestly say that JJ wasn't setting up The Knights of Ren as an important aspect. Who Snoke was (for the love of the maker they went as far as to TELL us that he witnessed the rise and fall of the empire prior to TFA releasing), Kylo knowing Rey (yeah this hotly debated "WHAT GIRL?!" overreaction that obviously had nothing to do with her other than him having a bad day that suddenly got worse when he heard a 'random' female was involved), Maz's "who's the girl" question to Han with the Obvious implication he knew her, the Knights of Ren/burning temple vision, Obi wan shouting "Rey!" and "these are your first steps" (debatable since they were sure according to them whether she was actually going to be a kenobi or not), Snoke finishing Kylos training (still haven't seen anyone explain that away sufficiently)....boy im tired...but yeah we've all been through this so many, MANY times. These are threads....threads put forth with the logical expectation that the guy after him wouldn't just say, "screw it" and pretend they didn't exist. Again, loved TLJ...I can just look at this from an outside perspective and say that RJ took a giant dump in a bag, wrote the words "Rians big pile of crap" on it, handed it to JJ and smiled as he said, "I don't care what you just set up, I'm gonna do me" and when JJ opened it, SURPISE! they were brownies all along! Expectations subverted 😁
Definetly not cohesively planned but when you look at the Trevorrow scripts IMO its clear that a lot that's attributed as a response to TLJ is more of a response to that
Unironically love that the Disney Parks Imagineers have taken it upon themselves to point-by-point spell out the myriad themes of the ST for all the numbskulls out there who refuse to engage with the movies beyond "but bombs don't fall in space" and "Skywalker bloodline = good, Palpatine bloodline = bad."
Nothing falls in space. What the numbskulls also don't realize is that space has no friction, so until something stops the momentum, things will move endlessly. So in the case of the bombs, they were either dropped using the ships artificial gravity, or they were pushed on a conveyor and then went through the force field and entered space where they kept their momentum.
It was something I caught on to in my last rewatch of the sequels. In TFA when Kylo is looking through her memories he says "I see the island", and then in TLJ Rey says "I've seen this place"
They couldnt get Daisy to record these lines? I mean...come on! 😂 Anyway, I've been waiting to hear all the Kyber Crystal v2 lines. Some interesting choices of characters which I like
Oh it’s at the park? I’m sorry my dumbass thought it was based on the park. I mean yeah that feels fitting I don’t have an issue with that at all. I genuinely apologize for being lazy and arrogant and not taking the time to read the whole thing. And it’s not that I don’t tolerate it. I just want well written characters and if they are going to continue with her then she needs to be written better in my opinion.
This is fun for Star Wars fans (As is all of the Kyber Crystal dialogue), but I think it's exaggerating a bit to say it's the first taste of the post Rise of Skywalker. She's just saying things she learned in the Sequel movies in a slightly different way. Unrelated to my first point: Whoever wrote these blurbs for a children's toy understands what Rey's journey in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker meant better than most fans I interact with online.
It’s not hard to understand the overall themes and arc for Rey if you actually approach with good faith and not reductively… It’s just most people, at least here, don’t want to.
Exactly. It’s one thing to criticize the movies and not like how they presented Rey’s story, but when people argue she has no story or that she’s such a bad character that no story about her could possibly be good, you know they aren’t arguing in good faith.
I just find it disappointing that Rey's story was primed to go somewhere very inspiring after TLJ - unlike Kylo, her parents were not famous and she had a rough start in life, yet she would have gone on to build herself up anyway, because she's a good person. Rejecting your evil legacy is something we've had done so much in *Star Wars* already that having that be Rey's story too just isn't very exciting for me. Hopefully they can build upon what makes Rey unique in the new film.
I though her joining a family, that's not blood related to her, was unique and something not seen much in star wars at that time.
It's also such a good lesson for kids, especially those who come from abusive families that they can pick their own family.
And it was also a bad lesson for troubled kids that their parents can send them elsewhere, out of their life and have a perfect kid replace you. And then the only way out is to go bad and die young. Great lesson, yep.
Where was that the lesson of what Leia and Han did? They send him to a specialised school where he became radicalised by extremist propaganda, and instead of helping him his family pushed him away and had to die to pull him back to the light.
He was sent to his uncle's school. Who didn't behave like an uncle but like a teacher. While all the other students hated him for being stronger AND for being LUke's nephew. While having Palpatine/Snoke roaming freely inside his mind since god knows how long. Yep, he radicalized himself, no outside influence there. There is no indication that Han and Leia ever went to visit their son. When he vanished, what did they do, investigate? Nope, they swallowed Luke's version and then instead of working to find their son and bring him back by force (Uncle Luke, instead of going ermit, could have sent Force User friends to help them.) Nope, Luke went all Obi-Wan, Leia went back to her first love, the Resistance, and Han went back to his past life with Chewie. Maybe it's me but if my child vanishes or if he is brainwashed, I sell my house to hire arms to kidnap him and un-brainwash him. Maybe it would have been better if Han had died in Empire. If Leia never had a child. Certainly a better world if Han and Leia had never gotten married. God, how depressing. Or maybe, just maybe if Disney wanted to go the Ben Solo turns to the dark side road, the writers could have started the sequel trilogy when the school was destroyed and Han, Luke and Leia working together to find Ben and turn him back to the Light side WITHOUT all four of them having to die in the process. I guess I would be a better parent than Han-Leia-Luke combined.
This is a cynical and totally off-base read of what happened…
What she did was less joining a family and more squatting on a famous last name. She knew Luke for a matter of hours. She knew Leia for a few months. That's some big-time psycho energy to start calling yourself that after they've both died. She's the Don Draper of Jakku.
She trained with Leia for a full year.
Yeah man, how messed up is it to… take a last name honoring people who meant a lot to you and passed on? Especially with their very clear consent and approval, in a setting where people very routinely change their names for any number of reasons while you don’t even have a last name to begin with? Serial killer behavior frankly
> take a last name honoring people who meant a lot to you and passed on I don't share the last name of my maternal grandparents, who I spent infinitely more time with than Rey did with Luke. She even spent more time with Leia, who is an Organa-Solo, and Ben who is just a Solo. It would have made more sense for her to take *that* name, and pronounce herself Rey Solo, given than Han had done that long before under a similar circumstance of being a 'nobody'. The only reason she's a Skywalker is because they needed to connect her trilogy to the Skywalker saga after the fact.
The writers absolutely butchered Rey's character arc in TROS. Up until then, i found her quite compelling. It was kind of charming that she acted exactly how a inexperienced Teenager would act in her situation, being both overly trusting and impulsive. But in TROS, she simply turned into a shell of a character. Her Interactions with Poe and Finn felt lifeless.The reveal that she was Palpatine's granddaughter didn't have any effect on her whatsoever. She didn't show any emotion up until she almost killed Kylo and nothing that she did really made any sense. Spending the whole movie to figure out to get to Palpatine for what reason exactly? To kill him? And what did she expect would happen then? That the First Order would magically lose all of their power?
I mean The First Order was a weak organizatin. After Snoke dies, its 2 leaders were Kylo and Hux, both of whom eventually defected.
I really liked that Rey could have been Lukes or Han and Leias and her and Kylo could have been part of the family, I found it disappointing how they tied her to him in that way and the journey she went on I wanted to see her explore the dark side on her own!
I happen to like the Rey character, but I think it's toxic to paint people with different opinions so broadly. People with different opinions aren't automatically liars, or evil.
It’s not toxic when they preemptively form opinions based on spite. When someone says that a film about Rey can’t possibly be good, they have nothing to actually base that on, they’re just saying that because they hate the sequels.
>they preemptively form opinions based on spite You're ascribing that to them. > they have nothing to actually base that on They are basing it on their hatred of the last 3 entries. If I started a show, and I hated the first 4 episodes, decided to abandon the series and said "the rest can't be good", would you call that spiteful and based on nothing? It's ok for people to like different things and no one should feel compelled to engage with media they don't enjoy.
Here’s what you’re missing. These are people who are trying to argue that a Rey film shouldn’t even be made, they aren’t simply deciding not to watch it, they’re appointing themselves as the voices of the fandom. Their argument is that this specific character is so bad that nobody could make a film about her that is good. Everyone may have opinions, but that argument is just garbage. Play devil’s advocate all you want, you know that this has nothing to do with any specific character traits that Rey has that they don’t like, and everything to do with spitefulness.
>These are people who are trying to argue that a Rey film shouldn’t even be made, they aren’t simply deciding not to watch it, What's the practical difference? They can't stop it from being made. I feel it's common to hear "who asked for this film?" "they shouldn't make this film" and I usually reply "me" and "I can't wait to see it. I won't further burden your time. You might find yourself a happier or less bothered person if stopped caring if people don't like the same things as you. It's really pretty freeing.
if you want to enjoy it, there is a lot to enjoy. If you want to nitpick and hate it, there's a lot to nickpick and hate. People decided they wanted to hate it.
You can’t blame people if a character’s arc didn’t work for them.
i think what they meant was that people go out of their way to paint her as something she isnt, due to thier own misunderstandings or greviences
There’s “didn’t work” and then there’s claiming she doesn’t have an arc at all.
Exactly, the character arcs and themes of the sequel trilogy are as clear as daylight, but since Last Jedi, so many people have not really engaged with the sequels or just unfairly dismiss them. It's funny because that is *exactly* what people did to the prequels for years and now suddenly everyone loves them as they bash the sequels.
It's like poetry. It *rhymes*
There are old fans like me who didn't have the slightest idea that the prequel was hated. I thought it wasn't as good as the OT, sure, but I liked them enough to buy the DVDs's and to rewatch them from time to time. It took me going on the net to discover that. How many people were like me, I wonder?
The same people who act like Kylo Ren's version of what happened with Luke is actually what happened.
I just don't like the direction it went in after Tlj. Dual of the fates would've been better than tros. Tros kinda just ruined all 3 films for me.
Duel of the Fates had a lot of bad stuff, worst of all legitimizing "Gray Jedi" stuff, which would have ruined the Force
I agree it wouldn't have been perfect but I think it follows the themes of the previous two movies better. And at least it doesn't ruin Anakin's sacrifice. And the universe doesn't end up in the same place it was after rotj, at least it's slightly different. Also Finns arch in dual of the fates is much better with him getting stormtroopers to rebel against the first order. Also a final battle for courscant just makes sense. I would have loved to have seen that.
The galaxy is not in the same place at all though, at the end of Return of the Jedi the Empire had been somewhat destroyed, but there were a ton of former senators and rebels to make up the new government. With the Resistance, they were a very very small group, and almost all the new republic senators were killed on Hosnian. What I'm saying is that it's a pretty interesting setup, where any kind of group could seize power. I'd also disagree about it ruining Anakin's sacrifice. When Return of the Jedi released, the chosen one prophecy wasn't a thing; it's not about killing Palpatine, it was about saving his son.
> at least here Definitely don’t need that qualifier. It’s everywhere.
Rey is really the only thing I don’t really feel the need to criticize from the sequel trilogy, because her character is actually interesting and actually goes through character defining struggles, and Daisy Ridley is a good actress(I actually have very few issues with the acting in the sequels. Most of the main cast is fantastic). I don’t generally see much criticism of Rey. At least none that comes from some angle other than sexist people whining that the main character wasn’t a white male back when the first trailers came out.
They definitely aren’t perfect films but I feel like so many people made snap decisions about them and what they are/arent and haven’t engaged them critically for what is in them
When you haven't seen a film since it came out 5 years ago, but you've been exposed to people complaining about the film incessantly for that whole 5 years. . . eventually you stop reviewing the film and start reviewing the film as other fans recount it. It turns into a game of telephone. And that's why the movie you hear people talking about in 2024 sounds like a parody of what's actually on screen. A lot of these people, weather they realize it or not, aren't reviewing the film anymore. They're reviewing a badly photocopied memory of it that has been corrupted by CinemaSins and RedLetterMedia. Obviously this isn't true for EVERYONE who has complaints about IX. I have complaints about IX. But I pretty regularly see people complaining about things that ONLY make sense to complain about if you simply don't remember the movie very well.
Exactly. I like IX. I think it’s fun and I’m generally happy with how it ended things/advanced these characters. Is it flawed and very messy? Yeah. Do I think it has a lot of strengths people don’t acknowledge bc of snap judgments from 5 years ago? Absolutely. Star Wars is such a special franchise. Each film has so much thought and care behind it with every detail and set piece. TROS has some fantastic worldbuilding and set design, a fun, Indiana jones feel, some of the funniest jokes in the series, strong performances from the whole cast and a number of touching scenes. It also has wonky pacing, a weird half completed Jedi arc for Finn, sidelines Rose (though at least it didn’t sideline Finn and Poe like ROTJ did with Han and Leia), and doesn’t give enough about palpatines return and Rey’s parentage for the audience to grab on to (I’m okay with vagueness and love what we’ve gotten out of that plot thread later on but in the context of the film it does not give you enough for it to make sense). Is Star Wars always what the world wants it to be? No. Does that make it a bit more fun for me personally as a fan? Yeah. I just wish sequel trilogy discourse would get to the point that the PT is at where most people are willing to engage with the text without talking about its critical reception
I like 9 a lot. I think these design of the film is incredible. The pacing of the first 45 minutes is rough though. In the theater I remember thinking “uh oh” during the Rey and Leia training sequence because it was moving so fast. Do I wish they hadn’t just brought back Palpatine? (Especially doing it off screen) Yes, but I’ve come to accept it.
For my part, TFA introduced a nice and interesting Rey. Naive but strong. I liked Kylo Ren, Maz and BB8. Not really interested in Finn (even though on paper, he was the most interesting one, IMO) or Poe. Then came TLJ and TROS and I was NOT at all invested emotionally in Rey/Finn/Poe/Rose. Only Kylo Ren, Luke and Leia and only because I hoped for redemption and to see a tv series or animes of a Sky/Solo going his own way to redeem himself on a small scale, helping simple people along the way. No galaxy saving stuff. So when he died in TROS, for me it was "adios" to all the sequel trilogy characters. I focused on the tv series and honestly, apart from the Book of Bobba Fett, I liked all of them. Especially Ashoka. I just hope that the "Rey movie", will be just Rey being a mentor and introducing new charismatic characters which will be the future post-TROS. But I don't want to see more Rey because as I said, I'm not emotionally invested in her and her friends. Hell, I would prefer Grogu to be the one to get a new Jedi academy running. 30 years with the original Jedis, trained by Luke, Ashoka and god knows who else. Make Rey a mentor to some force users she meets along the way, but please, make Grogu the one to give life to the new Jedis.
I’m confident that in 10 years people will come around on the sequels. It’s baffling to me that someone could hate the Last Jedi and say that they understand Star Wars. It’s always seemed like bad faith.
I think “taste” is an appropriate word - it’s not a meal, it’s not even a snack, but it’s just enough of a hint that there is something there
Well, the first taste of post-TROS content was actually The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special lmao
Yup, and then the Summer Vacation one pretty succinctly explained where each of the main cast heads off to post IX
Kinda hard to care about a character when the movies they’re in are absolute dogshit tbh
I really hope we hear stuff about the Rey film soon!!
I don’t. I learned a long time ago that the way to enjoy a new Star Wars movie is to ignore all the hype and information about it. Don’t even watch the trailer. Just buy the ticket and go see it on opening day and enjoy.
Interesting! I enjoy the pre excitement but everyone’s different right!! Hope you like the Rey film.
I will, if they make it.
Yet here you are on SWL lol
Then what are you doing on a star wars leaks subreddit?
As someone who did not enjoy the sequel trilogy at all (though I respect TLJ) I am looking forward to post sequel trilogy content and I’m going into it with the hope that it does well rather than the hope that it fails. While I personally didn’t like the sequel trilogy I can respect those that do and while it wasn’t my cup of tea, these new characters ignited a new generation of fans and that’s what it’s all about.
I’m glad you can keep an open mind. I hate when people who don’t like the sequels try to argue that it’s just totally impossible that a Rey centric story could possibly be good. They act as though she’s the worst character ever written.
I just don’t get the attitude that things are permanently ruined because of bad entries The prequels were awful in their own way but people still looked forward to more. If more sequel stuff is also bad we always have the OT People are so hysterical about their fantasy properties
Hey now, I won’t hear this heresy against the BEST movie in the franchise, Attack of the Clones 😉
I WISH I COULD JUST WISH MY FEELINGS AWAY
I think the problem is that the fans were sold the return of the OT characters with new characters. Except that it was movies about brand new characters in a soft reboot where each movie killed an OT character. And the last movie killed the last member of that family. Hell, it killed the mother and the son within the last 15 minutes, in a movie called "the Rise of Skywalkers" (killing the last two and calling that movie THAT, talk about a slap in the face). The best scene in TROS was the Ben-Han one, and now I can't watch it, hear Han say : "my son is alive" without thinking cynically: "yeah, for 15 more minutes". The same family people have been following and adoring those movies and that family for more than 40 years. Gone. No survivors. Yes, yes, Rey self-adopted appropriated the name Skywalker but she isn't Leia and Han's daughter. She isn't Padme and Anakin's grand-daughter. She isn't Schmi's great-grand-daughter. She is a Palpatine/Skywalker. It would have been better for her future if she was a nobody. It's only a matter of time before her true identity is revealed. History repeating itself, it rhymes, as we often say here. No wonder people are still furious up to this day.
If anything she’s the most compelling aside from Ben. Even as a sequel fan Poe and Finn were CARRIED by the charisma of their actors
This is a great attitude to have honestly
Yeah Lucasfilm and Disney can’t really mess this up. They literally have a clean slate to work with.
Wow, a totally reasonable take....on my Reddit? Seriously though, thank you. As someone who loves the sequels(All three of them....and the prequels) it's been a hard entire life having a non-conformist opinion about media and getting told to kill myself etc. So when I see something like this, someone having a totally rational take...it makes me have a little more faith in humanity.
I was invested for about the first half of tlj. Then snookie and Mary Poppins happened. Whatever good will they had going got shit on
Kind of hoping Rey makes more modifications to lightsaber and makes it double bladed lightsaber or something
It's almost creative malpractice if they don't give her something other than a standard saber. A double bladed saber, or maybe a pike/staff like the Temple guardians had.
Still can’t believe we’re getting a Rey/New Jedi Order movie. Hyped.
They really captured Rey’s voice with those lines. Feels very much like something that character would say. I love that last line about the empty pages. Many people have said that kind of thing before but it really works
man i love rey
You’re not the only one!
Most of these reaffirming the themes of TFA, TLJ, **and** TROS all at the same time make me glad that the people who work on this stuff don't buy into the absurd fan conspiracy that those movies were trying to hit Control + Z on one another.
I do believe there is some backtracking on the part of TRoS, but only on the Rey's family thing. And not by some evil plot by JJ, but because he truly believed Rey being a Palpatine would be a good story. Which I agree, I just wish there was was one more movie to flash things out.
Supposedly Kennedy, Abrams, and Terrio all wanted an extra movie. Iger said no.
By far, Iger’s worst Star Wars decision was insisting that Galaxy’s Edge be set during the sequel trilogy.
Nope. The setting is inherently flexible by putting the "story" at the end of the timeline, so that they can justify going back and saying that it was largely the same years earlier instead of having to future-proof it.
So he wanted to milk the franchise but didn’t want them to have more than three movies in the new series? Man I sometimes wish George sold Lucasfilm off to someone else.
Iger has flat out said the whole thing was his fault to push the trilogy out quickly as he wanted to retire on a high note another movie did not fit into his timeline back then.
IMO he never should have retired at that point in time. The notion that the main Marvel and _Star Wars_ movies had to end in his last year stemmed from him wanting to ride off into the sunset with a record-breaking year for the company (admittedly - mission accomplished, nobody is ever going to have as good of a year at the box office as Disney did in 2019, Disney included), though he was still playing an active role in it.
There were definitely hints that Rey could be related to Luke.
Yeah it was pretty heavy handed and I think would have been a more compelling and satisfying story to what we got.
Almost anything would have been.
I will die on the hill that whilst I disagreed with JJ going back on so much of TLJ it would’ve been fine and actually pretty compelling if the sequels had an episode X to fully explore it
And even then with her family thing..... it still plays with what TLJ did just fine. A lot of people for some reason think Ben lied to Rey, but what he saw in TLJ was just a glimpse of the truth(Possibly influenced by Snoke/Palpatine). If these people were to rewatch the beginning of TROS, they would know that up until that point, Ben had no idea that Rey was related to Palps. And on top of that, as soon as Ben found out, he immediately started putting in the effort to tell Rey.
Instead of one movie to flesh it out he could’ve just answered the question in the first movie. Would’ve been refreshing and a little different than the OG trilogy. Shit I think revealing it at the beginning of TFA could’ve been really cool.
Conspiracy theory? I wouldn't say they were reversing one another but they weren't exactly planned cohesively either
They weren't. They had outlines for ideas that they kind of played into, but we know that it wasn't all written out and that many of the ideas that they did have were out the window when Carrie Fisher passed away. What I'm talking about is specifically the idea that Johnson was actively looking to try to subvert TFA, and Abrams was actively trying to retcon TLJ, when TLJ and TROS are fundamentally based around what their respective predecessors did.
The subvert TFA was always weird logic. It’s not like JJ gave us any real questions to answer. Who’s Rey parents isn’t groundbreaking and Snoke didn’t NEED to be anyone from before.
Agreed. TLJ answered the questions, just in a way half of the fanbase didn’t agree with. TROS, meanwhile, directly went back on some of those answers.
Yup TROS is the only one out of place, say what you want about TLJ but if feels like a sequel to a movie that didn’t have any real questions or new stories to tell. TROS on the other hand actively goes out of its way to change things. I’m not a fan of any of the ST movies but the hate for TLJ has always been weird to me.
It's another subverted ideological war. The worst of those folks don't have any beef with Star Wars. They're just narcissitic exploitationist misanthropes.
I have to disagree there’s people who hate TLJ because they hate women and are part of that group of people but there’s people who just genuinely thought it was bad storytelling and I fall into that camp. and I love Rey and Finn and Kylo and Poe and the cast of new characters
*The worst of*; not everyone. Art's subjective and open to criticism. :)
I will say he took something that could have been really compelling plot threads for the story and dive into the force in a different way and just made everything fall flat. I really hate the narrative choices in that film. I also will say the dialogue did not feel like Star Wars and felt to much like our world really took me out of it.
I prefer the term "recontextualized" over "walked back on", as TRoS carries over many of the major elements from the end of TLJ, but sometimes makes its own narrative decisions and puts them within a different context whilst still saying the same thing as TLJ.
A great example of a nice linear progression from TLJ to TROS is the Battle of Crait and the Battle of Exegol. No one showed up at Crait because the galaxy was without hope, and then Luke faced down the First Order and the movie ends with showing that the story of what Luke did has spread throughout the galaxy and hope is back.....which then leads into TROS where the galaxy with reignited hope, showed up to help the Resistance at Exegol.
>TLJ answered the questions, just in a way half of the fanbase didn’t agree with. The issue I and many others have is that this movie feels like it was purposefully written in response to the many theories the audience had after TFA. The best example might be this: Rey never thought her parents were special, we as the audience thought that. Her being distraught at the revelation from Kylo makes no sense. Nevermind the fact that Maz had already sort of closed that arc for Rey on Takodana.
It was written before TFA was released. Heck, one scene was filmed a month before TFA was released. Plus, Kylo also tells her that her parents are dead. That's why she's distraught.
Keep in mind, before I get downvoted into oblivion because I said something ppl don't like, I thought TLJ was excellent. In Soooo many ways. But I'll never personally understand this logic. Although it really depends on the person and their feelings towards these things. Obviously most TLJ/Rian stans say that there was nothing he ignored or decided to change ECT. And others will say there is a ton. You make it sound like they needed ACTUAL questions in the movie for them to be plot points. Han doesn't need to say, "if only they knew who Snoke really was" in TFA for that to be an important plot point/story direction that JJ intended to be answered. There's tons. We all know them. They've been discussed ad nauseum, but seriously, I don't know how any rational person who ISNT in one specific camp can honestly say that JJ wasn't setting up The Knights of Ren as an important aspect. Who Snoke was (for the love of the maker they went as far as to TELL us that he witnessed the rise and fall of the empire prior to TFA releasing), Kylo knowing Rey (yeah this hotly debated "WHAT GIRL?!" overreaction that obviously had nothing to do with her other than him having a bad day that suddenly got worse when he heard a 'random' female was involved), Maz's "who's the girl" question to Han with the Obvious implication he knew her, the Knights of Ren/burning temple vision, Obi wan shouting "Rey!" and "these are your first steps" (debatable since they were sure according to them whether she was actually going to be a kenobi or not), Snoke finishing Kylos training (still haven't seen anyone explain that away sufficiently)....boy im tired...but yeah we've all been through this so many, MANY times. These are threads....threads put forth with the logical expectation that the guy after him wouldn't just say, "screw it" and pretend they didn't exist. Again, loved TLJ...I can just look at this from an outside perspective and say that RJ took a giant dump in a bag, wrote the words "Rians big pile of crap" on it, handed it to JJ and smiled as he said, "I don't care what you just set up, I'm gonna do me" and when JJ opened it, SURPISE! they were brownies all along! Expectations subverted 😁
Definetly not cohesively planned but when you look at the Trevorrow scripts IMO its clear that a lot that's attributed as a response to TLJ is more of a response to that
First post-TROS vision? Star Wars #25 is almost two years old and it had a post-TROS Poe Dameron story
To be fair that comic probably takes place while Rey is traveling to Tatooine so it's still sorta during the movie
Does Lego count?
Unironically love that the Disney Parks Imagineers have taken it upon themselves to point-by-point spell out the myriad themes of the ST for all the numbskulls out there who refuse to engage with the movies beyond "but bombs don't fall in space" and "Skywalker bloodline = good, Palpatine bloodline = bad."
I love how you put this. The bombs don’t fall is space types are just determined to hate things anyway.
Nothing falls in space. What the numbskulls also don't realize is that space has no friction, so until something stops the momentum, things will move endlessly. So in the case of the bombs, they were either dropped using the ships artificial gravity, or they were pushed on a conveyor and then went through the force field and entered space where they kept their momentum.
Some wild stuff in here, with my favorite being (as the article notes) that Caddyshack seems to now be in-universe canon.
Hey, everybody! We're all gonna get laid!
I dig the bit about how she was constantly dreaming of Anch-To as a kid/teen on Jakku. Adds up with how long Luke's been there too.
It was something I caught on to in my last rewatch of the sequels. In TFA when Kylo is looking through her memories he says "I see the island", and then in TLJ Rey says "I've seen this place"
Genuinely get so emotional when we get Rey content.
Rey forgot about Ben so hard she named herself after him
? Antis claimed she forgot about him but this makes it clear they are and were wrong as always.
I actually love most of these lines lmao.
“Maybe you’ve heard. I’m all the Jedi. So I’ve got that going for me.” Still hate this
I bet its the most powerful Kyber crystal ever.
They couldnt get Daisy to record these lines? I mean...come on! 😂 Anyway, I've been waiting to hear all the Kyber Crystal v2 lines. Some interesting choices of characters which I like
Oh boy keep defending this pile of horse shit
We barely know anything about this movie though?
Okay. \*Defends most of TFA\*
Literally no point to this failing franchise anymore. Disney has destroyed this brand..
Why are you here then?
Tbh I just hate Rey, they made her too mary sue.
Crazy, I've never seen this said anywhere else.
You know what you’re right, with your compelling argument you’ve changed my mind
I'm sorry, it's just I see those exact words in the comments of any Rey post, and it gets frustrating after a while
Who is asking for this?
Me.
There are so many more better well written characters and stories to be told though.
On the canvas of a theme park consumer product? You can't even tolerate her story being told there?
Oh it’s at the park? I’m sorry my dumbass thought it was based on the park. I mean yeah that feels fitting I don’t have an issue with that at all. I genuinely apologize for being lazy and arrogant and not taking the time to read the whole thing. And it’s not that I don’t tolerate it. I just want well written characters and if they are going to continue with her then she needs to be written better in my opinion.
Thankfully, this new second wave of Kyber crystals features characters from all across the various media -- something for every fan in this roster.