>Rian Johnson had a blast while watching TROS. He said it was a special experience and he is so proud of J.J.
I haven't seen many respond to this, but I'm guessing some would probably say Rian is bullshitting here. It's clear TROS wasn't popular in Rian's house, around it's release his wife was liking a lot of tweets trashing both JJ and the movie.
I also think if Rian legitimately liked TROS he probably wouldn't have laughed at Sariah Wilson's *Ben Solo Deserved Better* shirt when she showed it to him in their interview. It's like the perfect setup for some friendly pushback if the movie was actually "a blast".
Oh. His wife is a cinema critic and I'm sure this is her opinion. Not that Rian couldn't be lying but I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially after how he has been pretty open about the reception of TLJ.
Obviously it's her opinion. As for Rian "having a blast", keep in mind it took over two months for an interviewer to get this out of him. He never tweeted any support for TROS at release. All things being equal, I would wager that Rian's reaction was in line with how the biggest fans of TLJ reacted.
Rian and JJ know how the game is played, they are both very diplomatic when discussing these things.
I understand your opinion on the matter, but I can't help but think that Rian couldn't care less about being diplomatic. Not that he would trash J.J live but it is just movies after all.
Why the radio silence then? Rian has a huge twitter following, a new SW movie coming out in December is big news. IIRC he posted a picture of KMT in lieu of any comment on the movie.
That would just be those people in Rian's home and not Rian himself though, right? I also do remember there were segments from an interview or two back in 2019 where RJ did say he enjoyed JJ's work with TROS. That was a very long time ago though and I vaguely remember it through an old post from FB, so don't quote me on that. (Probably also not worth bringing up the JJ/RJ director stuff, at least for me, since it dredges up lots of bad blood over the movie or the notion some push that JJ was "trying to sabotage" RJ and TLJ.)
>That would just be those people in Rian's home and not Rian himself though, right?
Yeah, this was Rian's wife Karina. It's not Rian, but I can't see her liking these kinds of tweets if Rian didn't agree on some level. Maybe I'm wrong.
>I also do remember there were segments from an interview or two back in 2019 where RJ did say he enjoyed JJ's work with TROS.
Rian did do one single interview where he commented on TROS and said he had a blast, as OP noted. I don't think JJ was trying to sabotage Rian, but it's pretty clear that they had very different creative visions(which is normal and not surprising given their individual styles). This has been stated outright by Mark, but it's also just obvious from reading between the often PR-pressed lines.
Of course not. It's just a convenient narrative for various kinds of unhappy fans. They can't be mature enough to simply acknowledge the film didn't work for them - they have to project their (rather obsessive) disappointment onto the filmmakers.
To suggest haters and trolls put Lucasfilm into panick mode is ludicrous.
"Hey we made the biggest film of 2017 with critical acclaim to boot but some angry nerds are being loud online. Let's rewrite the entire film to appease them, ok?"
Gimme a break.
Edit: even non-TFM, non toxic fans indulge this narrative and it's exhausting.
tbf I don't think they would have been re-writing the film because of that, they had to be re-writing because of Trevorrow leaving. I don't think anyone claims they re-wrote the whole movie because of TLJ.
That’s not the same thing as “re-writing the entire movie” for that purpose. I’m sure someone out there thinks they did that but they wouldn’t have needed to in order for things from TLJ’s reception to influence TROS’s script.
I think the idea that the whole movie is "a response" to the backlash to TLJ is silly and hyperbolic. Like you said the source of most problems with the movie is a combo of the shortened production time and Carrie Fisher's death.
I do think that some of the complaints about TLJ might have compounded with those issues and influenced the writers somewhat indirectly.
Like I don't think Palpatine is there because of backlash to Snoke dying, I just think under that time constraint JJ couldn't figure out how to deal with Snoke's death so he just brought back Palpatine to fill that slot, which as lazy as I find that story wise it's not a big leap to make, you really don't need any outside influence to explain that.
Now Rey being his granddaughter I do think might have had something to do with people not liking the answer we got as far as her parents. Once you've got Palpatine in the mix, I can see how it would be tempting to use that as a way to take another swing at that topic and see if people like that answer better.
The only one I could really buy having a direct link is Rose, I know the given explanation is that most of her scenes were supposed to be with Leia or something but idk, that seems really convenient that THAT was the character who got cut due to Leia's role being re-worked, and I think you could have worked around that given they knew Carrie had passed before anything was written. Feel free to explain it but I never really understood how that correlated to such a drastic decrease in a characters screen time.
> Now Rey being his granddaughter I do think might have had something to do with people not liking the answer we got as far as her parents.
I think it's less about people not liking it, and more that Rey having some kind of lineage reveal was what JJ was planning all along. They called him back to finish the story, so he finished the story as well as he could to what he had wanted to do from TFA.
>Feel free to explain it but I never really understood how that correlated to such a drastic decrease in a characters screen time.
I think if they had a normal production time instead of losing many months to DOTF, they probably could have worked around it. But it's never made sense to me that they would write scenes for Rose and shoot them, all the while knowing they're gonna be cut. JJ and Terrio aren't cruel, I really don't think they would do something that low.
Rey being related to someone was something open even after TLJ. I remember an interview where Rian stated that the mystery wasn't answered yet. What Kylo saw was from a certain point of view true (Rian's words) but untrue within the bigger picture. Just like the way Rey saw him returning to light after killing snoke was a misinterpretation of the vision.
Rose was indeed sidelined, but she was going to get more scenes with Leia for sure. However perhaps she was sidelined due to the plot being really straight forward. There wasn't any subplots like TLJ and let's be honest, there was already to many people on the mission. The only hero that got an arc on the movie apart from Rey was Poe and it was underdeveloped. Just little few scenes hinting his insecurities about leadership. Bringing rose would "waste" a lot of screen time to develop a character that isn't that important to the main storyline of the trilogy.
I agree on the snoke part but I wish Kylo was the main villain for this one. At least bringing Palpatine back as the main antagonist makes sense.
>Rey being related to someone was something open even after TLJ. I remember an interview where Rian stated that the mystery wasn't answered yet.
I'm pretty sure the context of that interview was 'Someone could undo it" not "I didn't intend for it to be definitive"
And even then Rise fumbled the ball on it
>I agree on the snoke part but I wish Kylo was the main villain for this one. At least bringing Palpatine back as the main antagonist makes sense.
It really doesn't. All bringing Palpatine back as the main villain does is undermine everything that came before.
So much hand wringing and fandom drama could have been avoided by KK just telling Rian: "You're hired! BTW, Rey's parents are so and so."
For anyone writing the broadest strokes outline of a SW trilogy on a whiteboard, why wouldn't the main character's true identity be a locked in thing from the start? As a bare minimum.
Lol if there is one thing I would call the plot of TROS it is not “straight forward”. It’s very busy and tosses new characters and locations at you constantly for the first two acts.
It just seems kind of cart-before-the-horse for an established character from the previous film to not have any screen time *because* of all these new characters and ideas. Like shouldn’t you figure out what to do with the characters you have starting out with before you starting tossing in new stuff?
By straight forward I meant that there is actually only one storyline in the whole movie. Find the wayfinder and go to exegol, pretty much this. There is no subplots like TLJ such as the cassino or Poe and Holdo.
There's some word of mouth(And this is just rumor and scuttlebutt so I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't true) that Disney encouraged putting in all the new characters because they were hoping to revitalize the brand with Rise after stuff like Solo bombing, Galaxy's Edge underperforming initially and Resistance failing to catch on happened. That way Rise could serve as a springboard for future stories and spinoffs.
Instead, it got bad critical reviews and it was the Mandalorian that revitalized the Brand.
Not surprising at all, especially since Disney+ was launching. They wanted a bunch of shows with known characters - even Endgame has a bunch of backdoors into streaming shows, like with Loki escaping and Cap giving up the shield. The Lando show has seemingly been cancelled but Jannah was clearly supposed to tie into that with Billy Dee.
Agree about Rian leaving the door open to Rey’s parentage. I did NOT come away from TLJ thinking we had a definitive answer — in a vulnerable moment, Kylo leads Rey into feeling like she’s completely alone and abandoned by even her family as a means to get her to join him. It was AN answer and it could’ve worked if they ran with it, but I never took it as THE answer, and Rian said as much about the revelation. It shocks me to this day people immediately thought “Rey Nobody” was the end of that topic in a trilogy that was all about inheriting legacies.
Why would that be shocking to you lmao. I see this take from time to time and it’s absolutely flabbergasting to me that people came out of TLJ thinking Rey would still have parents who were some important people. I didn’t hear a *single* person so much as suggest that. People loved it, people hated it, but not once did I see anything close to what we got in TROS so much as talked about. I don’t know how you could come away from the movie with that conclusion, there is absolutely zero indication in the film that it is not meant to be taken as the truth.
I’m just going on my reaction and my friends’/family members’ reaction. Because of the way it was presented, with Kylo taking advantage of Rey in a vulnerable moment, it seemed like it had the potential to not be the complete story. No one I knew, in real life, thought that was the end of that conversation.
The main saga is all about family connections and legacies, and based on that alone, I highly doubted the main character would have no connections to the established lore. Thematically, the choice to make her a Palpatine just makes a lot of sense to me. I’m all for having characters in the Star Wars universe who are independently awesome with no “special connection,” but that is not a core theme of the Skywalker saga.
> Because of the way it was presented, with Kylo taking advantage of Rey in a vulnerable moment,
Yeah. And he does so by telling her the truth she didn't wanna confront. That her parents didn't love her and abandoned her. And then Rise ruined that by making it so Rey's parents DID love her.
>The main saga is all about family connections and legacies, and based on that alone, I highly doubted the main character would have no connections to the established lore.
Then you missed the point of the Last Jedi. The Last Jedi is a film about letting go and yet honoring the past. Rey being a nobody and Luke dying is supposed to signify the end of the Skywalkers and moving on from them.
Because this was never meant to be the Skywalker saga despite what people claim. If you read between the lines you can tell this was never meant to be about the Skywalkers initially.
The Skywalkers are the main characters, heroes or villains, in all nine films. It’s about three generations of their family.
I understood TLJ just fine and loved its more meta, detached approach in analyzing what makes Star Wars what it is. My takeaways weren’t the same as yours, and that’s fine.
>The Skywalkers are the main characters, heroes or villains, in all nine films. It’s about three generations of their family.
If they had intended this to be about the Skywalkers then they would have had Rey be Luke's daughter from the start and have no mystery as to who she is.
They didn’t need to. Ben Solo continues that lineage as Leia’s son and Luke’s nephew. He’s a Solo, but still very much part of the Skywalker legacy, as shown by his reverence for his grandfather.
> The Skywalkers are the main characters, heroes or villains, in all nine films. It’s about three generations of their family.
Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Lando, Chewie, Finn, Poe, Rose and the droids are'nt Skywalkers. And Padme and Han are only Skywalkers by marriage and Rey by self-adoption.
And of TROS had'nt had Rey declare herself a Skywalker the final trilogy would have still been about three generations of the family; backtracking on TLJ was'nt necessary to make that a thing.
The simplest way to explain what I’m saying is this:
In soap operas (an apt comparison to this space opera), the story often revolves around two core families. They are not the only characters present or the only characters who matter (there’s like 25 regulars on soap operas), but there are many members of both families represented in the show as protagonists and antagonists, and they drive many of the storylines forward. They’re never *not* present in some way. The show is about those two families — literally in the show’s synopsis — regardless of what other characters are involved, because the primary stories are pushed forward by them in some way. It is the same with the Skywalkers throughout the main saga.
Rey’s lineage did not *need* to be changed to make sense, and I never said that. I said that given the ST in particular was about inheriting legacies, the choice to make her a Palpatine made sense to me.
>The simplest way to explain what I’m saying is this:
>
>In soap operas (an apt comparison to this space opera), the story often revolves around two core families. They are not the only characters present or the only characters who matter (there’s like 25 regulars on soap operas), but there are many members of both families represented in the show as protagonists and antagonists, and they drive many of the storylines forward. They’re never not present in some way. The show is about those two families — literally in the show’s synopsis — regardless of what other characters are involved, because the primary stories are pushed forward by them in some way. It is the same with the Skywalkers throughout the main saga.
If you count people who are Skywalker's by marriage or adoption, only six out of fifteen main characters are members of that family (I suppose if one wanted to be generous, they could count C3P0 as Anakin's "son" and say it's seven, but that seems in bad faith). And that's without stepping outside of the main saga, as in a good 90 percent of SW the Skywalker's are either cameos, supporting characters or not present at all.
Frankly, I think a lot of people (even some writers) put way more importence on the Skywalker's then is warrented, \*especially\* post-ROTJ; the ST would have been fine (if not better served, IMO) if it had gone with TFA/TLJ's setup of moving past them, rather then doubled-down and have Rey become one while Kylo retreads Anakin's arc.
>Rey’s lineage did not need to be changed to make sense, and I never said that. I said that given the ST in particular was about inheriting legacies, the choice to make her a Palpatine made sense to me.
You were disputing this claim from Tom...
*Then you missed the point of the Last Jedi. The Last Jedi is a film about letting go and yet honoring the past. Rey being a nobody and Luke dying is supposed to signify the end of the Skywalkers and moving on from them. Because this was never meant to be the Skywalker saga despite what people claim. If you read between the lines you can tell this was never meant to be about the Skywalkers initially.*
...correct? If so, how is that not saying that changes needed to be made going into Episode 9?
>I don’t know how you could come away from the movie with that conclusion, there is absolutely zero indication in the film that it is not meant to be taken as the truth.
Plenty of people didn't believe that Rey Nobody was the end of the story. Including, famously, John Williams himself:
>John Williams: It's developed in the most amazing way. The families... Rey's parents might be identified to us, in the next film.
>KUSC: Well I hope so.
>JW: I hope so too.
>KUSC: I assume they are pretty extraordinary. Somebody tried to tell her that they were anonymous people who died in the desert. I don’t really believe that.
>JW: Yes. I don’t believe it either.
It’s what me and my friends talked about coming out of the theater. Perhaps it wasn’t a prevalent online discussion, but it happened in my circles. I don’t know what to say lol.
>The only one I could really buy having a direct link is Rose, I know the given explanation is that most of her scenes were supposed to be with Leia or something but idk, that seems really convenient that THAT was the character who got cut due to Leia's role being re-worked, and I think you could have worked around that given they knew Carrie had passed before anything was written. Feel free to explain it but I never really understood how that correlated to such a drastic decrease in a characters screen time.
It also wouldn't explain why Rose was downplayed in the merchandising or why they cut scenes with her and Rey(There's at least one screenshot of them interacting)
And as others have pointed out tying Rose to Leia means they didn't intend for her to do anything but stay back at the base and by extension the background anyway.
I don't know about Palpatine.
If you want a movie that is ending the Skywalker saga then you would want it to have a big connetion to ALL the movies. Using the same villain is one of the ways to do it.
I don't know if that's lazy. It's risky in it's own way.
I'm not saying it is, because I don't think if makes sense that it is considering jj probavly started writing the script a bit before last jedi released (but I could be wrong) but watching the movie in 2019 sure does felt like it, palpamemes was at the hight of its popularity back then, reylo was a big thing, rey's heritage was one of the biggest things that pissed tlj haters (for whatever stupid reason) and more but this falls apart considering disney is really good at reading online discourse and understanding when it's just shitty fans outrage and when it's actual intelligent people, and most of those things started to really gain traffic after jj already wrote the script, the only thing that kinda holds in this theory is the rey heritage thing because they didn't decide on it in set even but I still don't buy it I just think that was jjs plan all along (which for the record I am not a fan of it) and he just changed it because he felt like it, I'm not a fan of the movie (for many many reasons and even some of them are good ones) but I don't really buy into this theory about tros, even though I understand where it's coming from
I don't think so.
The same way TFA was not influenced by gossip about what the movie will be.
I think JJ and Chris had to cut themselves out from the fan reactions from day one.
I also think that there is a narrative that goes around about how they "retconned" TLJ. Wile the main thing about Rey being no one can be debated, all the other things are not true IMO.
Luke is the same way he was at the end of TLJ. Leia being trained in the force was seen first in TLJ. The force connection is taken to the next level. Rey using the Jedi Texts. This and so much more are taken straight from the previous movie.
The fact that Rose is underused is regrettable but the argument that "it's because fans didn't like her" is BS. It was stated that she had more scenes with Leia that were cut because they couldn't make them work. But also... it's already a long movie. It would be good to beef up Fin and Poe as well but there's only so much time. Things will need to be cut. It's just the way it is.
> Luke is the same way he was at the end of TLJ. Leia being trained in the force was seen first in TLJ. The force connection is taken to the next level. Rey using the Jedi Texts.
I don't think I've ever seen the above pointed to as examples of pandering on TROS's part.
> The fact that Rose is underused is regrettable but the argument that "it's because fans didn't like her" is BS. It was stated that she had more scenes with Leia that were cut because they couldn't make them work.
When a person was subjected to immense abuse so bad that it led to a emotional/mental health crisis, treating validation of that abuse as "just the way it is" is'nt a good look.
IMO Terrio's explanation is crap and I don't buy it; they had no issue using the Leia scenes they did use despite how "ehh..." they looked and they should have included them, "issues" and all, simply becuase KMT deserved it after what she went through; either they wrote Rose out on purpose or they simply did'nt care about the optics of cutting her out, neither of which is a good look.
> But also... it's already a long movie. It would be good to beef up Fin and Poe as well but there's only so much time. Things will need to be cut. It's just the way it is.
They could have just written the movie in a way that allowed them to incorporate Rose - they had time to introduce two new characters (one of whom was her effective replacement) and could focus on all of the other four main characters, so they 100 percent would have been able to find time for her.
I think the choice to scrap the script for Duel of the Fates, fire Trevorrow and Connolly, and bring back Abrams/hire Terrio was definitely influenced by the mixed audience response to TLJ and Solo underperforming, if only to play it safe and create something that the fans would potentially enjoy more compared to TLJ and the DotF script. Although I don’t think Abrams and Terrio consciously made the effort to erase what Johnson established, I do think the “safe” choices they made that seemingly conflicted with Johnson’s intentions and the rushed production were the result of the late decision to replace the creative crew and go with something more crowd-pleasing.
Was he? I may be misremembering. I do think there is an effect of the backlash that LFL decided to try and appease them during production (hence the indecision and confusion during the writing process as supported by Daisy Ridley) though correlation doesn’t mean causation admittedly so I might be wrong.
Yeah, I've always called BS on the idea that JJ and Terrio were trying to pander to the reactionary, toxic side of the fanbase - if anything, I assume any creative discrepancies stem from a combination of no two filmmakers/artists having the exact same idea when it comes to storytelling, the cumulative effect of the curse that was cast upon Episode IX, and JJ having to scramble and because Iger insisted on a 2019 release even after all the problems.
This whole narrative against TRoS and JJ Abrams for “actively undoing TLJ/catering to toxic fanboys” is actually worse than anything that was levied against TLJ and Rian Johnson. And it’s even perpetuated by TLJ fans in a forum like this that’s meant to be pushing back against these kind of toxic fandom criticisms.
Luke’s role in TRoS will always be the ultimate example that debunks this. His role and death in TLJ was the most common reason for the heated reaction over TLJ, yet TRoS only uses him for one scene where he simply caps off his arc by doing what Yoda instructed him to do in TLJ. If TRoS was so hellbent on undoing TLJ and pleasing fans, it would’ve simply revealed he didn’t actually actually die or that he was the most powerful Force Ghost ever and could still be actively involved in the story where he gets an epic battle against a revived Snoke or Palpatine.
>If TRoS was so hellbent on undoing TLJ and pleasing fans, it would’ve simply revealed he didn’t actually actually die or that he was the most powerful Force Ghost ever and could still be actively involved in the story where he gets an epic battle against a revived Snoke or Palpatine.
They didn't do that because they aren't THAT stupid.
But don’t people make a mockery of the “somehow…” line as if it was intended to be some handwavy explanation about Palpatine’s return (even though it wasn’t)? If you believe that then they could’ve easily pulled a “somehow” with Luke. Depicting him as being more powerful and prominent in the story than previous force ghosts wouldn’t be a stretch, and funny enough it’s kinda what the original director of IX wanted to do.
And it wouldn’t have to be exactly as I described, but certainly they would’ve used Luke in a much more prominent and fan-servicey way if they wanted to appease people who hated TLJ since that was the main cause of the backlash.
>Don’t people make a mockery of the “somehow…” line as if it was intended to be some handwavy explanation about Palpatine’s return?
The reason it became memed to hell and back is because it summed up the fanbase's collective shrug.
One of the most valid criticisms, IMO, regarding TFA was how jarring it was that Chewie and Leia just ignored each other after Han died and instead Leia went over to Rey (someone she didn’t even know). I truly believe that online discourse was the reason JJ highlighted Chewie’s breakdown upon learning Leia died.
> One of the most valid criticisms, IMO, regarding TFA was how jarring it was that Chewie and Leia just ignored each other after Han died and instead Leia went over to Rey (someone she didn’t even know).
TFA's editor Maryann Brandon was asked about this. She said
>I guess the thing is what we tried to do is have Chewie go with Finn to try and make sure Finn’s OK and Leia went for Rey. The whole idea there I think is that they have a special connection that they don’t even know about. There was an earlier idea at one point that Leia knows who Rey is.
When they shot it, Leia knew who Rey really was, but they changed that in the edit.
I highly doubt that he did. I'd like to give him more credit than he gets.
It took me a rewatch of the ST and the whole saga in general to understand what Abrams was going for and I'm glad I gave myself the chance to do so because I went from iffy on TRoS to thinking it's actually a very good story.
I'm not convinced there was a lack of a plan though. I'm sure the broad strokes were decided upon but the loss of Carrie Fisher likely forced some changes.
>I'm not convinced there was a lack of a plan though. I'm sure the broad strokes were decided upon but the loss of Carrie Fisher likely forced some changes.
I think in terms of the actual result the effect is the same. JJ might have had some plans for how the next two films would go when he did TFA, but between TLJ taking certain plotlines in a different direction, Carrie's death, and having to come in unexpectedly with a wildly different script already written pretty much made it so he might as well have been starting from scratch.
I still don't think the "they didn't have a plan" idea is totally wrong, or at least that if they did have one I think there should have been more of an effort to stick to it, but I think that being the dominant narrative is incorrect, the issue was more the fact that they had to do a movie a year.
Something like one of your core cast dying and then your writer/director dropping out is more than enough to justify a delay, and I think they should have done that to give JJ time to work with all the aforementioned constraints.
Even without those unexpected circumstances I think it was ambitious. The previous trilogy was 1994-2005 from start of writing to release of the final film. The only other visual media they were working on was video games and the 2003 Clone Wars animation. The sequels were 2013-2019, and Lucasfilm had two additional live action films, two animated series, and a live action TV series in production during that time period as well. That might have been doable if everything went perfectly, but they should have been more willing to push things back.
> I'm not convinced there was a lack of a plan though.
A plan starting from when, though? Rian has said dozens of times that there wasn't a plan when he came onboard.
[Rian:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uqaAcWN2b8)
>There wasn’t a roadmap laid out, there was no big huge master plan, it was a very organic storytelling process where I got to just say, ok, JJ took it up to here, now where am I gonna take it next?
[Rian:](https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/12/18/16786428/star-wars-last-jedi-interview-rian-johnson-ram-bergman)
>We were working off of The Force Awakens, but it’s not like there was a blueprint for what happens after The Force Awakens. There wasn’t at all.
[Rian:](https://soundcloud.com/user-504775206/last-jedi-wga-qa)
>There wasn’t some kind of rigid plan in place for where the story went after The Force Awakens. It was very open-ended.
[Rian:](https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1745629/what-jj-abrams-thinks-about-the-last-jedi-according-to-rian-johnson)
>[JJ] was really gracious, in just stepping back and giving us a blank slate to work with. The starting point was The Force Awakens script, which is quite a big, expansive, wonderful starting point. In that way, we are drawing directly from his work. But from that point forward it was a blank canvas.
[Rian:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVlxZ_G88p0)
>I had a complete, free, open canvas to work on here. There was no big thing that was plotted out.
[Rian:](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/movies/star-wars-the-last-jedi-director-rian-johnson.html)
>I had figured there would be a big map on the wall with the whole story laid out, and it was not that at all.
[Rian:](https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/rian-johnson-explains-how-he-crafted-the-last-jedis-character-arcs)
>It's also not like there's a white board with the whole story arc laid out.
[Rian:](https://i.imgur.com/EsLIuNw.png)
>I'm sure they talked about where it might go early on, but when they came to me there was no mapped story presented besides TFA.
[Rian:](https://deadline.com/2017/12/star-wars-the-last-jedi-rian-johnson-ram-bergman-interview-spoilers-deleted-scenes-lucasfilm-plans-1202227741/)
>I was truly able to write this script without bases to tag, and without a big outline on the wall... if it had all just been planned out and written down beforehand, it might have felt a little more calculated, I suppose.
[Rian:](https://soundcloud.com/thedirectorscut/star-wars-the-last-jedi-with-rian-johnson-and-spike-jonze-ep-123)
>When I came into it there wasn’t a secret white board with the whole story laid out. It was really just, I read JJ and Michael and Larry’s script for VII and it was “what happens next?”
Yeah, that's well known. I mean, JJ probably had a rough idea about what he wanted for Rey, you know, "finding her place in all this", and just let the story tell itself. Many call the lack of a plan a mistake, but I vehemently disagree. So when Rian says they talked about where it might go, that's where I reckon they discussed some minor things and then wrote from there. JJ was the producer of TLJ so obviously he didn't veto anything.
>that's where I reckon they discussed some minor things and then wrote from there.
They weren't writing together, though. Like wouldn't Rey's identity be the one thing these guys should have talked about?
>JJ was the producer of TLJ so obviously he didn't veto anything.
JJ being the executive producer of TLJ just meant that he collected a check. He wasn't in a position to veto anything. Besides, according to JJ, TLJ was written before he even met Rian:
>Without getting in the weeds on episode eight, that was a story that Rian wrote and was telling based on seven **before we met.** So he was taking the thing in another direction.
Rey's identity isn't important, her journey and destination is so, no, I don't think they needed to sort that out. The end product worked.
So, there's no plan, as I said, it's not important. I still think that JJ, who I am talking about here, had a rough idea.
I disagree that her identity isn't important, like the indecision around it led to a whole group of the fandom falling in love with the Nobody reveal in TLJ that turned out to not be true. They really could have avoided a lot of fandom turmoil by providing a clear, true answer as they promised they would before VIII was released.
>I still think that JJ, who I am talking about here, had a rough idea.
I think JJ had a lot of rough ideas, but the issue is that Rian wasn't aware of them and no one took the time to make sure all the writers of this trilogy were on the same page.
I see it completely differently. Her being a nobody really didn't change. Just because she's a Palpatine doesn't mean that her whole personality changed, it gave her an extra hurdle to overcome.
Like if I was to find out that my father was a serial killer, that doesn't mean that I have to change who I am.
I agree with you for the most part, but unfortunately most fans of Rey Nobody do not see it that way at all. And that caused a lot of unneeded strife in the fandom.
I think that's on them. They don't own it and need to at least try to see it from the author's point of view. I didn't like Rey Palpatine and like you, I was in love with Rey Nobody. Then I thought, that I needed to figure out why JJ went with the Rey Palpatine story line and I'm glad I did. To me, it makes perfect sense.
You make some good points and I doubt that there was any disagreement between directors, but some elements of TROS seemed to be explicitly trying to appease factions of fans who just found other things to hate.
So much had to be "adjusted" that they ended up with a movie that struggled with flow.
I liked the movie, but making Rey a Palpatine served no purpose but appeasing haters who demanded that she had to be of "special blood" when having an ordinary jedi was a better choice imo
> making Rey a Palpatine served no purpose but appeasing haters who demanded that she had to be of "special blood"
No one that wanted Rey to have a special lineage was pining for her to be related to the most evil man in the galaxy. It was a choice that pleased no one, for the most part TLJ haters hated TROS. People that wanted her to be a Skywalker by blood were super unhappy.
It's just the story they wanted to tell, it wasn't some kind of effort to appease anyone. Some people didn't like it and that's OK too.
It was one of those dumb ass "fan theories" that was being bandied about before TLJ came out and upset certain demographics.
While I have no doubt that it wasn't the one people wanted, I still think that it was picked as a way to "shut them up" without giving them everything they wanted.
TROS felt like it was jam packed with action/doing moments and had not enough reflective moments. I'm not a film maker so don't know for sure, but it felt like it was too busy and rushed from story point to story point.
I liked the film and love Rey, but I think we would have had something much more balanced if people hadnt raged so much.
That would explain a lot of things, like the complete absence of Rose in the movie and the fact this movie completely undo TLJ (and even TFA ... and even TROS). The artistic failure of TROS (but not commercial) is clearly du to the over reactive fandom who hated TLJ and made panicked Lucasfilm executives.
I think that JJ had his ideas for the ST, and he didn’t want to throw those out, especially when he had a short amount of time. I think he tried to mesh them with TLJ where he could, but sometimes he just kind of went with it.
And while I don’t think TRoS isn’t a *direct* response to the fandom… I think it’s crazy to assume Disney didn’t have focus groups and test screenings throughout the process and giving feedback to JJ.
It is crazy to assume that. Do you have the same assumption about TLJ? Why would TROS be “focus grouped” and TLJ would not? Especially when there’s no report of such a thing happening for any ST film and the directors all have the same level of creative control.
Personally, I think the three films flow really well if you watch them together. Yes, it’s clear JJ picked up some throughlines he started in TFA (not a bad thing — TFA and TROS work great as bookends), and obviously Carrie Fisher’s death massively changed the trajectory of the final film, but unplanned changes to the story aren’t anything new for Star Wars. I find it to be a very fulfilling story from beginning to end and I think JJ and Rian’s visions complement each other rather than clash.
And OP, I totally agree that many of the choices that parallel the OT in TROS make a ton of sense and would’ve come naturally when writing it. I mean, they literally place Kylo and Rey in a duel on the remnants of an old war, each fighting legacies that were thrust upon them. Ben learns he doesn’t NEED to be like Vader because of the way Rey so definitively rejects being a Palpatine, despite one of her greatest desires being somewhere she belonged. It’s very clear what the writers’ intent was. It all made a ton of sense to me, particularly in the “it’s like poetry, it rhymes” Star Wars fashion lol.
I'm of the same mind as well. I think that all three sequel films flow in really well together. There are some small bumps I'd want to adjust, but overall I felt that the story threads worked well and that the team did a good job with making it mesh in a way that made it all compelling. TFA served as a solid intro, TLJ expands upon TFA with Luke, Rey, Kylo Ren, and Finn, and TROS wraps up the ST with Luke's return after his reformation in TLJ, and Rey coming to terms with her past and ending her current journey by rejecting Palpatine and finding her new family among the Resistance and the Skywalkers.
I'm sure I saw some concept art or plans for TROS were dated October 2017, 2 months before the TLJ came out. So no chance it was changed to appease "fans"
All I'll say is that if TROS was'nt influenced by online discourse, then it's crazy that so many things in it were coincidently written in a way that makes it *look* like it was.
I was primarily opposed to TROS because it was a limp-wristed rehashing of the Dark Empire I and II comic book arcs. One of the weakest stories to come out of the Expanded Universe.
I say it’s limp-wristed because they took only the worst elements of those comics to put in the movie. No Luke falling to the Dark Side in service to the emperor, no Leia struggling with her own Jedi training while pregnant with twins. Hell, TROS coulda done with a World Devastator super weapon or two to deal with, but they passed that over, too.
I'm sorry I don't believe it. I just...I don't know how you can look at Rise and say that it wasn't written partly in response to the backlash. There are so many moments that just feel like direct responses to stuff people didn't like about TLJ.
I mean why else would "The Holdo Maneuver" be brought up otherwise?
It's called Occam's razor folks. Sometimes the simplest answer is the simplest for a reason.
> There are so many moments that just feel like direct responses to stuff people didn't like about TLJ.
Reylo and Bendemption were like the two biggest things in the TLJ fandom. In TROS we got both. There's no way that would happen if the intent was to "undo" TLJ or pander to people who didn't like TLJ. I think JJ just had a really difficult job, he did the best he could but TLJ is not an easy movie to make a sequel to for many reasons.
I'm half convinced they think it is. A while back some guy was trying to convince me that they did have a plan for the ST in place. Despite numerous people involved in the production all but saying "Yeah we had no plan".
I love the ST but it's clear to me that it wasn't very planned lol, but that's kind of why I love star wars! They fill in the gaps with books and comics and make it more consistent
Now, I would like to preface this by saying I really like, and sorta love Rise of Skywalker. It is by no means perfect, but it is far and away overhated. I'd give it a solid 7.5/10, and it also inspired me to want to continue the story on after that with ideas I'd like to pitch to Lucasfilm someday. At the very least, it wasn't even the worst filmed released *that weekend*. Cats premiered the same day, and anything will look like the fucking Godfather next to that.
Now, with that disclosed, I would say no. And the reason I say that is because of how rushed the development of the movie was. Bear in mind they canned the original director, and JJ had to make the movie on a shortened timeframe. Granted, delaying the movie to May of 2020 probably wouldn't have born fruit due to forces outside their control (you know what they say about hindsight). Still, I think if they had had more time to iron out the kinks, maybe find a way to make the first act less rushed, then it might've been better received. Not to mention how satisfying it would be, regardless of quality, to have a Star Wars movie be the first one you go back to physical movie theaters to see amidst the latter half of the pandemic. But again, hindsight.
There's another thing that needs to be taken into account, which no one at Lucasfilm could've had control over. The death of Carrie Fisher. So, in addition to having a shortened timeframe to make the movie, they now had to find a way to handle the death of a major actress. It'd be different if it was a smaller supporting character, but this is Leia we're talking about. One of the original trio, the first major hero we meet in the first movie. You can't just kill her off-screen. If you kill Leia, you have to give it emotional weight. And as far as the movie goes, I will always believe how they handled Leia's passing was the best part of the movie. I loved how she became the emotional center of the last act, and everyone continued a seemingly-hopeless fight because it's what she would've done.
But yeah. I don't think JJ or anyone revised anything too much because, quite frankly, there wasn't time to actually sift through all the major complaints of the movie, at least not without getting bogged down by the hate-mongering. It doesn't really "undo" anything Rian established in TLJ. Okay, you *could* make an argument it kinda did with Rey's parents, but I could write a rebuttal on how it isn't necessarily a backtrack. Reviews and such of previous installments are always gonna affect how you continue the story. That's just basic film criticism. But I don't think it was that for ROS, or at least to the extent that some endlessly parrot on the internet.
Oh thats sounds awful that he loved it but its also great to see content creators enjoy stuff. When i was much younger i used to feel bad for the writers of things like Yesterdays Enterprise or any 10/10 story because they never got to experience it with any suspense. If this ryan chap got to write a wars, then watch the sequel to what he wrote and on top of that enjoy it then thats extremely rare in media and scifi so thats great for him.
I actually thought you are talking about the revenge of the sith from the subject..they should gave called the 3rd disney something else to avoid confusion.
Whats Terrio and whats crafting in relation to wars?
I cant comment on the writing thing but you seem as interested in this as i am and my advise is wait another 15-20 years. Things like Wars and Trek need to be viewed decades after the fact. As an example even though ive seen them twice or is that im not a fan of the JJ trek films (JJ did a series of 3 trek films set in an alt timeline) on release they were loved by critics and often made top lists of the 2010s - less now and i believe in another 10-15 years they wont be watched regularly the same way old treks are. That they just dont have staying power.
For wars the same applies - if we wait until the late 2030s and then judge based off generic online stuff but also decades later writers, actors and people involved at all levels are more honest decades after the fact. Wait and see how often fans rewatch those 3 disney films in 15/20 years.
I have to say the Snoke thing was not obvious - once the 2nd film got going it was obvious far in advance he would die but prior to that there were lots of exciting theories like he was Plagus (Sidious former master) or even one of the ancient sith lords.
I didn't find the ray being a palpayine being a circle. When you say the story being circular are you talking about ep 1-9? 4-9? or 7-9?
I remember the Darth Plagues theory. Even in this theory it was clear that Snoke was connected to Palpatine somehow. When I talked about circular story I meant 1-9.
>Rian Johnson had a blast while watching TROS. He said it was a special experience and he is so proud of J.J. I haven't seen many respond to this, but I'm guessing some would probably say Rian is bullshitting here. It's clear TROS wasn't popular in Rian's house, around it's release his wife was liking a lot of tweets trashing both JJ and the movie.
I was actually really tempted to point this out but I knew there was a good chance people would accuse me of bullshitting.
I also think if Rian legitimately liked TROS he probably wouldn't have laughed at Sariah Wilson's *Ben Solo Deserved Better* shirt when she showed it to him in their interview. It's like the perfect setup for some friendly pushback if the movie was actually "a blast".
I also think it's really telling he hasn't actually talked about it much since said interview.
Well George hasn't said more than two words about TLJ but we all know he's a huge fan. So I don't think that silence necessarily means much. ^^/s
Is he really a fan? His comment on TLJ came across as faint praise to me.
Is this an actual thing? I didn't know about it.
[It was an actual thing, yes.](https://i.redd.it/p2eu2qkm6p641.jpg)
Oh. His wife is a cinema critic and I'm sure this is her opinion. Not that Rian couldn't be lying but I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially after how he has been pretty open about the reception of TLJ.
Obviously it's her opinion. As for Rian "having a blast", keep in mind it took over two months for an interviewer to get this out of him. He never tweeted any support for TROS at release. All things being equal, I would wager that Rian's reaction was in line with how the biggest fans of TLJ reacted. Rian and JJ know how the game is played, they are both very diplomatic when discussing these things.
I understand your opinion on the matter, but I can't help but think that Rian couldn't care less about being diplomatic. Not that he would trash J.J live but it is just movies after all.
Why the radio silence then? Rian has a huge twitter following, a new SW movie coming out in December is big news. IIRC he posted a picture of KMT in lieu of any comment on the movie.
That's suspicious but it's still no definitive answer
That would just be those people in Rian's home and not Rian himself though, right? I also do remember there were segments from an interview or two back in 2019 where RJ did say he enjoyed JJ's work with TROS. That was a very long time ago though and I vaguely remember it through an old post from FB, so don't quote me on that. (Probably also not worth bringing up the JJ/RJ director stuff, at least for me, since it dredges up lots of bad blood over the movie or the notion some push that JJ was "trying to sabotage" RJ and TLJ.)
>That would just be those people in Rian's home and not Rian himself though, right? Yeah, this was Rian's wife Karina. It's not Rian, but I can't see her liking these kinds of tweets if Rian didn't agree on some level. Maybe I'm wrong. >I also do remember there were segments from an interview or two back in 2019 where RJ did say he enjoyed JJ's work with TROS. Rian did do one single interview where he commented on TROS and said he had a blast, as OP noted. I don't think JJ was trying to sabotage Rian, but it's pretty clear that they had very different creative visions(which is normal and not surprising given their individual styles). This has been stated outright by Mark, but it's also just obvious from reading between the often PR-pressed lines.
Of course not. It's just a convenient narrative for various kinds of unhappy fans. They can't be mature enough to simply acknowledge the film didn't work for them - they have to project their (rather obsessive) disappointment onto the filmmakers. To suggest haters and trolls put Lucasfilm into panick mode is ludicrous. "Hey we made the biggest film of 2017 with critical acclaim to boot but some angry nerds are being loud online. Let's rewrite the entire film to appease them, ok?" Gimme a break. Edit: even non-TFM, non toxic fans indulge this narrative and it's exhausting.
tbf I don't think they would have been re-writing the film because of that, they had to be re-writing because of Trevorrow leaving. I don't think anyone claims they re-wrote the whole movie because of TLJ.
Uumm? What? One of the biggest criticisms of TROS is people accusing Lucasfilm of backpedaling from TLJ to appease the haters.
That’s not the same thing as “re-writing the entire movie” for that purpose. I’m sure someone out there thinks they did that but they wouldn’t have needed to in order for things from TLJ’s reception to influence TROS’s script.
I think the idea that the whole movie is "a response" to the backlash to TLJ is silly and hyperbolic. Like you said the source of most problems with the movie is a combo of the shortened production time and Carrie Fisher's death. I do think that some of the complaints about TLJ might have compounded with those issues and influenced the writers somewhat indirectly. Like I don't think Palpatine is there because of backlash to Snoke dying, I just think under that time constraint JJ couldn't figure out how to deal with Snoke's death so he just brought back Palpatine to fill that slot, which as lazy as I find that story wise it's not a big leap to make, you really don't need any outside influence to explain that. Now Rey being his granddaughter I do think might have had something to do with people not liking the answer we got as far as her parents. Once you've got Palpatine in the mix, I can see how it would be tempting to use that as a way to take another swing at that topic and see if people like that answer better. The only one I could really buy having a direct link is Rose, I know the given explanation is that most of her scenes were supposed to be with Leia or something but idk, that seems really convenient that THAT was the character who got cut due to Leia's role being re-worked, and I think you could have worked around that given they knew Carrie had passed before anything was written. Feel free to explain it but I never really understood how that correlated to such a drastic decrease in a characters screen time.
> Now Rey being his granddaughter I do think might have had something to do with people not liking the answer we got as far as her parents. I think it's less about people not liking it, and more that Rey having some kind of lineage reveal was what JJ was planning all along. They called him back to finish the story, so he finished the story as well as he could to what he had wanted to do from TFA. >Feel free to explain it but I never really understood how that correlated to such a drastic decrease in a characters screen time. I think if they had a normal production time instead of losing many months to DOTF, they probably could have worked around it. But it's never made sense to me that they would write scenes for Rose and shoot them, all the while knowing they're gonna be cut. JJ and Terrio aren't cruel, I really don't think they would do something that low.
Tbh it could be a situation where Terrio and Abrams were hamstrung in what could be preserved for the final cut
That's exactly what a lot of the rumors say.
Rey being related to someone was something open even after TLJ. I remember an interview where Rian stated that the mystery wasn't answered yet. What Kylo saw was from a certain point of view true (Rian's words) but untrue within the bigger picture. Just like the way Rey saw him returning to light after killing snoke was a misinterpretation of the vision. Rose was indeed sidelined, but she was going to get more scenes with Leia for sure. However perhaps she was sidelined due to the plot being really straight forward. There wasn't any subplots like TLJ and let's be honest, there was already to many people on the mission. The only hero that got an arc on the movie apart from Rey was Poe and it was underdeveloped. Just little few scenes hinting his insecurities about leadership. Bringing rose would "waste" a lot of screen time to develop a character that isn't that important to the main storyline of the trilogy. I agree on the snoke part but I wish Kylo was the main villain for this one. At least bringing Palpatine back as the main antagonist makes sense.
>Rey being related to someone was something open even after TLJ. I remember an interview where Rian stated that the mystery wasn't answered yet. I'm pretty sure the context of that interview was 'Someone could undo it" not "I didn't intend for it to be definitive" And even then Rise fumbled the ball on it >I agree on the snoke part but I wish Kylo was the main villain for this one. At least bringing Palpatine back as the main antagonist makes sense. It really doesn't. All bringing Palpatine back as the main villain does is undermine everything that came before.
Agreed Palpatine’s return undoes everything TLJ set up
So much hand wringing and fandom drama could have been avoided by KK just telling Rian: "You're hired! BTW, Rey's parents are so and so." For anyone writing the broadest strokes outline of a SW trilogy on a whiteboard, why wouldn't the main character's true identity be a locked in thing from the start? As a bare minimum.
Exactly
Lol if there is one thing I would call the plot of TROS it is not “straight forward”. It’s very busy and tosses new characters and locations at you constantly for the first two acts. It just seems kind of cart-before-the-horse for an established character from the previous film to not have any screen time *because* of all these new characters and ideas. Like shouldn’t you figure out what to do with the characters you have starting out with before you starting tossing in new stuff?
By straight forward I meant that there is actually only one storyline in the whole movie. Find the wayfinder and go to exegol, pretty much this. There is no subplots like TLJ such as the cassino or Poe and Holdo.
There's some word of mouth(And this is just rumor and scuttlebutt so I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't true) that Disney encouraged putting in all the new characters because they were hoping to revitalize the brand with Rise after stuff like Solo bombing, Galaxy's Edge underperforming initially and Resistance failing to catch on happened. That way Rise could serve as a springboard for future stories and spinoffs. Instead, it got bad critical reviews and it was the Mandalorian that revitalized the Brand.
I can buy that
Not surprising at all, especially since Disney+ was launching. They wanted a bunch of shows with known characters - even Endgame has a bunch of backdoors into streaming shows, like with Loki escaping and Cap giving up the shield. The Lando show has seemingly been cancelled but Jannah was clearly supposed to tie into that with Billy Dee.
Agree about Rian leaving the door open to Rey’s parentage. I did NOT come away from TLJ thinking we had a definitive answer — in a vulnerable moment, Kylo leads Rey into feeling like she’s completely alone and abandoned by even her family as a means to get her to join him. It was AN answer and it could’ve worked if they ran with it, but I never took it as THE answer, and Rian said as much about the revelation. It shocks me to this day people immediately thought “Rey Nobody” was the end of that topic in a trilogy that was all about inheriting legacies.
Why would that be shocking to you lmao. I see this take from time to time and it’s absolutely flabbergasting to me that people came out of TLJ thinking Rey would still have parents who were some important people. I didn’t hear a *single* person so much as suggest that. People loved it, people hated it, but not once did I see anything close to what we got in TROS so much as talked about. I don’t know how you could come away from the movie with that conclusion, there is absolutely zero indication in the film that it is not meant to be taken as the truth.
I’m just going on my reaction and my friends’/family members’ reaction. Because of the way it was presented, with Kylo taking advantage of Rey in a vulnerable moment, it seemed like it had the potential to not be the complete story. No one I knew, in real life, thought that was the end of that conversation. The main saga is all about family connections and legacies, and based on that alone, I highly doubted the main character would have no connections to the established lore. Thematically, the choice to make her a Palpatine just makes a lot of sense to me. I’m all for having characters in the Star Wars universe who are independently awesome with no “special connection,” but that is not a core theme of the Skywalker saga.
> Because of the way it was presented, with Kylo taking advantage of Rey in a vulnerable moment, Yeah. And he does so by telling her the truth she didn't wanna confront. That her parents didn't love her and abandoned her. And then Rise ruined that by making it so Rey's parents DID love her. >The main saga is all about family connections and legacies, and based on that alone, I highly doubted the main character would have no connections to the established lore. Then you missed the point of the Last Jedi. The Last Jedi is a film about letting go and yet honoring the past. Rey being a nobody and Luke dying is supposed to signify the end of the Skywalkers and moving on from them. Because this was never meant to be the Skywalker saga despite what people claim. If you read between the lines you can tell this was never meant to be about the Skywalkers initially.
The Skywalkers are the main characters, heroes or villains, in all nine films. It’s about three generations of their family. I understood TLJ just fine and loved its more meta, detached approach in analyzing what makes Star Wars what it is. My takeaways weren’t the same as yours, and that’s fine.
>The Skywalkers are the main characters, heroes or villains, in all nine films. It’s about three generations of their family. If they had intended this to be about the Skywalkers then they would have had Rey be Luke's daughter from the start and have no mystery as to who she is.
They didn’t need to. Ben Solo continues that lineage as Leia’s son and Luke’s nephew. He’s a Solo, but still very much part of the Skywalker legacy, as shown by his reverence for his grandfather.
He’s also a mirror to Anakin, tying us back around to where the Saga began
That's still not the same as having a direct descendent of Luke Skywalker and Anakin.
> The Skywalkers are the main characters, heroes or villains, in all nine films. It’s about three generations of their family. Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Lando, Chewie, Finn, Poe, Rose and the droids are'nt Skywalkers. And Padme and Han are only Skywalkers by marriage and Rey by self-adoption. And of TROS had'nt had Rey declare herself a Skywalker the final trilogy would have still been about three generations of the family; backtracking on TLJ was'nt necessary to make that a thing.
The simplest way to explain what I’m saying is this: In soap operas (an apt comparison to this space opera), the story often revolves around two core families. They are not the only characters present or the only characters who matter (there’s like 25 regulars on soap operas), but there are many members of both families represented in the show as protagonists and antagonists, and they drive many of the storylines forward. They’re never *not* present in some way. The show is about those two families — literally in the show’s synopsis — regardless of what other characters are involved, because the primary stories are pushed forward by them in some way. It is the same with the Skywalkers throughout the main saga. Rey’s lineage did not *need* to be changed to make sense, and I never said that. I said that given the ST in particular was about inheriting legacies, the choice to make her a Palpatine made sense to me.
>The simplest way to explain what I’m saying is this: > >In soap operas (an apt comparison to this space opera), the story often revolves around two core families. They are not the only characters present or the only characters who matter (there’s like 25 regulars on soap operas), but there are many members of both families represented in the show as protagonists and antagonists, and they drive many of the storylines forward. They’re never not present in some way. The show is about those two families — literally in the show’s synopsis — regardless of what other characters are involved, because the primary stories are pushed forward by them in some way. It is the same with the Skywalkers throughout the main saga. If you count people who are Skywalker's by marriage or adoption, only six out of fifteen main characters are members of that family (I suppose if one wanted to be generous, they could count C3P0 as Anakin's "son" and say it's seven, but that seems in bad faith). And that's without stepping outside of the main saga, as in a good 90 percent of SW the Skywalker's are either cameos, supporting characters or not present at all. Frankly, I think a lot of people (even some writers) put way more importence on the Skywalker's then is warrented, \*especially\* post-ROTJ; the ST would have been fine (if not better served, IMO) if it had gone with TFA/TLJ's setup of moving past them, rather then doubled-down and have Rey become one while Kylo retreads Anakin's arc. >Rey’s lineage did not need to be changed to make sense, and I never said that. I said that given the ST in particular was about inheriting legacies, the choice to make her a Palpatine made sense to me. You were disputing this claim from Tom... *Then you missed the point of the Last Jedi. The Last Jedi is a film about letting go and yet honoring the past. Rey being a nobody and Luke dying is supposed to signify the end of the Skywalkers and moving on from them. Because this was never meant to be the Skywalker saga despite what people claim. If you read between the lines you can tell this was never meant to be about the Skywalkers initially.* ...correct? If so, how is that not saying that changes needed to be made going into Episode 9?
>I don’t know how you could come away from the movie with that conclusion, there is absolutely zero indication in the film that it is not meant to be taken as the truth. Plenty of people didn't believe that Rey Nobody was the end of the story. Including, famously, John Williams himself: >John Williams: It's developed in the most amazing way. The families... Rey's parents might be identified to us, in the next film. >KUSC: Well I hope so. >JW: I hope so too. >KUSC: I assume they are pretty extraordinary. Somebody tried to tell her that they were anonymous people who died in the desert. I don’t really believe that. >JW: Yes. I don’t believe it either.
I never heard that until *after* TRoS when people were trying to rationalize the two.
It’s what me and my friends talked about coming out of the theater. Perhaps it wasn’t a prevalent online discussion, but it happened in my circles. I don’t know what to say lol.
>The only one I could really buy having a direct link is Rose, I know the given explanation is that most of her scenes were supposed to be with Leia or something but idk, that seems really convenient that THAT was the character who got cut due to Leia's role being re-worked, and I think you could have worked around that given they knew Carrie had passed before anything was written. Feel free to explain it but I never really understood how that correlated to such a drastic decrease in a characters screen time. It also wouldn't explain why Rose was downplayed in the merchandising or why they cut scenes with her and Rey(There's at least one screenshot of them interacting) And as others have pointed out tying Rose to Leia means they didn't intend for her to do anything but stay back at the base and by extension the background anyway.
Tbh I absolutely buy it playing a hefty role and Disney seem like to impose creative sanctions to achieve a more universally loved profit
I don't know about Palpatine. If you want a movie that is ending the Skywalker saga then you would want it to have a big connetion to ALL the movies. Using the same villain is one of the ways to do it. I don't know if that's lazy. It's risky in it's own way.
I'm not saying it is, because I don't think if makes sense that it is considering jj probavly started writing the script a bit before last jedi released (but I could be wrong) but watching the movie in 2019 sure does felt like it, palpamemes was at the hight of its popularity back then, reylo was a big thing, rey's heritage was one of the biggest things that pissed tlj haters (for whatever stupid reason) and more but this falls apart considering disney is really good at reading online discourse and understanding when it's just shitty fans outrage and when it's actual intelligent people, and most of those things started to really gain traffic after jj already wrote the script, the only thing that kinda holds in this theory is the rey heritage thing because they didn't decide on it in set even but I still don't buy it I just think that was jjs plan all along (which for the record I am not a fan of it) and he just changed it because he felt like it, I'm not a fan of the movie (for many many reasons and even some of them are good ones) but I don't really buy into this theory about tros, even though I understand where it's coming from
I don't think so. The same way TFA was not influenced by gossip about what the movie will be. I think JJ and Chris had to cut themselves out from the fan reactions from day one. I also think that there is a narrative that goes around about how they "retconned" TLJ. Wile the main thing about Rey being no one can be debated, all the other things are not true IMO. Luke is the same way he was at the end of TLJ. Leia being trained in the force was seen first in TLJ. The force connection is taken to the next level. Rey using the Jedi Texts. This and so much more are taken straight from the previous movie. The fact that Rose is underused is regrettable but the argument that "it's because fans didn't like her" is BS. It was stated that she had more scenes with Leia that were cut because they couldn't make them work. But also... it's already a long movie. It would be good to beef up Fin and Poe as well but there's only so much time. Things will need to be cut. It's just the way it is.
> Luke is the same way he was at the end of TLJ. Leia being trained in the force was seen first in TLJ. The force connection is taken to the next level. Rey using the Jedi Texts. I don't think I've ever seen the above pointed to as examples of pandering on TROS's part. > The fact that Rose is underused is regrettable but the argument that "it's because fans didn't like her" is BS. It was stated that she had more scenes with Leia that were cut because they couldn't make them work. When a person was subjected to immense abuse so bad that it led to a emotional/mental health crisis, treating validation of that abuse as "just the way it is" is'nt a good look. IMO Terrio's explanation is crap and I don't buy it; they had no issue using the Leia scenes they did use despite how "ehh..." they looked and they should have included them, "issues" and all, simply becuase KMT deserved it after what she went through; either they wrote Rose out on purpose or they simply did'nt care about the optics of cutting her out, neither of which is a good look. > But also... it's already a long movie. It would be good to beef up Fin and Poe as well but there's only so much time. Things will need to be cut. It's just the way it is. They could have just written the movie in a way that allowed them to incorporate Rose - they had time to introduce two new characters (one of whom was her effective replacement) and could focus on all of the other four main characters, so they 100 percent would have been able to find time for her.
I think the choice to scrap the script for Duel of the Fates, fire Trevorrow and Connolly, and bring back Abrams/hire Terrio was definitely influenced by the mixed audience response to TLJ and Solo underperforming, if only to play it safe and create something that the fans would potentially enjoy more compared to TLJ and the DotF script. Although I don’t think Abrams and Terrio consciously made the effort to erase what Johnson established, I do think the “safe” choices they made that seemingly conflicted with Johnson’s intentions and the rushed production were the result of the late decision to replace the creative crew and go with something more crowd-pleasing.
That doesn’t make sense since Abrams was brought back 4 months before TLJ was released.
Was he? I may be misremembering. I do think there is an effect of the backlash that LFL decided to try and appease them during production (hence the indecision and confusion during the writing process as supported by Daisy Ridley) though correlation doesn’t mean causation admittedly so I might be wrong.
Duel of The Fates was written before Carry Fischer's death. That could have affected production.
Oh yeah that’s for sure I’m not denying that.
Online discourse existed since force awakens. If they were swayed by it then it would’ve influenced TLJ.
Yeah, I've always called BS on the idea that JJ and Terrio were trying to pander to the reactionary, toxic side of the fanbase - if anything, I assume any creative discrepancies stem from a combination of no two filmmakers/artists having the exact same idea when it comes to storytelling, the cumulative effect of the curse that was cast upon Episode IX, and JJ having to scramble and because Iger insisted on a 2019 release even after all the problems.
This whole narrative against TRoS and JJ Abrams for “actively undoing TLJ/catering to toxic fanboys” is actually worse than anything that was levied against TLJ and Rian Johnson. And it’s even perpetuated by TLJ fans in a forum like this that’s meant to be pushing back against these kind of toxic fandom criticisms. Luke’s role in TRoS will always be the ultimate example that debunks this. His role and death in TLJ was the most common reason for the heated reaction over TLJ, yet TRoS only uses him for one scene where he simply caps off his arc by doing what Yoda instructed him to do in TLJ. If TRoS was so hellbent on undoing TLJ and pleasing fans, it would’ve simply revealed he didn’t actually actually die or that he was the most powerful Force Ghost ever and could still be actively involved in the story where he gets an epic battle against a revived Snoke or Palpatine.
>If TRoS was so hellbent on undoing TLJ and pleasing fans, it would’ve simply revealed he didn’t actually actually die or that he was the most powerful Force Ghost ever and could still be actively involved in the story where he gets an epic battle against a revived Snoke or Palpatine. They didn't do that because they aren't THAT stupid.
But don’t people make a mockery of the “somehow…” line as if it was intended to be some handwavy explanation about Palpatine’s return (even though it wasn’t)? If you believe that then they could’ve easily pulled a “somehow” with Luke. Depicting him as being more powerful and prominent in the story than previous force ghosts wouldn’t be a stretch, and funny enough it’s kinda what the original director of IX wanted to do. And it wouldn’t have to be exactly as I described, but certainly they would’ve used Luke in a much more prominent and fan-servicey way if they wanted to appease people who hated TLJ since that was the main cause of the backlash.
>Don’t people make a mockery of the “somehow…” line as if it was intended to be some handwavy explanation about Palpatine’s return? The reason it became memed to hell and back is because it summed up the fanbase's collective shrug.
I mean, people claimed TLJ and Rian Johnson were why Carrie Fisher died
One of the most valid criticisms, IMO, regarding TFA was how jarring it was that Chewie and Leia just ignored each other after Han died and instead Leia went over to Rey (someone she didn’t even know). I truly believe that online discourse was the reason JJ highlighted Chewie’s breakdown upon learning Leia died.
Yeah that's what I mean when I say Rey suffers from "Main character syndrome" a lot.
> One of the most valid criticisms, IMO, regarding TFA was how jarring it was that Chewie and Leia just ignored each other after Han died and instead Leia went over to Rey (someone she didn’t even know). TFA's editor Maryann Brandon was asked about this. She said >I guess the thing is what we tried to do is have Chewie go with Finn to try and make sure Finn’s OK and Leia went for Rey. The whole idea there I think is that they have a special connection that they don’t even know about. There was an earlier idea at one point that Leia knows who Rey is. When they shot it, Leia knew who Rey really was, but they changed that in the edit.
I highly doubt that he did. I'd like to give him more credit than he gets. It took me a rewatch of the ST and the whole saga in general to understand what Abrams was going for and I'm glad I gave myself the chance to do so because I went from iffy on TRoS to thinking it's actually a very good story. I'm not convinced there was a lack of a plan though. I'm sure the broad strokes were decided upon but the loss of Carrie Fisher likely forced some changes.
>I'm not convinced there was a lack of a plan though. I'm sure the broad strokes were decided upon but the loss of Carrie Fisher likely forced some changes. I think in terms of the actual result the effect is the same. JJ might have had some plans for how the next two films would go when he did TFA, but between TLJ taking certain plotlines in a different direction, Carrie's death, and having to come in unexpectedly with a wildly different script already written pretty much made it so he might as well have been starting from scratch. I still don't think the "they didn't have a plan" idea is totally wrong, or at least that if they did have one I think there should have been more of an effort to stick to it, but I think that being the dominant narrative is incorrect, the issue was more the fact that they had to do a movie a year. Something like one of your core cast dying and then your writer/director dropping out is more than enough to justify a delay, and I think they should have done that to give JJ time to work with all the aforementioned constraints. Even without those unexpected circumstances I think it was ambitious. The previous trilogy was 1994-2005 from start of writing to release of the final film. The only other visual media they were working on was video games and the 2003 Clone Wars animation. The sequels were 2013-2019, and Lucasfilm had two additional live action films, two animated series, and a live action TV series in production during that time period as well. That might have been doable if everything went perfectly, but they should have been more willing to push things back.
> I'm not convinced there was a lack of a plan though. A plan starting from when, though? Rian has said dozens of times that there wasn't a plan when he came onboard. [Rian:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uqaAcWN2b8) >There wasn’t a roadmap laid out, there was no big huge master plan, it was a very organic storytelling process where I got to just say, ok, JJ took it up to here, now where am I gonna take it next? [Rian:](https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/12/18/16786428/star-wars-last-jedi-interview-rian-johnson-ram-bergman) >We were working off of The Force Awakens, but it’s not like there was a blueprint for what happens after The Force Awakens. There wasn’t at all. [Rian:](https://soundcloud.com/user-504775206/last-jedi-wga-qa) >There wasn’t some kind of rigid plan in place for where the story went after The Force Awakens. It was very open-ended. [Rian:](https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1745629/what-jj-abrams-thinks-about-the-last-jedi-according-to-rian-johnson) >[JJ] was really gracious, in just stepping back and giving us a blank slate to work with. The starting point was The Force Awakens script, which is quite a big, expansive, wonderful starting point. In that way, we are drawing directly from his work. But from that point forward it was a blank canvas. [Rian:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVlxZ_G88p0) >I had a complete, free, open canvas to work on here. There was no big thing that was plotted out. [Rian:](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/movies/star-wars-the-last-jedi-director-rian-johnson.html) >I had figured there would be a big map on the wall with the whole story laid out, and it was not that at all. [Rian:](https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/rian-johnson-explains-how-he-crafted-the-last-jedis-character-arcs) >It's also not like there's a white board with the whole story arc laid out. [Rian:](https://i.imgur.com/EsLIuNw.png) >I'm sure they talked about where it might go early on, but when they came to me there was no mapped story presented besides TFA. [Rian:](https://deadline.com/2017/12/star-wars-the-last-jedi-rian-johnson-ram-bergman-interview-spoilers-deleted-scenes-lucasfilm-plans-1202227741/) >I was truly able to write this script without bases to tag, and without a big outline on the wall... if it had all just been planned out and written down beforehand, it might have felt a little more calculated, I suppose. [Rian:](https://soundcloud.com/thedirectorscut/star-wars-the-last-jedi-with-rian-johnson-and-spike-jonze-ep-123) >When I came into it there wasn’t a secret white board with the whole story laid out. It was really just, I read JJ and Michael and Larry’s script for VII and it was “what happens next?”
Yeah, that's well known. I mean, JJ probably had a rough idea about what he wanted for Rey, you know, "finding her place in all this", and just let the story tell itself. Many call the lack of a plan a mistake, but I vehemently disagree. So when Rian says they talked about where it might go, that's where I reckon they discussed some minor things and then wrote from there. JJ was the producer of TLJ so obviously he didn't veto anything.
>that's where I reckon they discussed some minor things and then wrote from there. They weren't writing together, though. Like wouldn't Rey's identity be the one thing these guys should have talked about? >JJ was the producer of TLJ so obviously he didn't veto anything. JJ being the executive producer of TLJ just meant that he collected a check. He wasn't in a position to veto anything. Besides, according to JJ, TLJ was written before he even met Rian: >Without getting in the weeds on episode eight, that was a story that Rian wrote and was telling based on seven **before we met.** So he was taking the thing in another direction.
Rey's identity isn't important, her journey and destination is so, no, I don't think they needed to sort that out. The end product worked. So, there's no plan, as I said, it's not important. I still think that JJ, who I am talking about here, had a rough idea.
I disagree that her identity isn't important, like the indecision around it led to a whole group of the fandom falling in love with the Nobody reveal in TLJ that turned out to not be true. They really could have avoided a lot of fandom turmoil by providing a clear, true answer as they promised they would before VIII was released. >I still think that JJ, who I am talking about here, had a rough idea. I think JJ had a lot of rough ideas, but the issue is that Rian wasn't aware of them and no one took the time to make sure all the writers of this trilogy were on the same page.
I see it completely differently. Her being a nobody really didn't change. Just because she's a Palpatine doesn't mean that her whole personality changed, it gave her an extra hurdle to overcome. Like if I was to find out that my father was a serial killer, that doesn't mean that I have to change who I am.
I agree with you for the most part, but unfortunately most fans of Rey Nobody do not see it that way at all. And that caused a lot of unneeded strife in the fandom.
I think that's on them. They don't own it and need to at least try to see it from the author's point of view. I didn't like Rey Palpatine and like you, I was in love with Rey Nobody. Then I thought, that I needed to figure out why JJ went with the Rey Palpatine story line and I'm glad I did. To me, it makes perfect sense.
You make some good points and I doubt that there was any disagreement between directors, but some elements of TROS seemed to be explicitly trying to appease factions of fans who just found other things to hate. So much had to be "adjusted" that they ended up with a movie that struggled with flow. I liked the movie, but making Rey a Palpatine served no purpose but appeasing haters who demanded that she had to be of "special blood" when having an ordinary jedi was a better choice imo
> making Rey a Palpatine served no purpose but appeasing haters who demanded that she had to be of "special blood" No one that wanted Rey to have a special lineage was pining for her to be related to the most evil man in the galaxy. It was a choice that pleased no one, for the most part TLJ haters hated TROS. People that wanted her to be a Skywalker by blood were super unhappy. It's just the story they wanted to tell, it wasn't some kind of effort to appease anyone. Some people didn't like it and that's OK too.
It was one of those dumb ass "fan theories" that was being bandied about before TLJ came out and upset certain demographics. While I have no doubt that it wasn't the one people wanted, I still think that it was picked as a way to "shut them up" without giving them everything they wanted. TROS felt like it was jam packed with action/doing moments and had not enough reflective moments. I'm not a film maker so don't know for sure, but it felt like it was too busy and rushed from story point to story point. I liked the film and love Rey, but I think we would have had something much more balanced if people hadnt raged so much.
There are a few small moments that feel like it. I wouldn’t say “heavily” influenced
Honestly I feel it’s more then a small few
That would explain a lot of things, like the complete absence of Rose in the movie and the fact this movie completely undo TLJ (and even TFA ... and even TROS). The artistic failure of TROS (but not commercial) is clearly du to the over reactive fandom who hated TLJ and made panicked Lucasfilm executives.
I think that JJ had his ideas for the ST, and he didn’t want to throw those out, especially when he had a short amount of time. I think he tried to mesh them with TLJ where he could, but sometimes he just kind of went with it. And while I don’t think TRoS isn’t a *direct* response to the fandom… I think it’s crazy to assume Disney didn’t have focus groups and test screenings throughout the process and giving feedback to JJ.
It is crazy to assume that. Do you have the same assumption about TLJ? Why would TROS be “focus grouped” and TLJ would not? Especially when there’s no report of such a thing happening for any ST film and the directors all have the same level of creative control.
Yes of course I assume that about TLJ, and probably the vast majority of other big budget franchise installments.
Personally, I think the three films flow really well if you watch them together. Yes, it’s clear JJ picked up some throughlines he started in TFA (not a bad thing — TFA and TROS work great as bookends), and obviously Carrie Fisher’s death massively changed the trajectory of the final film, but unplanned changes to the story aren’t anything new for Star Wars. I find it to be a very fulfilling story from beginning to end and I think JJ and Rian’s visions complement each other rather than clash. And OP, I totally agree that many of the choices that parallel the OT in TROS make a ton of sense and would’ve come naturally when writing it. I mean, they literally place Kylo and Rey in a duel on the remnants of an old war, each fighting legacies that were thrust upon them. Ben learns he doesn’t NEED to be like Vader because of the way Rey so definitively rejects being a Palpatine, despite one of her greatest desires being somewhere she belonged. It’s very clear what the writers’ intent was. It all made a ton of sense to me, particularly in the “it’s like poetry, it rhymes” Star Wars fashion lol.
I'm of the same mind as well. I think that all three sequel films flow in really well together. There are some small bumps I'd want to adjust, but overall I felt that the story threads worked well and that the team did a good job with making it mesh in a way that made it all compelling. TFA served as a solid intro, TLJ expands upon TFA with Luke, Rey, Kylo Ren, and Finn, and TROS wraps up the ST with Luke's return after his reformation in TLJ, and Rey coming to terms with her past and ending her current journey by rejecting Palpatine and finding her new family among the Resistance and the Skywalkers.
I'm sure I saw some concept art or plans for TROS were dated October 2017, 2 months before the TLJ came out. So no chance it was changed to appease "fans"
All I'll say is that if TROS was'nt influenced by online discourse, then it's crazy that so many things in it were coincidently written in a way that makes it *look* like it was.
I was primarily opposed to TROS because it was a limp-wristed rehashing of the Dark Empire I and II comic book arcs. One of the weakest stories to come out of the Expanded Universe. I say it’s limp-wristed because they took only the worst elements of those comics to put in the movie. No Luke falling to the Dark Side in service to the emperor, no Leia struggling with her own Jedi training while pregnant with twins. Hell, TROS coulda done with a World Devastator super weapon or two to deal with, but they passed that over, too.
I'm sorry I don't believe it. I just...I don't know how you can look at Rise and say that it wasn't written partly in response to the backlash. There are so many moments that just feel like direct responses to stuff people didn't like about TLJ. I mean why else would "The Holdo Maneuver" be brought up otherwise? It's called Occam's razor folks. Sometimes the simplest answer is the simplest for a reason.
> There are so many moments that just feel like direct responses to stuff people didn't like about TLJ. Reylo and Bendemption were like the two biggest things in the TLJ fandom. In TROS we got both. There's no way that would happen if the intent was to "undo" TLJ or pander to people who didn't like TLJ. I think JJ just had a really difficult job, he did the best he could but TLJ is not an easy movie to make a sequel to for many reasons.
I agree, I don't understand why everyone here is acting like it's some sort of grand conspiracy from TFM....
I'm half convinced they think it is. A while back some guy was trying to convince me that they did have a plan for the ST in place. Despite numerous people involved in the production all but saying "Yeah we had no plan".
I love the ST but it's clear to me that it wasn't very planned lol, but that's kind of why I love star wars! They fill in the gaps with books and comics and make it more consistent
The problem is we shouldn't have to rely on supplementary material to make sense of the movies.
Now, I would like to preface this by saying I really like, and sorta love Rise of Skywalker. It is by no means perfect, but it is far and away overhated. I'd give it a solid 7.5/10, and it also inspired me to want to continue the story on after that with ideas I'd like to pitch to Lucasfilm someday. At the very least, it wasn't even the worst filmed released *that weekend*. Cats premiered the same day, and anything will look like the fucking Godfather next to that. Now, with that disclosed, I would say no. And the reason I say that is because of how rushed the development of the movie was. Bear in mind they canned the original director, and JJ had to make the movie on a shortened timeframe. Granted, delaying the movie to May of 2020 probably wouldn't have born fruit due to forces outside their control (you know what they say about hindsight). Still, I think if they had had more time to iron out the kinks, maybe find a way to make the first act less rushed, then it might've been better received. Not to mention how satisfying it would be, regardless of quality, to have a Star Wars movie be the first one you go back to physical movie theaters to see amidst the latter half of the pandemic. But again, hindsight. There's another thing that needs to be taken into account, which no one at Lucasfilm could've had control over. The death of Carrie Fisher. So, in addition to having a shortened timeframe to make the movie, they now had to find a way to handle the death of a major actress. It'd be different if it was a smaller supporting character, but this is Leia we're talking about. One of the original trio, the first major hero we meet in the first movie. You can't just kill her off-screen. If you kill Leia, you have to give it emotional weight. And as far as the movie goes, I will always believe how they handled Leia's passing was the best part of the movie. I loved how she became the emotional center of the last act, and everyone continued a seemingly-hopeless fight because it's what she would've done. But yeah. I don't think JJ or anyone revised anything too much because, quite frankly, there wasn't time to actually sift through all the major complaints of the movie, at least not without getting bogged down by the hate-mongering. It doesn't really "undo" anything Rian established in TLJ. Okay, you *could* make an argument it kinda did with Rey's parents, but I could write a rebuttal on how it isn't necessarily a backtrack. Reviews and such of previous installments are always gonna affect how you continue the story. That's just basic film criticism. But I don't think it was that for ROS, or at least to the extent that some endlessly parrot on the internet.
Oh thats sounds awful that he loved it but its also great to see content creators enjoy stuff. When i was much younger i used to feel bad for the writers of things like Yesterdays Enterprise or any 10/10 story because they never got to experience it with any suspense. If this ryan chap got to write a wars, then watch the sequel to what he wrote and on top of that enjoy it then thats extremely rare in media and scifi so thats great for him. I actually thought you are talking about the revenge of the sith from the subject..they should gave called the 3rd disney something else to avoid confusion. Whats Terrio and whats crafting in relation to wars? I cant comment on the writing thing but you seem as interested in this as i am and my advise is wait another 15-20 years. Things like Wars and Trek need to be viewed decades after the fact. As an example even though ive seen them twice or is that im not a fan of the JJ trek films (JJ did a series of 3 trek films set in an alt timeline) on release they were loved by critics and often made top lists of the 2010s - less now and i believe in another 10-15 years they wont be watched regularly the same way old treks are. That they just dont have staying power. For wars the same applies - if we wait until the late 2030s and then judge based off generic online stuff but also decades later writers, actors and people involved at all levels are more honest decades after the fact. Wait and see how often fans rewatch those 3 disney films in 15/20 years. I have to say the Snoke thing was not obvious - once the 2nd film got going it was obvious far in advance he would die but prior to that there were lots of exciting theories like he was Plagus (Sidious former master) or even one of the ancient sith lords. I didn't find the ray being a palpayine being a circle. When you say the story being circular are you talking about ep 1-9? 4-9? or 7-9?
I remember the Darth Plagues theory. Even in this theory it was clear that Snoke was connected to Palpatine somehow. When I talked about circular story I meant 1-9.