Here's something cool I just realized: at the right moment, you can grin at your players and say, "You know, your guys' ship was probably in that final battle."

2 hours ago, DanteRotterdam said:

Okay, this movie really is a lot better the second time around.
Once you really have had some time to digest your first viewing then I highly suggest rewatching it in the cinema.

I'll second this. Knowing all the beats after having seen it once helped me to both better process what was happening but also to make various connections that showed this film wasn't the total attempted retcon/flushing of TLJ that some claim.

Sadly, there's still some key elements of TLJ that they tried to retcon (Rey's heritage being the big one) on top of them trotting out Palpatine as the behind-the-curtain villain for this film still sticks in my craw. As I mentioned in a prior post, if LFL had spent some more time working on the script, they could have handled the major villain better. Heck, they could have even had it been Snoke, having used a clone proxy in TLJ as a means of "testing" Kylo Ren to see if he could be a worthy successor or just another tool to be used like the rest of the First Order, which itself was a smokescreen to distract the galaxy while building up the massive planet-killer fleet.

19 hours ago, DanteRotterdam said:

Sorry... Did you see Lord and Miller’s footage???

no, is this available somewhere? Even in snippets? would LOVE to see some of this.

18 hours ago, Voltron64 said:

I saw it and I honestly enjoyed it.

2. There should have been a **** lightsaber battle between Palpatine against Ben and Rey.

I thought the exact same thing and although McDiarmid is old, all I kept thinking about was the sheer awesomeness of this Palp/Maul/Opress fight.

30 minutes ago, StriderZessei said:

That's what I did. And while it made it easier to tolerate our even like my more minor nitpicks, I only doubled down on my biggest gripes:

- Palpatine coming back invalidating the prophecy and thus all of the previous trilogies.

- Rey being his granddaughter invalidated VII and VIII's themes of making your own future and being exceptional, not because of your lineage, but because of your spirit.

- Even briefly hinting at a romance between Rey and Kylo, who has been nothing but abusive and hateful towards her, pushes every NOPE button in my brain, (but I'm biased from an abusive childhood, so YMMV.)

The first one's debatable, with Yoda in RotS even saying "misread, the prophecy could have been" in regards to Anakin being the Chosen One. Prophecy in fiction is a tricky business, and to quote Kira from The Dark Crystal, "prophets don't know everything!"

I fully agree on the second one regarding Rey. I LOVED that TLJ pretty much said, "it doesn't matter what Rey's lineage is!" (hearing that in The Rock's voice is optional), for the reasons you cited that it said that anyone can rise up to be the hero. That TRoS retconned that is my biggest gripe with this film, and it felt like a lazy effort to throw a bone to the segment of the viewership that had their knickers in a twist over a girl suddenly being powerful in the Force (even though Snoke explains why she was becoming so powerful so quickly in both TFA and TLJ).

The Reylo romance has very much been hit-or-miss for folks, even from as far back as TFA. I'm with you in that I don't really see them as being any sort of healthy couple, and that Kylo is very much in the mold of the manipulative partner, and I've talked with people who survived abusive relationships, and had the same "NOPE!" reaction you did. And yet, I've talked with people that wanted to see Kylo be redeemed much like his grandfather was and to actually have a happy conclusion to his story arc. I guess it's up for debate if Rey actually loved Ben, or if the victory smooch was an impulse reaction to her realizing that she'd won and just came back from the dead (a G-rated version of "glad to be alive sex" maybe?)

11 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Heck, they could have even had it been Snoke, having used a clone proxy in TLJ as a means of "testing" Kylo Ren to see if he could be a worthy successor or just another tool to be used like the rest of the First Order

Man, if only they'd done this. My preferred choice here would have been: Snoke is Plagueis after all, he returns to life in basically the same way as Palpatine, beginning with the same classic line about the dark side giving unnatural abilities.

10 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

The Reylo romance has very much been hit-or-miss for folks, even from as far back as TFA. I'm with you in that I don't really see them as being any sort of healthy couple, and that Kylo is very much in the mold of the manipulative partner, and I've talked with people who survived abusive relationships, and had the same "NOPE!" reaction you did.

To me, the difference is that in Star Wars, unlike our world, the dark side can dominate a Force user's destiny. Evil isn't just something under your control like it is in real life. It's a dark power that speaks to you and moves you, and that takes tremendous effort to resist. So good people like Vader and Ren can fall under its sway without being fully to blame. This means Luke and Rey aren't being naive or making excuses when they believe in the deep down goodness of the dark siders they love.

Edit to add: of course I don't have any beef with people who've been through real life experiences that leave a bad taste in their mouths in reaction to dark side redemption stories. They feel the way they feel, and that's okay.

Reylo just feels particularly off when Rey was clearly set up as an adoptive Skywalker throughout the whole sequel trilogy. I mean, within 10 minutes of that kiss she declares herself to be one with Luke and Leia (Kylo’s mum ) looking on approvingly, thus making him her cousin. I don’t think anyone was really nostalgic for vaguely incestuous kisses.

His life force is in her and therefor she is a Skywalker is how I read that...

39 minutes ago, Talkie Toaster said:

Reylo just feels particularly off when Rey was clearly set up as an adoptive Skywalker throughout the whole sequel trilogy. I mean, within 10 minutes of that kiss she declares herself to be one with Luke and Leia (Kylo’s mum ) looking on approvingly, thus making him her cousin. I don’t think anyone was really nostalgic for vaguely incestuous kisses.

I wish I could like, thank, AND laugh at this.

1 hour ago, Talkie Toaster said:

Reylo just feels particularly off when Rey was clearly set up as an adoptive Skywalker throughout the whole sequel trilogy. I mean, within 10 minutes of that kiss she declares herself to be one with Luke and Leia (Kylo’s mum ) looking on approvingly, thus making him her cousin. I don’t think anyone was really nostalgic for vaguely incestuous kisses.

Just my own interpretation, but I got the feeling that one of the reasons Rey took the Skywalker surname for her own was to honor not only her teachers, but also the guy that literally sacrificed himself so that she could live.

Then again, it's not like the Skywalker family has a history of emotionally stable and mutually supportive relationship that are lacking in cringe. Anakin & Padme is a prime example (they're literally only together because of plot, though total lack of chemistry between the actors didn't help) and there are viewers that find Han & Leia to have creepy undertones (due to the major part of the onscreen courtship in ESB taking place during a time frame when Leia was literally trapped on the Falcon).

Of course, the only reason the kiss in ESB became incestuous at all was Lucas (suffering from creative burnout) decided to just simplify matters regarding Luke's sister and make it be Leia given that he was (at the time) wrapping the story up and putting it on the shelf for the foreseeable future. Apparently, not only was Luke's sister meant to be a whole 'nother character, but that Luke and Leia were meant to be the main couple, with Han being a false romantic lead.

4 hours ago, Talkie Toaster said:

Reylo just feels particularly off when Rey was clearly set up as an adoptive Skywalker throughout the whole sequel trilogy. I mean, within 10 minutes of that kiss she declares herself to be one with Luke and Leia (Kylo’s mum ) looking on approvingly, thus making him her cousin. I don’t think anyone was really nostalgic for vaguely incestuous kisses.

Well, if it makes it any better, he would be technically a step cousin which would make everything-

*Dramatic pause, glup as sweat drops, types a few commands into the computer and sighs. Erase everything, destroy it if you have to.*

-Totally unacceptable. XD

In all seriousness though, the only reason I feel she adopted the name was to honour them; not necessarily be related to them. Kinda would be like everyone with the sir name Smith being part of the most numberous bloodline on the planet. If only the Smith's knew what their combined might would create, we could see a whole new planetary order....

13 minutes ago, LordBritish said:

Well, if it makes it any better, he would be technically a step cousin which would make everything-

*Dramatic pause, glup as sweat drops, types a few commands into the computer and sighs. Erase everything, destroy it if you have to.*

-Totally unacceptable. XD

In all seriousness though, the only reason I feel she adopted the name was to honour them; not necessarily be related to them. Kinda would be like everyone with the sir name Smith being part of the most numberous bloodline on the planet. If only the Smith's knew what their combined might would create, we could see a whole new planetary order....

Our this could be plot to a new sci-fi harem anime...hmm....

Yeah, the only people to raise her besides herself were the Skywalker siblings. Accepting their surname as almost adoptive makes sense in that light.

I have a lot of positive and negative things to say about this movie.

However, I'm going to wait until I watch it a second time (New Year's Eve) before saying anything.

I need to sit with it for a while.

5 hours ago, LordBritish said:

In all seriousness though, the only reason I feel she adopted the name was to honour them; not necessarily be related to them. Kinda would be like everyone with the sir name Smith being part of the most numberous bloodline on the planet. If only the Smith's knew what their combined might would create, we could see a whole new planetary order....

The last scene could be foreshadowing the establishment of a Jedi Academy on that spot.

2 hours ago, Eoen said:

The last scene could be foreshadowing the establishment of a Jedi Academy on that spot.

Or if not that, I presume that after she has left and hundreds of years have passed, another young scavenger or wanderer with a dream may find what she buried...

To paraphase another genre classic, "the saga is over, but the story never ends..."

OK, now that I'm up on it, there's something bugging me, but I'm hoping I missed something and it's been covered and I just didn't see it:

So, in TFA we get the return of the Anakin/Luke saber.

In TLJ it gets destroyed.

In TRoS... it's back, totally fine, no further mention or discussion.

I mean, I don't need to see lightsaber construction and maintenance on screen, but that was a kinda unique item and something of a McGuffin. So having it obliterated and then just reappear doesn't seem right. Did I miss something?

3 minutes ago, Ghostofman said:

In TRoS... it's back, totally fine, no further mention or discussion.

It has been repaired, there are extra straps and supports on it that show this.

4 hours ago, Ghostofman said:

OK, now that I'm up on it, there's something bugging me, but I'm hoping I missed something and it's been covered and I just didn't see it:

So, in TFA we get the return of the Anakin/Luke saber.

In TLJ it gets destroyed.

In TRoS... it's back, totally fine, no further mention or discussion.

I mean, I don't need to see lightsaber construction and maintenance on screen, but that was a kinda unique item and something of a McGuffin. So having it obliterated and then just reappear doesn't seem right. Did I miss something?

As DanteRotterdam said, it was repaired off-camera in the year between when TLJ ended and TRoS began.

I believe in the visual dictionary, it's mentioned that one of the old Jedi texts that Rey took from the library tree in TLJ discussed methods of healing, including one that enabled a Force user to mend a broken kyber crystal. With that crucial part mended, repairing the hilt becomes a fairly simple matter, especially for someone with Rey's degree of tech savvy.

Of course, the more cynical explanation was that Abrams (or someone at LFL with executive influence) didn't like that the franchise's equivalent of Excalibur got broken, and so hand-waved that away and said "it's fixed now, let's move on."

1 hour ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

I believe in the visual dictionary, it's mentioned that one of the old Jedi texts that Rey took from the library tree in TLJ discussed methods of healing, including one that enabled a Force user to mend a broken kyber crystal. With that crucial part mended, repairing the hilt becomes a fairly simple matter, especially for someone with Rey's degree of tech savvy.

The crafting PCs in my games are gonna love this. Having a canon depiction of repairing a crystal could have huge ramifications for failed modding checks.

Also, maybe JJ didn't think it was important to cover Rey repairing it, since we didn't see Luke build his green one.

7 hours ago, Voltron64 said:

Or if not that, I presume that after she has left and hundreds of years have passed, another young scavenger or wanderer with a dream may find what she buried...

One thing’s for sure, it definitely isn’t fodder for a GM who runs a campaign set about 200 years down the line and centered on a group finding Jedi locations and artifacts. Nope...it definitely isn’t.... 🤓

4 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Of course, the more cynical explanation was that Abrams (or someone at LFL with executive influence) didn't like that the franchise's equivalent of Excalibur got broken, and so hand-waved that away and said "it's fixed now, let's move on."

This was kinda how I took it, I'll have to look again for the signs of repair.

I think that's my issue with the film so far. The story itself wasn't awful. Dark Empire meets Dark Force Rising with a dash of Jedi Prince, but I'm willing to tolerate that to some extent, such is things with such an extensive EU.

But the sabers return, Palpy Again, the fan service, the return of Han/Luke/Leia/Lando, Chewie getting a medal. It felt, I dunno... I want to say desperate, but that doesn't feel like the right word.

I'm kinda curious about the dynamic of the Kennedy/Abrams/Iger relationship now. Kennedy seems to have a good enough sense of what Star Wars feels like, but seems to lack the strategic vision and will to handle series production. Abrams is a good film maker, but kinda feels like he can't take an IP in a new direction (maybe because he tried with Trek?). And Iger is someone who has gone on the record as wanting the franchise to move forward to stay relevant.

Kennedy made more money with the franchise than anyone ever did and had to put up with a lot of crap for it. I am so tired of everybody constantly being dismissive of her and to be frank I am absolutely certain that such extreme scrutiny would not have been applied had she been a man.

1 hour ago, Ghostofman said:

Chewie getting a medal

It was Han’s medal that Leia left him. I only saw that the second time around.

4 minutes ago, DanteRotterdam said:

Kennedy made more money with the franchise than anyone ever did and had to put up with a lot of crap for it. I am so tired of everybody constantly being dismissive of her and to be frank I am absolutely certain that such extreme scrutiny would not have been applied had she been a man.

Really? I'm sure that a man in her position would've had to endure the same non-gender indicative insults, such as "botox *****".

For those who didn't spot it, look up and you will see that this post proudly flies the sarcasm flag.

6 minutes ago, DanteRotterdam said:

It was Han’s medal that Leia left him. I only saw that the second time around.

Oh, I got that.

I don't get why. Because my old butt immediately thought of the "Chewie didn't get a medal" thing. So that scene felt less like a memento thing, and more like a "Chewie finally got the medal." Since George corrected that in the redo, giving Chewie the medal felt like it was both servicing fans as well as throwing shade at special edition updates.