53 minutes ago, DanteRotterdam said:

Joker is a piece of crap that makes a certain group of people feel special.

I don't know if I'd go that far with Joker on the second element (though I do think the film overall was garbage). Granted, it wasn't quite the "white male incel's answer to Black Panther!" that I saw some admittedly blazing liberal folks be concerned that it'd be (one woman whom I follow on Twitter and had been doxxed and harassed online by self-identified alt-righters was very uneasy if not terrified of what this film might stir up based upon the trailers).

Of course, that doesn't mean the white male incel crowd won't try to appropriate the film as their personal anthem and/or justification for being what they are, but that's not inherently a fault of the film's creators. To me, said film was an attempt to remake Taxi Driver but slapping a coat of DC-themed paint over it and changing the circumstances that drive the lead character to lash out the way they do. I feel it was a fumbled attempt and that it would have worked as well (maybe even better) without shoehorning in the DC elements, but that's just my take and not really relevant to the thread's topic.

30 minutes ago, Eoen said:

Palpatine is the archetypical Sociopath/Psychopath, Narcissist and Machiavellian. He’s the whole dark triad burrito.

Well, he's pretty much the modern archetype for the Big Bad Evil Sorcerer, right down to the evil cackle and mustache-twirling villainy (enough so to inspire the whole "drunk on the dark side" trope). So yeah, I do agree those particular personality traits fit Palpatine like a tailor-made glove.

My wife pointed out how the final space battle was all about going for the (male genetalia)-like guns hanging down from the Star Destroyers. She thought the symbolism, intentional or not, was "so Disney."

2 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

My wife pointed out how the final space battle was all about going for the (male genetalia)-like guns hanging down from the Star Destroyers. She thought the symbolism, intentional or not, was "so Disney."

Like the phallic towers in little Mermaid.

2 minutes ago, Eoen said:

Like the phallic towers in little Mermaid.

Maybe if the remake focuses on Disney's heroes destroying those towers.

3 hours ago, Bojanglez said:

i heard that and my first thought was “Sure, just ‘people’ but enough of them to beat a (presumably) highly trained military force in ships that was 10,000 more powerful than the First Order” (or whether that line was). Shows were my head was at by that point.

That such a rag-tag group of ships could do that much damage to the Sith Star Destroyers was covered in Poe's mission briefing, in that said ships would be largely helpless in the crazy chaos that was the Sith planet's atmosphere, due to being unable to raise their shields. Rose then goes on to say that blowing up their planet killer guns would (or at the time she hoped) cause a chain reaction to then blow up said Star Destroyer. One of the huge facets of the whole attack plan required taking out the nav-beacon to ensure all those destroyers would stay in the atmosphere.

To hearken back to history, it could be said that the American Revolutionary War was fought (at least initially) by "just people" of the colonies who decided to push back against the very regimented British army, and I suspect that the British officers saw the colonials who fought back as "just people" as opposed to the sort of properly organized military force that the British army would have been trained to fight.

So having a crap-ton of bush pilots, smugglers, guerillas, and what-not show up en masse for what (to the First Order command staff) was no discernible reason to attempt what the FO brass still saw as a futile effort and start winning was probably enough to cause some cognitive dissonance in that one officer, thus saying "they're just people" in a tone not unlike a schoolyard bully suddenly seeing a large group of kids gather together to stand up to said bully.

Then again, all of the Star Wars films have had lines that, in your words, were dripping in "Schmutzly Cheese." It's almost part of the very DNA of the whole franchise, especially with it's Good vs. Evil motifs and how a rag-tag band of scrappy underdogs can triumph over a massive monolithic quasi-fascist government.

Just now, HappyDaze said:

Maybe if the remake focuses on Disney's heroes destroying those towers.

If those cannons are phallic symbols does that make the landing bay on the normal ISD’s a vaginal symbol?

1 minute ago, Eoen said:

If those cannons are phallic symbols does that make the landing bay on the normal ISD’s a vaginal symbol?

Perhaps. We know the Profundity in Rogue One gave birth to Leia's ship.

1 minute ago, HappyDaze said:

Perhaps. We know the Profundity in Rogue One gave birth to Leia's ship.

Well nautical terms are mixed with pregnancy terms in English, such as berth/birth.

51 minutes ago, Eoen said:

She died for the same reason as Ben did, Palpatine sucked half the life force out from the Dyad leaving only enough for one person.

I wonder if that was a canonical example of dark side heal/harm on his part?

I took Rey's death as having exhausted what little reserves she had left. It'd already been stated in TLJ that pushing oneself too far or too hard in Force usage, going beyond what one's body can handle, can be lethal. We even see in the second episode of the Mandalorian, with the Child exhausting itself to the point of needing a very long nap after lifting the mudhorn into the air, and then Luke overtaxing himself to project his image possibly across the galaxy for his Big **** Heroes moment in the climax of TLJ. Kylo Ren even says that Rey couldn't have been projecting herself to him in TLJ, as the effort alone would have killed her.

So after Palps sucked out the vast majority of hers and Ben's life forces (with Ben recovering a little quicker due to him being a bit more resilient than Rey, which he'd demonstrated several times before in the trilogy), she used that last bit of her strength to fend of Palpatine's attack (who was standing on what was probably the great-granddaddy of dark side nexus) and turn it back on him, after which she pretty much broke down.

There's been various documented medical cases in the real world of people pushing themselves well past the point their bodies should have given out yet kept going due to a combination of adrenaline and determination, only to collapse dead once they stopped. Plus, this is the same franchise in which an otherwise healthy pregnant woman died of extreme sadness after giving birth to twins, so there's also that.

As for Ben, my take is that he'd abandoned the dark side by that point in the film (having made his heel-face turn the moment he tossed his crossguard lightsaber into Endor's ocean), so he was drawing from the light side when he made the ultimate sacrifice and (in my view at least) finally honoring Anakin's legacy by giving his life to save the one person left in the galaxy that he still cared about. Whether he'll get to show up as a Force ghost in supplemental media remains to be seen.

3 minutes ago, Eoen said:

Well nautical terms are mixed with pregnancy terms in English, such as berth/birth.

Obvious pun was intentional. Donations are welcome.

30 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Of course, that doesn't mean the white male incel crowd won't try to appropriate the film as their personal anthem and/or justification for being what they are, but that's not inherently a fault of the film's creators.

That’s why I said it made them feel special. I maybe wasn’t clear that I don’t blame the filmmakers for that.

2 hours ago, Eoen said:

I thought it was weird they sidelined Rose, only to introduce two new characters who had less impact than DJ.

They brought Maz back and a bunch of older characters back who seemed unimportant to the plot.

JJ brought back JJ's characters and sidelined Johnsons.

I don't think having multiple directors helped this trilogy.

Sure, it could be going along with previous backlash, but a preference for his own creations is a simpler explanation.

2 hours ago, Eoen said:

I thought it was weird they sidelined Rose, only to introduce two new characters who had less impact than DJ.

They brought Maz back and a bunch of older characters back who seemed unimportant to the plot.

JJ brought back JJ's characters and sidelined Johnsons.

I don't think having multiple directors helped this trilogy.

Sure, it could be going along with previous backlash, but a preference for his own creations is a simpler explanation.

2 hours ago, Eoen said:

I thought it was weird they sidelined Rose, only to introduce two new characters who had less impact than DJ.

They brought Maz back and a bunch of older characters back who seemed unimportant to the plot.

3 hours ago, DanteRotterdam said:

Joker is a piece of crap that makes a certain group of people feel special. Guess you are a part of that group.

Ok, now I see how low taste you have when it comes to movies. I end this here, as there is no further point. I guess your top 10 movies include Avatar and Endgame.

6 minutes ago, Darzil said:

I don't think having multiple directors helped this trilogy.

I can agree with this, but I think the overall problem runs deeper.

It's been said that A New Hope was saved in the editing room, with the initial edit by GL being... well, frankly being not very good. And that apparently while filming and editing ESB, the crew would write scenes and edit the film during hours that GL was asleep or otherwise not able to get involved.

With the prequels, the major issue was that there was nobody around to challenge George's execution of his vision, with the majority of LFL at that point pretty much just doing whatever he said, along with the actors pretty much just going with it. Lucas may be an amazing idea guy with some visionary concepts (a lot of what became Raiders of the Lost Ark is spun off things he came up with), but he's not the best at executing that vision, and not very good at directing actors.

With the sequel trilogy, I think the biggest problems were two-fold. The first and most critical is that they didn't really have a roadmap for this trilogy; say what you want about the prequels, but Lucas at least had a roadmap of where things generally started and where they would progress, taking time in between films to tweak things (the original trilogy especially, given the changes in the identities of Vader and Luke's hidden sister from what Lucas initially may have had in mind).

So with JJ Abrams, who is good at setting up questions but lousy at answering them doing the first film and then handing it off to another director, that left Rian Johnson in an unenviable position of having to answer many of those questions that the viewers had already started spouting theories about. So Rian does what he feels is best for the story, and half the viewership loses their minds because the answers he comes up with fly in the face of all the speculation and theory-crafting they did. Had there been a roadmap for the sequel trilogy, it would have lead to a more coherent story. Then you've got JJ back in the director's chair, and the man is not that good at answering the questions he sets up (the TV series Lost illustrates this), and he's got the unenviable task of having to "course-correct" the trilogy in the wake of the backlash to TLJ not being what an overly vocal segment of the viewership expected as well as address outstanding questions (something that he's never really been good at), again without a road map.

And granted, while it was nice not having to wait as long between installments, I feel that perhaps taking an extra year to review the story between installments would have served the films better, tweaking the roadmap as necessary to account for story developments. The MCU generally did so well due to having a roadmap that lead them at first to the initial Avengers movie, and then gradually to Avengers: Endgame; it remains to be seen if they'll be able to keep up the trend now that they're past the Infinity Gem/Stone saga. Now, would TLJ and TRoS been better off if there had been a planned roadmap from the start? No idea, but it wouldn't have hurt, and would have made for a more consistent narrative throughout the three films, as it would have given the directors at least an outline of where each movie needed to go in order to get to the desired endgame; some detours might have been made by each director, but they'd at least be heading in the same general direction.

The other but not as critical issue with the sequels is that in contrast to the prequels only having one executive voice (George's), they instead had what was probably too many executive voices giving their input. It wasn't quite to the extent of "filmmaking by committee," but it still feels like there were a few too many cooks in the kitchen, and the films (especially this one) tried to accommodate everyone as much as they could.

Can we consider the Jedi and Sith gone definetly now? and only grey Jedi remain. That's the way I understand the last scene of the movie. Rey make the lightsaber disappear underground, then she lights her new yellow lightsaber.

18 minutes ago, Rosco74 said:

Can we consider the Jedi and Sith gone definetly now? and only grey Jedi remain. That's the way I understand the last scene of the movie. Rey make the lightsaber disappear underground, then she lights her new yellow lightsaber.

Jedi use yellow lightsabers, the color is traditionally associated with Jedi Sentinels in the EU, and the temple guards in canon (who are arguably also Sentinels).

She may have a yellow saber because Ilum’s crystals are not available any more. But new canon says the color comes from the Jedi themselves attuning the crystal.

Grey Jedi are a Fanon thing, mostly from YouTube.

One thing I realized after watching this movie: the one thing that's consistently bugged me about the Disney Star Wars movies is how they all have to have a motto. " We are the spark that will light the fire that will restore the Republic." "Rebellions are built on hope." "They win by making you think you're alone."

I don't really like it when a Star Wars movie is supposed to have a theme that can be boiled down to one sentence.

@DaverWattra They can all be summed up with this line “I have a bad feeling about this!” Followed by a famous scream. 😎

59 minutes ago, Rosco74 said:

Can we consider the Jedi and Sith gone definetly now? and only grey Jedi remain. That's the way I understand the last scene of the movie. Rey make the lightsaber disappear underground, then she lights her new yellow lightsaber.

Nah, Rey is still a Jedi, even going so far as to say that all the Jedi of the past live on in here.

She's just not the same breed of Jedi as those of the pre-Empire days, as she doesn't have centuries of dogma to try and adhere to. She's only a "gray" Jedi in the same sense that Qui-Gon Jinn was a "grey" Jedi, but both were still Jedi.

Hopefully her story has Rey having a better success rate than Legends!Luke did with his initial efforts. Then again, lazy writers from the 90's needed an easy way to cook up a new dark/fallen Jedi threat (when they weren't reaching for the equally tired cliche if New Imperial Superweapon!), so Luke's school on Yavin 4 became their one-stop shop as opposed to exercising some genuine creativity in coming up with new villains. Maligned as they are, the Yuuzhan Vong at least had the merit of being something entirely different in theme, even if the execution left a lot to be desired.

53 minutes ago, Eoen said:

Grey Jedi are a Fanon thing, mostly from YouTube.

Grey Jedi actually exist from well before YouTube, having their origins in munchkin players of WEG's D6 Star Wars where they wanted to be able to use Force powers labeled as dark side but without suffering the penalties/consequences for using dark side powers. It's akin to a Force user in this game wanting to use black pips on their Force dice but without generating any Conflict just because they're a special snowflake Force user that sees past the lies of the Jedi.

24 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Grey Jedi actually exist from well before YouTube, having their origins in munchkin players of WEG's D6 Star Wars where they wanted to be able to use Force powers labeled as dark side but without suffering the penalties/consequences for using dark side powers. It's akin to a Force user in this game wanting to use black pips on their Force dice but without generating any Conflict just because they're a special snowflake Force user that sees past the lies of the Jedi.

That still sounds like a Fanon thing. A Jedi for edge lords to play. It’s like being interested in having the powers of a Paladin but wanting to be neutral.

Qui-Gon Jinn is some times referred as a Grey Jedi but I would classify him as a light side paragon in game terms.

That was fantastic. I'm stunned. Best of the sequels. Movies are what they are these days, Richard Marquand made a leaner and sharper 80s adventure film, and Jedi will always be dear to me, but I think this contends for third of the nine. And I still suspect Disney will drop the tempo for sparser throwback-style like Mando, but for the Saga? Wonderful.