A bit of trivia I discovered recently, but evidently the corvette the resistance uses is the Tantive IV. The very same one from A New Hope.

If this isn't a statement of the movie's character, I don't know what is. We didn't need the Tantive IV to come back, and I'd rather have a new corvette to add to the list of named ones so we can develop its new history. It was completely unnecessary to make it the same ship except for fan pandering. Same with Luke's X-Wing. Same with Palpatine. *angry sigh*

So now that superlasers can be mounted to Star Destroyers, A. I guess the death stars are obsolete then and B. When can we get our special title card to mount superweapons to ISDs?

Also I wonder which is the stupider idea: Superlasers mounted on ordinary ISD-Is, or the Sun Crusher?

15 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

Also I wonder which is the stupider idea: Superlasers mounted on ordinary ISD-Is, or the Sun Crusher?

Sun Crusher is worse. They should have stuck with Onager SD, that would have been better.

28 minutes ago, Norsehound said:

Also I wonder which is the stupider idea: Superlasers mounted on ordinary ISD-Is, or the Sun Crusher?

In a vacuum? Sun Crusher.

In context? A giant fleet of ISDs. Turns out superweapons are a dime a dozen, and planets will just explode into a quadrillion pieces when you hit them with any giant laser instead of, you know, bombarding them to slag in what would be a vaguely reasonable scenario. Time to outfit BB-8 with a planet killer.

9 hours ago, The Jabbawookie said:

In a vacuum? Sun Crusher.

In context? A giant fleet of ISDs. Turns out superweapons are a dime a dozen, and planets will just explode into a quadrillion pieces when you hit them with any giant laser instead of, you know, bombarding them to slag in what would be a vaguely reasonable scenario. Time to outfit BB-8 with a planet killer.

That's what I thought about the scene. Why not make make it like 30 of them blasting the planet apart by bombing it for a while (couple of secs), for more reasonability and greater cinematic effect without sacrificing any of the actual threat.

I think this is a moment where Pablo Hidalgo is just wrong about the ISDs being a new class.

Not only does the movie not specify they’re at all different from regular ISDs, except the ventral cannon, Rose postulates their weakness by examining diagrams of OLD destroyers.

To me they’re old Imperial destroyers ordered by the Emperor to rendezvous the unknown regions, as stated in the Aftermath Trilogy and Lost Stars, and retrofitted on Exegol. That makes sense to me. To have built the fleet there is seriously pushing it.

Looking back on the whole trilogy now that it’s completed, what a mess it all feels like. The Force Awakens was the high point of this trilogy - which is damning considering that movie’s well-known weaknesses.

The most you can say about Rise of Skywalker is that it’s a better movie than The Last Jedi .

It’s crazy to see how much enthusiasm for this series has waned. In my local Armada group only half the players I spoke with even saw the movie. Half! A lot of that should be attributed to TLJ but the series as a whole feels like it’s somehow less than the sum of its parts.

Each of the sequel movies are better as stand-alone films - when taken as part of a trilogy they are incoherent.

I really didn't care for it... I can't believe I'm saying this but I think I enjoyed TLJ more than TROS.

I own every Star Wars movie on Bluray and I don't know if I can bring myself to buy this last one when it comes out...

Their I said it... I feel slightly better now.

On 12/25/2019 at 2:22 PM, Forresto said:

I think this is a moment where Pablo Hidalgo is just wrong about the ISDs being a new class.

Not only does the movie not specify they’re at all different from regular ISDs, except the ventral cannon, Rose postulates their weakness by examining diagrams of OLD destroyers.

To me they’re old Imperial destroyers ordered by the Emperor to rendezvous the unknown regions, as stated in the Aftermath Trilogy and Lost Stars, and retrofitted on Exegol. That makes sense to me. To have built the fleet there is seriously pushing it.

There is real life precedent for a refit to be named as a whole new class I believe.

On ‎12‎/‎24‎/‎2019 at 10:40 AM, Forresto said:

It won’t happen but how about this:

A post Rise of Skywalker Thrawn Trilogy.

So, one more of these movies and you'll have your thrawn trilogy. There just wasn't enough fleet action in it for my tastes. And I always thought thrawn wore a shirt.

3 hours ago, D.Erasmus said:

The most you can say about Rise of Skywalker is that it’s a better movie than The Last Jedi .

Trying to understand it in a technical way (since I'm biased as fan of the Last Jedi) but... I can't agree to that. But I also think Rise of Skywalker is worse than the prequels too, from the standpoint of storytelling and cinematography.

I've heard people say the Prequels were well written but badly acted, and RoS is badly written but well acted. I think that's an apt statement about all this.

You may disagree with the conclusions TLJ reached, or some of the decisions they made in terms of where to take the story, but I'd argue it was still a better made movie. The pacing was better than in RoS, and TLJ holds suspense and unexpected surprises for the audience that just isn't there for RoS. RoS feels like a melodramatic bad fan fiction from high school, TLJ is like a novel you're assigned to read from class. It has a deep, central point, but it may not be your kind of read, and it was published before the author could finish editing it.

6 hours ago, Norsehound said:

I've heard people say the Prequels were well written but badly acted, and RoS is badly written but well acted. I think that's an apt statement about all this.

I'd argue the Prequels were well written in terms of the story, but badly-written for the dialogue. It was very well acted, but then you had all that post-production directing and acting-in-the-edit that makes things look and feel so weird.

As for a Thrawn Trilogy of film; I think a TV series would be needed instead. It's hard to cut down a book to a film, but a TV series (8-10 episodes, 3 seasons?) gives you the time to really get into things.

21 hours ago, Grumbleduke said:

I'd argue the Prequels were well written in terms of the story, but badly-written for the dialogue. It was very well acted, but then you had all that post-production directing and acting-in-the-edit that makes things look and feel so weird.

As for a Thrawn Trilogy of film; I think a TV series would be needed instead. It's hard to cut down a book to a film, but a TV series (8-10 episodes, 3 seasons?) gives you the time to really get into things.

Many have ridiculed the prequels for the... well, wooden dialogue (and for me personally, Hayden Christensen's very awkward performance in II). I don't think it was written to be bad, but delivered badly, and I rest blame at the feet of Lucas' directing. This does not mean the actors were bad, but they performed badly since they were directed by LUcas to do so.

But I think even Lucas admits he's not good on dialogue.

On 12/21/2019 at 3:54 AM, ISD Avenger said:

It’s the little things that bug me. Planet killing guns that can be powered by an ISD!? 🤪 . You are telling me that they managed to shrink the tech that used to be the size of an entire moon down to an ISD!?

And yet again, a whole ‘superweapon’ can be destroyed by a fighter. Lazy writing. Does the Empire never learn?

I suppose this does increase the options for a first order faction after the Clone Wars stuff is done.

The Sith star destroyers are way bigger that old ISDs. I have the visual guide. The length is 2406 meters according to the visual guide. So bigger power source better technology derived from the dreadnought from TLJ

7 hours ago, Rune Taq said:

The Sith star destroyers are way bigger that old ISDs. I have the visual guide. The length is 2406 meters according to the visual guide. So bigger power source better technology derived from the dreadnought from TLJ

Bigger or not that’s still a big stretch from a moon sized battle station to a 1.5 mile starship. Actually that’s a huge stretch.

And the dreadnought is a better bombardment platform not a planet cracker no?

13 hours ago, Rune Taq said:

The Sith star destroyers are way bigger that old ISDs. I have the visual guide. The length is 2406 meters according to the visual guide. So bigger power source better technology derived from the dreadnought from TLJ

That's still shorter than the Resurgent-class Star Destroyers at 2.9km and way shorter than the Mandator IV-class Siege Dreadnought from TLJ, at 7.7km.

The starships in the Sequel Trilogy are stupidly big.

On 12/26/2019 at 11:43 PM, Norsehound said:

You may disagree with the conclusions TLJ reached, or some of the decisions they made in terms of where to take the story, but I'd argue it was still a better made movie.

The strengths of TLJ are - for me - simply outweighed by its weaknesses. It only has one interesting story arc: Rey’s. The stories of the supporting cast are meandering and borderline nonsensical. Poe’s conflict with Holdo is very poorly setup and the less said about Canto Bight the better. The humor of TLJ falls flat more frequently than it lands. RoS incorporates humor more effectively in comparison. And while RoS has manic pacing, TLJ drags interminably. Plus the central conflict of TLJ was farcical on its face. The slow motion chase of the Raddus was I think a weaker plot than the RoS macguffin fetch quests.

TLJ was stronger in two ways: it was easily the most beautifully shot film of the saga and it felt more coherent. But as the second movie in a trilogy it failed to set up any kind of meaningful conflict for the final movie. I left TLJ thinking it felt like a finale. Reducing the Resistance to a handful of people on the Millenium Falcon was poorly thought out. It’s hard to imagine how RoS could have concluded the saga after picking up from that storyline.

Thats not to say RoS is a great movie, it’s a 5/10 for me. The whole sequel trilogy feels like an enormous waste of potential.

On 12/26/2019 at 7:29 PM, mhd said:

This unfortunate image makes me wonder about Disney’s inevitable attempt to remake the Skywalker saga 40, 50, 60 years from now.

I’m sure episodes IV-VI would suffer but you could raise the overall quality a great deal by going into them knowing from the get-go what the story of this trilogy of trilogies already is and just tightening it all up.

...though that might just be the Stockholm Syndrome talking.

I saw it a third time. I went in looking for faults. Couldn’t find any that bothered me enough to diminish the film.

Things I noticed this time that I love :

-When Chewie is captured you can just see a second transport in shot. So Chewie’s death isn’t a cheap trick, the reveal is in fact setup if you were paying attention.

-Finn and Jannah DON’T destroy the comms tower. They temporarily knock it out but the Steadfast’s bridgecrew can reset it.

-It takes Finn and Jannah a while to slice the turbolaser in order to destroy the Steadfast’s Command Bridge. And it makes more sense to me that a ship bound gun could punch through the hull then an A Wing.

-The space battle at the end shows way more then I originally expected. It’s cool seeing a pack of corvettes in the background chewing into an unshielded Star Destroyer in a complete reversal of fortunes from the original film.

-Richard E Grant as General Pryde was such a breath of fresh air from the incompetence of Hux.

-Adam Driver emulates Han Solo way more in this movie. His finger point, the way he carries a blaster, the way he shrugs at the Knights of Ren when he pulls out the lightsaber. Like father like son.

-Palpatine gets a crimson Hugh Hefner Smoking Jacket robe when he becomes younger.

-At a certain point Palpatine stops shooting lightning at Rey but by then it’s too late.

-Kylo’s Jedi lightsaber greatly resembles Leia’s lightsaber, suggesting she helped him build his.

The first time I watched it my sister asked me if I liked it. I said yes. She asked me how much from 1-10. I said 5-6. She got shocked, lol, I guess she meant how much 1 or 10 (her world should be more polarized than mine, I play grey instead of rebel scum so makes sense XD)

After a second time I'd say 6-7.

The beginning is still terrible. But the film is really fun and enjoyable. TLJ which a watched three times is getting more a more boring each time.

These are my two major gripes, partly because they’re such easy tweaks and I think substantially improve the film:

-Rose should have been given Dominic Monhagan’s lines and been on the Falcon at the beginning instead of the space slug.

-Maz Kanata is a Pirate Queen. She should’ve been one of the people leading the massive fleet Lando brings. Could have given her a cheeky line such as “half of them owed me money” or something.

7 hours ago, D.Erasmus said:

But as the second movie in a trilogy it failed to set up any kind of meaningful conflict for the final movie. I left TLJ thinking it felt like a finale. Reducing the Resistance to a handful of people on the Millenium Falcon was poorly thought out. It’s hard to imagine how RoS could have concluded the saga after picking up from that storyline

Yeah. To me TLJ works best if it was a bookend to the new trilogy, either the 1st or 3rd one. If the 1st, it's setting up the rest of the trilogy for a different feeling Star Wars, and for the people who want all the fan service and things that feel like the "old" Star Wars, they had the spinoff Star Wars stories like Rogue One and Solo.

As a finale, TLJ could have cemented it's themes on letting the past die and that a nobody can still save the galaxy.

Instead, we get movies where each one tries to "fix" whatever happened before it. Instead of getting setups and payoffs, it feels more like damage control.

10 hours ago, D.Erasmus said:

The strengths of TLJ are - for me - simply outweighed by its weaknesses. It only has one interesting story arc: Rey’s. The stories of the supporting cast are meandering and borderline nonsensical. Poe’s conflict with Holdo is very poorly setup and the less said about Canto Bight the better. The humor of TLJ falls flat more frequently than it lands. RoS incorporates humor more effectively in comparison. And while RoS has manic pacing, TLJ drags interminably. Plus the central conflict of TLJ was farcical on its face. The slow motion chase of the Raddus was I think a weaker plot than the RoS macguffin fetch quests.

TLJ was stronger in two ways: it was easily the most beautifully shot film of the saga and it felt more coherent. But as the second movie in a trilogy it failed to set up any kind of meaningful conflict for the final movie. I left TLJ thinking it felt like a finale. Reducing the Resistance to a handful of people on the Millenium Falcon was poorly thought out. It’s hard to imagine how RoS could have concluded the saga after picking up from that storyline.

Thats not to say RoS is a great movie, it’s a 5/10 for me. The whole sequel trilogy feels like an enormous waste of potential.

I need to re-watch TLJ...

I will agree that TLJ dropped the ball in a few places. I think the distrust between Holdo and Poe would have been better served if there was rumor of a spy in the fleet to give away the Resistance's position (rather than a tech gizmo). This fuels Poe's suspicions about Holdo while Finn and Rose depart to find some way to disable the Supremacy. I agree the slow-motion chase was a disservice, because clearly the First order could have surrounded and pummeled the Raddus into submission. Why they didn't do that isn't clear when it seems obvious and an explanation would have been nice.

I don't remember there being a problem per-se about Canto Bight, but I do like the lesson we take out of it (about Arms dealers supplying both sides of the war). I also like how it touches upon what, really, makes up the meat of the resistance: The oppressed. It's also a nice touch to revisit these same kids in the finale to set up that they are the future of the Resistance, even if for now the Resistance has been suppressed.

It was hard for me to really enjoy the humor in RoS when the story pacing and integrity suffered so badly. I liked some of Threepio's lines (Is this the afterlife? Are droids allowed in here?)- but many of the moments that were good (like Threepio's "last look") were suddenly muted by off-timed comedic lines. I'm thinking of the one where Threepio thinks of something just before being unplugged in the very next scene. It was supposed to be funny, but it destroyed the gravity of the previous moment. Same with Threepio being effectively dead and suddenly reversed with R2's reset.

I'd say where TLJ left us off was loaded with a lot of interesting leads that RoS refused to pick up upon because Disney, driven by TLJ critics, was hot to abandon them. The Resistance has a major challenge ahead of them of rebuilding their numbers to take on the First Order. The kindling is there- the children of Canto Bight are indicative of the potential.

In the wake of Snoke's death we're obviously set up for a power struggle between Hux and Kylo Ren- both men are immature, so the struggle between them would be a clumsy one... and something the Resistance could use to their advantage when taking on the First Order.

The blade of Skywalker is asunder, the last in the bloodline has been turned to evil, and TLJ leaves us with the thought that the Jedi and Sith were not the proper way to understand the force. Rey could have been the one to find new understanding on how to draw from both sides of the force without succumbing to both of them. She could have been the first of a new kind of force user, who shares this understanding with Kylo Ren as both of them try to understand their place in the Force.

So much of this potential I found beautiful, and I want to know the answers to these points. When all is said and done though, the answers provided in RoS are disappointing. Even that last point defaults back to the Jedi/Sith split that refuses to even ask the question of whether there are new ways to use the Force (Rebels was starting to ask this question as well, with the Bentu). We'll never know the answers to these directions now, not without setting everything back to the way RoS was (Like... Ben will be dead. There will be no explaination of who he can be as a grey force user).

It's like TLJ asked a very interesting and thought-provoking question, and RoS's answer was a shrug and saying, "I dunno, Lol." It's unsatisfying, hollow, and essentially leaves the question unanswered. And everyone seems to be happy with this.

3 hours ago, Badly Browned said:

Yeah. To me TLJ works best if it was a bookend to the new trilogy, either the 1st or 3rd one. If the 1st, it's setting up the rest of the trilogy for a different feeling Star Wars, and for the people who want all the fan service and things that feel like the "old" Star Wars, they had the spinoff Star Wars stories like Rogue One and Solo.

As a finale, TLJ could have cemented it's themes on letting the past die and that a nobody can still save the galaxy.

Instead, we get movies where each one tries to "fix" whatever happened before it. Instead of getting setups and payoffs, it feels more like damage control.

I can agree with this.

If it were up to me I'd let Rian Johnson direct 9 as well, to give us interesting answers to all these leads he set up. But "the fans" would have pitched a fit if that had been the case because how much "they" hated The Last Jedi.

I had apprehensions when I heard JJ was cast to direct 9 because I remember well how awkward Star Trek Into Darkness was as a sequel. I doubted his ability to do it, so I wasn't surprised RoS came out so awkwardly.

On 12/29/2019 at 3:20 PM, Forresto said:

I saw it a third time. I went in looking for faults. Couldn’t find any that bothered me enough to diminish the film.

Things I noticed this time that I love :

-When Chewie is captured you can just see a second transport in shot. So Chewie’s death isn’t a cheap trick, the reveal is in fact setup if you were paying attention.

-Finn and Jannah DON’T destroy the comms tower. They temporarily knock it out but the Steadfast’s bridgecrew can reset it.

-It takes Finn and Jannah a while to slice the turbolaser in order to destroy the Steadfast’s Command Bridge. And it makes more sense to me that a ship bound gun could punch through the hull then an A Wing.

-The space battle at the end shows way more then I originally expected. It’s cool seeing a pack of corvettes in the background chewing into an unshielded Star Destroyer in a complete reversal of fortunes from the original film.

-Richard E Grant as General Pryde was such a breath of fresh air from the incompetence of Hux.

-Adam Driver emulates Han Solo way more in this movie. His finger point, the way he carries a blaster, the way he shrugs at the Knights of Ren when he pulls out the lightsaber. Like father like son.

-Palpatine gets a crimson Hugh Hefner Smoking Jacket robe when he becomes younger.

-At a certain point Palpatine stops shooting lightning at Rey but by then it’s too late.

-Kylo’s Jedi lightsaber greatly resembles Leia’s lightsaber, suggesting she helped him build his.

I've only seen it one time. But now I wanna see the pack of corvettes firing at the star destroyer.

I did not notice this the first time around. Why didn't they do much more of that.... ? Shame.