Star Wars General Discussion Thread

[BBadolato]

A Kylo redemption could work, if their was a better plan for it. Mind you into retrospect Vader's redemption might only work within the context of IV-VI, so I never really saw him 'unredeemable' at least by in-universe or Jedi standards at best. I mean after all Vader helped make the Empire and all of its horrific abuses possible, and I'd still give him shit for failing to act sooner if the new comics are anything to go by. Kylo just seems to be there, and really outside of the First Order inner workings despite his power.

If we're trying to approach a Snoke-Kylo problem then, I feel you could keep both of them as villains and maybe redeem Klyo if you change up the plot. I'm ambivalent towards Snoke, because I feel he's an embodiment of one perhaps the fatal flaw in Star Wars, everything setup in the OT is always brought back into new media to make it recognizably Star Wars. In this case Snoke plays the Dark Side Chessmaster behind everything, also played by Palps, Kreia, Vitiate, and Kryat. I admit I'm probably more spit-balling ideas I posted in the fan fic thread, so here goes.

Make earlier and more significant tension between Snoke and Kylo, be it different M.O's, maybe have Snoke's control not be ironclad over the First Order, perhaps draw Kylo into an alliance with disaffected elements. Also Snoke isn't a Palpatine Clone, even if Palps is still alive, Snoke is very behind the first for his own unclear reasons. The tension could spill into an all out civil war with the Order, but to make them still a threat you give them different but effective means even if it boils down to Snoke's plans hinge on the Dark Side and causing suffering for it's own sake, while Kylo might just be out for galactic conquest.

Depending on how you work with that, then you could set up a decent redemption arc.

 

[bluntblade]

I should stress that I have enormous problems with Anakin murdering children. I just think it was a bad choice.

For me, the crux of the throne room is that this is where we see how different Kylo's motivation is to Vader's. This is his chance to come back, which Vader never had... but he passes it up for power.

 

[Axslashel]

Snoke getting offed was one of TLJ's best decisions. TFA clearly establishes that its Kylo Ren and his relationship to our protagonist, Leia and Luke that is at the centre of all the story's drama, and Adam Driver (one of the finest actors working today) versus Andy Serkis in mocap isn't at all a hard decision for who should be driving a story.

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At this point I honestly believe that Adam Driver would have been a great actor play Anakin in the Prequels if he was around back then. I think he really could deliver on the "awkward teen with anger issues" that Anakin is. Hayden Christensen was never really expecting that that was the character young Vader would be so he did never really nail it when playing Anakin.

 

[Vympel]

I should stress that I have enormous problems with Anakin murdering children. I just think it was a bad choice.

For me, the crux of the throne room is that this is where we see how different Kylo's motivation is to Vader's. This is his chance to come back, which Vader never had... but he passes it up for power.

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Well Vader had his chance multiple times in RotS, and turned away from them all. Most significantly Padme's pleas on Mustafar, which he (literally) violently rejected. Vader is also a pretty malicious, malevolent and sadistic figure.

At this point I honestly believe that Adam Driver would have been a great actor play Anakin in the Prequels if he was around back then. I think he really could deliver on the "awkward teen with anger issues" that Anakin is. Hayden Christensen was never really expecting that that was the character young Vader would be so he did never really nail it when playing Anakin.

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It's pretty wild when you consider that Adam is 36 and Hayden is 39. Like Adam playing Anakin is something that could've happened if things had gone a bit differently. Of course, his skill as an actor is probably something he's developed over the years and his performance as, say, a 19 year old would be very different from his performance as a 31-35 year old through TFA to TROS.

 

[bluntblade]

True, but Anakin lives for decades with the hollowness of the Vader life. I hear him speak with Luke and I hear the melancholy of that.

There's also the fact that Luke extending a hand to him amounts to the breaking of a cycle. Whereas with Kylo, people just try and try and try because he has to be saved no matter his sins, until it works.

And this matters because it tips into the Joker Question, but times a million. How many innocents killed or enslaved is Ben Solo worth? Because Johnson makes a clear choice when Luke chooses to save Rey and the Resistance.

Again, not against a redemption arc in principle, but by the third film it's too late for anyone but Ben Solo to save his own soul.

 

[Vympel]

True, but Anakin lives for decades with the hollowness of the Vader life. I hear him speak with Luke and I hear the melancholy of that.

There's also the fact that Luke extending a hand to him amounts to the breaking of a cycle. Whereas with Kylo, people just try and try and try because he has to be saved no matter his sins, until it works.

And this matters because it tips into the Joker Question, but times a million. How many innocents killed or enslaved is Ben Solo worth? Because Johnson makes a clear choice when Luke chooses to save Rey and the Resistance.

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That's not really what happened though? Vader had no interest in Luke making a plea for him to turn (i.e. first on Endor, and again during their duel). He rejected Luke too. It's only when Luke begs for his life that Vader acts, because ultimately he still loves his son. Redemption is something Vader achieves because Luke is ultimately right - he still has good in him. It's not at all about Luke making some sort of 'offer' or something which Vader accepts. Similarly, even in TROS' quite poor handling fo the whole issue, Ben still has good in him. It's pretty much the entire point of his imaginary conversation with his father. The whole issue is muddled by his mother dying to reach him (sigh), but ultimately the same principle is there.

Luke sacrificing himself in that manner isn't a choice between Ben on the one hand and Rey and the Resistancce on the other. Luke just knows he's totally unequipped to try and 'save' Ben - probably because he played such a huge role in his fall in the first place. Luke did fail Ben, after all. Luke recognises that. It's not for him to save Ben. But as he tells Leia before he walks out, he still thinks he can be saved.

 

[bluntblade]

But we've got the seeds of doubt in Vader. He changes the subject on Luke rather than get into his own doubts, but they're there.

The trouble is that Kylo may have some good in him, but until after Leia's dead he hasn't acted on it for the whole of TRoS. He never seeks forgiveness from anyone other than an imaginary ghost, which ends up being an issue for me. The second he wants forgiveness, he gets it.

Again, I think he needed to have realised his folly and be seeking a way back from the darkness. Because then that would actually be a great moral to the story, and it's easy to see the real-world parallels that would have.

 

[Vympel]

But we've got the seeds of doubt in Vader. He changes the subject on Luke rather than get into his own doubts, but they're there.

The trouble is that Kylo may have some good in him, but until after Leia's dead he hasn't acted on it for the whole of TRoS. He never seeks forgiveness from anyone other than an imaginary ghost, which ends up being an issue for me. The second he wants forgiveness, he gets it.

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Well that conversation isn't him seeking or getting forgiveness from anyone rather than him basically talking himself into fighting for what his mother fought for, based on what he knows (from TFA) his father would have wanted, IMO.

As to Vader, I dunno to me the ST always put far more work into showing Kylo as having good in him than the OT in particular ever did for Vader. In the OT this is just something Luke declares in ROTJ and he's proven right, there's just no real evidence for it anywhere in ANH or TESB. It's part of why I never doubted for even a second he'd get a redemption arc. That Kylo didn't definitively commit to it until late in the day doesn't really matter that much to me.

Again, I think he needed to have realised his folly and be seeking a way back from the darkness. Because then that would actually be a great moral to the story, and it's easy to see the real-world parallels that would have.

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I think even in TROS, that's pretty much what he did. They just fumbled something they had already left too late in the film by thinking it'd be a capital idea to kill him off the moment he decided to do it, because doing the exact same thing as in ROTJ (i.e. one redemptive act = death) was the only thing they were willing to consider.

If they had any brains, the turn should've come like - Act 2 at the latest, and if they wanted to pick some really low hanging fruit they could've done the always entertaining "former villain interacts awkwardly with the heroes" trope, but nope - let's waste time on a 1.5 hour MacGuffin hunt and a bunch of bullshit fake deaths instead.

 

[kjyl]

So? He's trying to convince her to join him, not forcing her into attacking her. She made that choice. He didn't make it for her.



Oh yeah look I hate that they had Leia actually kill herself to reach him. I'm sick and tired of movies glorifying suicidal sacrifice as some sort of Ultimate Good, and that applies to both Leia and Ben himself later in the film. Generally its not very well handled, like so much in TROS isn't.

But sure, Kylo's giving orders, but he was still broken to Snoke's service before that. That Kylo killed Snoke didn't magically fix him, all that damage was still done and still affected him. I think it's an overly technical "just following orders" distinction - Vader could've stopped at any point too, it doesn't matter that Palpatine was there to punish him.

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Specifically for Leia's sacrifice, that was completely for meta reasons with Fischer's death they were scrabbling for a way to kill her off while making it meaningful and at the same time having her not really do a lot.

Which was moderately hilarious give the number of death fake outs they gave her in 8.

It seems like for various reasons they were setting up Leia as THE legacy character and RL smashed that.

 

[Vympel]

Specifically for Leia's sacrifice, that was completely for meta reasons with Fischer's death they were scrabbling for a way to kill her off while making it meaningful and at the same time having her not really do a lot.

Which was moderately hilarious give the number of death fake outs they gave her in 8.

It seems like for various reasons they were setting up Leia as THE legacy character and RL smashed that.

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Yeah - at the end of the day I think using a CGI puppet version of Carrie in TROS was a pretty disastrous and creepy decision and they should've just bit the bullet and recast. It was a really terrible idea and feels very gross, as well as just having terrible consequences for both the actors trying to act off of that and story consequences.

 

[bluntblade]

Well that conversation isn't him seeking or getting forgiveness from anyone rather than him basically talking himself into fighting for what his mother fought for, based on what he knows (from TFA) his father would have wanted, IMO.

As to Vader, I dunno to me the ST always put far more work into showing Kylo as having good in him than the OT in particular ever did for Vader. In the OT this is just something Luke declares in ROTJ and he's proven right, there's just no real evidence for it anywhere in ANH or TESB. It's part of why I never doubted for even a second he'd get a redemption arc. That Kylo didn't definitively commit to it until late in the day doesn't really matter that much to me.

I think even in TROS, that's pretty much what he did. They just fumbled something they had already left too late in the film by thinking it'd be a capital idea to kill him off the moment he decided to do it, because doing the exact same thing as in ROTJ (i.e. one redemptive act = death) was the only thing they were willing to consider.

If they had any brains, the turn should've come like - Act 2 at the latest, and if they wanted to pick some really low hanging fruit they could've done the always entertaining "former villain interacts awkwardly with the heroes" trope, but nope - let's waste time on a 1.5 hour MacGuffin hunt and a bunch of bullshit fake deaths instead.

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But the issue is, it's not articulated.

This might just be me not being much of an OT fan, but the fact that he's Han and Leia's son still doesn't make me very willing to overlook the sins which are right there onscreen and the choices which he is depicted making to be the bad guy. And not just the bad guy, the big bad. At that point he has taken ownership of his own evil. The buck stops with him, and I view that as a fundamental difference between him and Vader.

My capacity to feel sorry for Kylo is limited because I've seen and empathised with the pain that he and his regime cause in a way that I'm not sure the OT necessarily did with the Empire, at least not during the OT. We've got Rose and Finn's backstories, Finn's mauling at Kylo's hands, Han's death, the Resistance pilots who we see being quirky and matey before Kylo carpet-bombs them, we have the way he needles at Rey and finally, him letting hundreds of defenceless people die because saving them would be an inconvenience. I've had my sympathy for him severely depleted.

As for Leia, they shouldn't recast. They should let her die and say it was the after-effects of void exposure.

 

[Arthur Frayn]

Yeah - at the end of the day I think using a CGI puppet version of Carrie in TROS was a pretty disastrous and creepy decision and they should've just bit the bullet and recast. It was a really terrible idea and feels very gross, as well as just having terrible consequences for both the actors trying to act off of that and story consequences.

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I mean I am admittedly biased since I wrote a whole treatment for an alt IX centered around this idea, but I think the smartest decision would have been to lean into the skid. Recasting Leia would have been too weird (not as weird as Zombie CGI Leia, but still pretty weird), and turning "What do we do without Carrie Leia?" from subtext to just plain text opens up a ton of dramatic possibilities.

What do the heroes do once they can't lean on Leia anymore? Poe was being groomed for leadership, how does he handle being thrust into the role before he's ready? How does Rey react to losing a potential mentor (buck wild TROS just buries the fact that, in terms of chronology, Leia was far more Rey's master than Luke) right when she needs them most? Most importantly, it's not hard to accept that Kylo/Ben kind've always secretly hoped that his mother would offer him a way out - how does he deal with the fact that he now thinks his one escape route from evil is gone? Fisher's death left them with no good options, but IMO you can instantly charge the material by just speaking to that hole at the center of the story instead of trying to paper it over and pretend like everything's fine.

 

[bluntblade]

I kinda compromised on my own take - have Leia in the background (with Republic Navy officers and such having joined the fight in the years since Crait) and then giving her own life to heal Rey after she's mortally wounded by Kylo. Less of a practical loss than in Arthur's take (I'd go with Rey voraciously learning from books, scavenged holocrons and such), but a colossal blow to morale.

I also just like the idea of Kylo realising how far he's fallen when he faces Rey again and realises that his mother ultimately chose Rey over him.

 

[bluntblade]

Moving away from Kylo, I've got another thought on how TFA Finn could be improved; Poe hauls him from the wreck on Jakku. Thay way we get more time with Poe, don't need to suddenly announce Rey being a whizz pilot, and he and Finn can actually talk a bit on their hike. We can get into Finn's head a bit.

Basically this would all feed into him finding real fellowship and then a place in the Resistance. Then you can modify TLJ a little so it's grappling with Finn's newfound zeal the whole way through, rather than completing his movie 1 arc and then getting down to business. Keeping in Phasma's End and tweaking it a little so that he connects to the Force and uses that to get the cannon for when he blasts the Captain.

OK, this turns out to be much easier for me than fixing TFA Rey. I find her to be something of a beautiful, likeable, well-acted blank slate, and I don't know if you can simply import the rounded-out version that Johnson wrote. Maybe she explicitly establishes a connection to the Force early on, and spends most of the film wrestling with it until she gets a proper hold on it during the Starkiller events?

The issue with this is that you can only get so far into this stuff before you have to start drastically changing events in the film's plot - stuff like making Han a Resistance Commander who Poe makes contact with, for example - and having Rey and Finn begin to seriously drive the plot. Which would be for the better but has big old ripple effects.

 

[Joviwan]

I wish someone would make a new Star Wars movie instead of a bunch of movies that are about Star Wars.

 

[Z-Cosmonaut]

I wish someone would make a new Star Wars movie instead of a bunch of movies that are about Star Wars.

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What does that mean?

 

[bluntblade]

What does that mean?

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Well, the sequels are very much legacequels. To quote Films & Stuff, they represent three types respectively: pastiche, deconstruction and parody.

Because we're seeing the old characters, any depiction of them serves as a commentary on them and the old films whether or not the director or writers intend it. So Abrams ends up saying that the OT is the thing we should strive to recreate at all costs, while Johnson seems to take the view that while they're to be admired, to attempt to just repeat them is folly.

With all that baggage, it's not unreasonable to want stories that are set well aware from that core, be it specially or temporally.

 

[Z-Cosmonaut]

Chop

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So, where does this leave things like the Old Republic Era and the prequels?

 

[bluntblade]

So, where does this leave things like the Old Republic Era and the prequels?

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They're far removed enough to be free of that, at least in most people's eyes.

Strictly speaking the Prequels are about how the OT happened, but they aren't doing anything drastically different with OT characters and where they do get into the weeds with stuff like the Jedi and the Force, they're old enough at this point that those revisions are just part of the canon for a lot of people.

I mean, just look at people bemoaning the Sequels using saber styles more akin to the OT than the Prequels.

Oh, and add to this that Rey, Finn, Ben Solo and Poe Dameron were conceived in part as New Luke, New Vader etc and partly as audience surrogates who were meant to marvel at how awesome the old heroes were. Johnson, again, didn't get the memo that he'd been hired to venerate, not interrogate, and of course that approach only pissed people off more.

Not least Abrams.

 

[Joviwan]

What does that mean?

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This is going to ramble on for a hot minute, but basically:

Every single star wars movie released after 1977's Star Wars has had to pretend that everything in Star Wars is real, for some reason.

40 years of having to pretend the events of 1 (one) film are some kind of sacrosanct plot king that all stories must be told around. Nothing can exist except and unless it kneels at the throne of a pulp adventure movie made by a film hippie in the 70's with 20 bucks and no faith from any production crew that it was going to be important or cool.

Entire films are now spent laboriously unpacking adventures that only exist to explain a single character's handful of personality quirks. Actors are raised from the dead, their shambling, uncanny likeness enslaved to a franchise whose storytelling is so narrow in scope that they blow up the same thing 3 times and in the same way. One guy gets killed two times.

3 entire direct sequel films built their foundational thesis on how the future cannot help but mimic the past but in a worse and more enfeebled way. It ended with a character staring at a skyline that has no meaning to them as music that never described their emotional journey swells underneath, having buried in the ground the last possessions of two people who never liked that fucking planet to begin with, and it did that because it must unshakingly presume 'Skywalker' has deep emotional resonance while having no understanding of why it would only have that depth in some situations and not 'just because'

1977's Star Wars is a fun adventure film about laser monks and bush pilots fighting moon nazis. Everything after that has tried desperately to pretend that it was both real and the only story that mattered. They are all movies ABOUT Star Wars.

We've only ever had one star wars movie.

 

[bluntblade]

I wouldn't say Empire did that. And as for pretending it's real, surely every sequel does that inherently? Empire's the one that gets weird, delves down into what the setting is really about, and yes, gets dark at points.

Likewise, I'd say there's some value in a legacequal if you mine it properly... like one of the Sequel Trilogy films did. Unfortunately the films either side of it fundamentally disagreed with its take.

Also, Thing Abrams and Johnson Disagree on No. 3209764: whether the First Order and Empire have any purpose outside being tools of the Dark Side. I'd been thinking for a while that Abrams hadn't explored the FO as much as he should, but then I realised that the text of TFA actually says that the "only fight" is that against the Dark Side. What the First Order are doesn't matter, before they're just the means by which the Dark Side takes over. Hence why they also crumble the second Palpatine's down, because Palpatine = Sith therefore = the Dark Side.

 

[Joviwan]

Empire did do that. It did it well and told a good story, but it still did it. I personally love TLJ and it wouldn't be possible if 1977 wasn't treated as somehow real.

It's just also fucking exhausting to be 11 films in and we're still somehow still so mired in the same fucking story that we will commit to the closest thing to literal necromancy before considering maybe just telling new fun adventure stories.

 

[bluntblade]

It is also a special kind of frustrating to watch a rerun of the Battle of Endor play out pretty much the same way, after we all thought that possibility had been scrubbed and that the series had to move forward.

 

[IfIhadaHammer]

The one decent thing is with the upcoming High Republic stuff, disney seems tofinally be trying something different, albeit only in novels and comics (and arguably comics have had the most freedom for a while in Disney canon what with the success of Doctor Aphra).

 

[bluntblade]

Have to admit, the only comic stuff I've seen was the "Kylo's not actually a school shooter, look the bad things he does really aren't that bad we promise and look he's soooo sad..." stuff.