Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (December 2019)

[JPL]

28 minutes ago, Glasgowchivas said:

As we appear to be revisiting concept art from ‘TFA’, I wonder if we’ll get the 

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Anakin/Vader ghost that communes with Kylo Ren. 

 

The one that is still struggling with the Light/Dark even in death and so constantly switches appearance.

 

AND! If it does appear, will it be realm or just manipulation from Palestine?

 

Those bloody Palestinians!

[linkster]

3 hours ago, JPL said:

I hope they do try and retcon in something that works. Having introduced him as the mysterious baddy in TFA, just for Rian Johnson to petulantly kill him off was absolutely mental. The complete embodiment of a character arc/plot strand that goes absolutely nowhere. It was a total kick in the balls for anyone who was looking forward to seeing what they'd do with Snoke. It'd be a nice bit of course correction if they could find a way to give his character a purpose for existing in the first two films.

The thing is, in saying this you understandably assume there was something worth saying about Snoke in the first place. Maybe he was just badly conceived and rather than dragging it out RJ took the decision to put us out our misery. I can't help being cynical because I've seen it happen so many times on the inside of something creative where the most appallingly misguided decisions get made, in this case i can easily see it going something along the lines of "Andy Serkis as the baddie? great, moving on then..." and then looking out the outcome and going "oh fuck, what happened there?"

 

TLJ shone so brightly at times but it never sank lower than shot for shot 'reimaginings' of moments from the original trilogy, notably the pointless Battle of Hoth parody and the utterly fucking dreadful throne room. They stank so badly by comparison it's almost like sabotage.

[Popo]

48 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

 

I remember an old theory back in the 90's that everyone was desperate to die in front of Luke Skywalker.

 

Die in front of Luke Skywalker? Become a cool blue ghost.

 

Die offscreen? Dead forever.

 

This is brilliant. 

 

Anyway, I’ve come to withdraw my earlier comment - Vader dies at the end of VI and becomes a ghost but wouldn’t have been able to have ‘learned’ how to become a ghostie, it just happened.

 

Which suggests he did a presto-chango deathbed conversion to the light side, granting him the eternal life that comes with being a really wicked-powerful Jedi Knight, and  the concept of having to learn the skill from another is rubbish. 

 

But the second theory is also a bit dubious. How much do-gooding does one have to achieve to cancel out all the dastardly deeds from one’s past? Can you just rescue a cat from a tree before copping it to receive your free pass? And ohhh dear my eyes have gone crossed. 

 

Its almost like the ghost stuff was used to serve a plot purpose in the original movies, doesn’t really stand up to too much scrutiny, but has been used as the foundations for canon, on which the rickety structures of other movies has been built. 

[Girth Certificate]

Force Ghosts might actually be the least interesting thing in the entire franchise. Makes a trip to space-monaco look like The Raid.

[SharkyOB]

9 minutes ago, Naieve said:

Force Ghosts might actually be the least interesting thing in the entire franchise. Makes a trip to space-monaco look like The Raid.

 

God this all sounds so shit.  Still not as bad as midi-fucking-chlorians though.

[JPL]

26 minutes ago, linkster said:

The thing is, in saying this you understandably assume there was something worth saying about Snoke in the first place. Maybe he was just badly conceived and rather than dragging it out RJ took the decision to put us out our misery. I can't help being cynical because I've seen it happen so many times on the inside of something creative where the most appallingly misguided decisions get made, in this case i can easily see it going something along the lines of "Andy Serkis as the baddie? great, moving on then..." and then looking out the outcome and going "oh fuck, what happened there?"

 

TLJ shone so brightly at times but it never sank lower than shot for shot 'reimaginings' of moments from the original trilogy, notably the pointless Battle of Hoth parody and the utterly fucking dreadful throne room. They stank so badly by comparison it's almost like sabotage.

Well, I’d like the director of the next instalment to actually try to build on the characters created in the first. It’s like they didn’t have a plan and thought ‘ah, fuck it, let’s bin off anything we don’t know how to develop’, which made it feel massively disjointed and lacking direction to me.

 

Personally, I liked Snoke as a character, so to see him so utterly wasted was pretty disappointing and I’ll be happy to see them actually give him a purpose if they do use him as a cover for the Emperor in Episode IX.

[Girth Certificate]

The only thing worse would be if Rey gains the ability to commune with the living force and we go inside her head and she's in a room full of CCTV monitors and that cunt from Matrix Reloaded.

[macosx]

2 hours ago, Thor said:

Petulant?  I don't think so. TLJ has many flaws, its handling of Snoke is definitely not one of them. 

 

Oh come on the most evil thing he ever did was sit in a chair and look ugly. Not a high bar for villainy.

 

Actuallly when he did snuff it there was a little hidden audio cue of Palps, everyone would have loved it. Bit like Harry Potter though with V.

[Uncle Mike]

24 minutes ago, JPL said:

Personally, I liked Snoke as a character

 

What did you like about him? Granted, I think I've only seen TFA the once when it was released, but I just remember a floaty head not doing much.

[linkster]

1 minute ago, Uncle Mike said:

 

What did you like about him? Granted, I think I've only seen TFA the once when it was released, but I just remember a floaty head not doing much.

He reminds me of Col Clink in Hogan's Heroes. Or more specifically since it was well before my time The Simpsons' parody of him

[JPL]

12 minutes ago, Uncle Mike said:

 

What did you like about him? Granted, I think I've only seen TFA the once when it was released, but I just remember a floaty head not doing much.

The mystery more than anything. Who is this new evil master? How did he rise to power? What are his motives? How is his story going to play out?

 

Unfortunately we never got to find out, which makes his inclusion completely redundant.

 

Some people will say that’s typical JJ, but I still think Rian should have worked with what he was given and figured it out, rather than just killing him off because he didn’t like the character or couldn’t be arsed to explore that line of the story, or whatever his reasons were.

 

His premature demise was definitely a low point of TLJ for me.

[Purin]

Cheating death itself....by occupying another vessel?

[Girth Certificate]

The new Star Wars Expanded Universe to be largely made up of fan fiction detailing the motivations of the franchise's various directors.

[Danster]

4 hours ago, Treble said:

 

lol

 

"The Pies of Skywalker"

 

I'll have Sith and Chips please...

[Harsin]

28 minutes ago, Naieve said:

The new Star Wars Expanded Universe to be largely made up of fan fiction detailing the motivations of the franchise's various directors.

 

Would still be better than the old EU.

[Kevvy Metal]

1 hour ago, macosx said:

 

Oh come on the most evil thing he ever did was sit in a chair and look ugly. Not a high bar for villainy.

 

 

[Girth Certificate]

Clearly Rian loved Snoke more than anyone and wanted to save him from the Star Wars curse where the more you learn the shitter something becomes so he killed him off before he could be ruined forever. By the time StarWars was finished with him he would have turned out to have been Dexter Jettster after he had his pituitary gland removed because of smoking too many deathsticks.

 

 

[amc]

5 hours ago, wev said:

It's part of the fun but also a huge part of the problem a d ultimately results in all "not my Star Wars" style shit

Oh yeah there are a good few idiots who get wound up when things don't go their way. It's fine to be pissed off that a film jettisoned a lot of plot strands but to become militant because Snoke wasn't who you had speculated takes a special type of knob. I think those are in the minority amongst those speculating about trailers and plot points. That whole not my Star Wars was more an amalgam of people who genuinely didn't like the film, said unhappy script writers and genuine shits with agendas whipping up a frenzy.

 

Those last two groups aren't going to spoil my fun in concocting daft theories about Lando becoming a Jedi or whether the Emperor has a robot body with the arch Sith's brain inside. And when the film drops and Lando dies and the Emperor turns out to be a ghost, I won't be angry. I'll just smile and move on.

[Popo]

2 hours ago, JPL said:

Unfortunately we never got to find out, which makes his inclusion completely redundant.

 

I don’t think there was any intention to explore this stuff. The start of episode VII launches into a new period in galactic affairs, already in full flow - one of the many ways that movie echos A New Hope. 

 

Theres a new bad guy, he’s called Snoke, we know he’s bad because look at his face... let’s batter him. 

[linkster]

22 minutes ago, Popo said:

 

I don’t think there was any intention to explore this stuff. The start of episode VII launches into a new period in galactic affairs, already in full flow - one of the many ways that movie echos A New Hope. 

 

Theres a new bad guy, he’s called Snoke, we know he’s bad because look at his face... let’s batter him. 

More likely a lame attempt to go all Game of Thrones. “OMG they killed a major character, so shock”, except nobody gives a shit

[Popo]

It was a great twist, but not something you could reasonably have any emotional investment in. Who cares about Snoke? He was more a plot device than a character, really. 

[Glasgowchivas]

Making Snoke a Force User - basically, the Emperor-lite - was the biggest mistep imo. I hated his character but if he'd just been some Dude, who was the head of this new Space Nazi Group, that would have been cool! Even more so if he was the one that managed to "turn" Ben Solo and had him in thrall to him - all without Force Powers! But no. I'm glad he's dead.

[Ivanho]

Re the Rey - TIE Fighter jump

 

Edit:  As pointed out, this is a big’ish spoiler (thanks @Kevvy Metal for the reminder)

 

Spoiler

Don’t go into Smyths (or any place that sells Lego) as some of the new sets are spoilertastic!  This was in a promo leaflet for a new Smyths store near me.  Pretty sure the set comes with Rey as well.

 

Edited April 16, 2019 by Ivanho

[Kevvy Metal]

3 minutes ago, Ivanho said:

Re the Rey - TIE Fighter jump

 

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Don’t go into Smyths (or any place that sells Lego) as some of the new sets are spoilertastic!  This was in a promo leaflet for a new Smyths store near me.  Pretty sure the set comes with Rey as well.

 

 

Might want to actually write that what you've hidden is a proper ep.9 spoiler!

[Ivanho]

12 minutes ago, Kevvy Metal said:

 

Might want to actually write that what you've hidden is a proper ep.9 spoiler!

 

Sorted! 

[BitterToad]

18 hours ago, JPL said:

The mystery more than anything. Who is this new evil master? How did he rise to power? What are his motives? How is his story going to play out?

 

Unfortunately we never got to find out, which makes his inclusion completely redundant.

 

Some people will say that’s typical JJ, but I still think Rian should have worked with what he was given and figured it out, rather than just killing him off because he didn’t like the character or couldn’t be arsed to explore that line of the story, or whatever his reasons were.

 

His premature demise was definitely a low point of TLJ for me.

Right but what's a satisfying end to the Snoke storyline that hasn't already been played out within the Star Wars canon? That isn't just Snoke is related to someone we already know? I'm not saying that that Trope is totally dead in all fiction, but in Star Wars? The series with the most famous familial twist of all time? Nah mate. What are your options; Snoke's Ray's Dad? Bleh, a retread of Empire. Snoke's Han's Gran? It feels nice to say and it's a nice image and he did look a bit like one of those old women you see that look like they've had a fuck tough life, but I'm pretty sure the TLJ sucked crowd wouldn't go for it. 

 

What I'm saying with the above, sort of aside from all the Nan content, is that in the age of the internet it's quite difficult to come up with a series of twists that won't get thought up and shared around between the exact group of people that hated their beloved Star Wars baddies not seeming as important as they'd like. Nerds that like Star Wars a bit too much. So the bigger twist is to just throw it all away. Make the films about the characters rather than some tired DUN DUN DAAAAAAAH moment linked to a series of films that came out 40 years ago. This isn't about Snoke in the same way it's not about Rey's parents. It's about Kylo Ren and Rey. Two interesting, well developed characters that we've seen grow over two films. I'm much more into their story than that of unseen abandoner parents and big bollock head evil Andy Serkis. 

[Kevvy Metal]

12 minutes ago, BitterToad said:

This isn't about Snoke in the same way it's not about Rey's parents. It's about Kylo Ren and Rey. Two interesting, well developed characters that we've seen grow over two films. I'm much more into their story than that of unseen abandoner parents and big bollock head evil Andy Serkis. 

 

Man, so this. yes. 

The same with the supporting characters from the prior films, like Luke. Rey is the new blood hero. Luke is there for Mentor support, not the star of the show. 

[JohnC]

1 hour ago, Ivanho said:

Re the Rey - TIE Fighter jump

 

Edit:  As pointed out, this is a big’ish spoiler (thanks @Kevvy Metal for the reminder)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Don’t go into Smyths (or any place that sells Lego) as some of the new sets are spoilertastic!  This was in a promo leaflet for a new Smyths store near me.  Pretty sure the set comes with Rey as well.

 

 

56 minutes ago, Kevvy Metal said:

 

Might want to actually write that what you've hidden is a proper ep.9 spoiler!

This is actually from the Resistance animated show and the figures with it are also from that, apart from one crossover character (not the one named in the spoiler).

 

[Paulando]

Snoke was nothing. Meaningless. Hinted at being the big bad in TFA, but turned out to be a wet fart with about five minutes of screen time. He was a bump in the road for the real villain of the trilogy: Kylo Ren, of course. I love that.

 

It is a shame the trilogy wasn’t fully road mapped though, and the Emperor’s laugh is yet more proof of that. That’s the biggest failing of these films. The Emperor should have been hinted at in TLJ if anything, not a teaser trailer.

 

I wonder if Michael Arndt had planned a full trilogy, which was chucked out by JJ when he was booted off the project?

[JohnC]

Kennedy claims the Emperor had been planned for this movie for a long time.