Like the Leia getting force powers out of nowhere in space. Sheesh.
“Somehow Palpatine returned”
Comedy gold. Literally in the opening crawl and then some background character was like “I don’t know, dark force powers, cloning or some shit” and that was all we got 🤣
I always said that opening crawl should behave been the movie. How Palestine came back, grew power, and the opening 10 seconds of him searching for the stones. That should have been half of the movie
Watch that and then the “By Grabthar’s Hammer, what a savings” line from Galaxy Quest.
It’s the exact same pained expression, but Oscar Isaac’s is real.
Definitely needed explained better (or at all).
I don’t really mind it as a plot twist, but it shouldn’t have just come out of nowhere. I’m still not clear on exactly what is supposed to have happened there.
Also, there was that weird thing where they announced it in Fortnite, wtf was that about.
It is/was a terrible idea. It inherently devalues the end of the original trilogy and it’s incredibly lazy.
I agree that it’s a pretty bad idea to bring back Palpatine, and that the execution of that idea was also really bad, but this idea has been in the Star Wars universe for a long time - in the early 90s the Dark Empire comics were all about a clone of the emperor secretly working to assemble a powerful industrial and military machine in the galactic core, before going on a crusade to restore the galactic empire, with Luke Skywalker as his new enforcer, to replace Dark Vader.
The comics were and are extremely popular and a lot of the sequel movies seem to pull some ideas from them, but never in a way that really makes sense. For example, in Dark Empire, the republic has to deal with a mysterious new military force conducting heavy strip mining of planets long before they know anything of the new imperial threat.
It’s well known (and good) trait of Star Wars movies that they jump straight into the action without too much context, but the writing on episode 9 was so sloppy it feels amateurish. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I believe they could have got a fanfic author to do a better job. Delivering exposition like “somehow, palpatine has returned” directly to the audience is a fucking joke.
To be fair, though, I think the scenes on Exegol pretty much confirm that it was cloning, or some kind of Sith alchemy, and subsequent works (the Mandalorian, for example) are definitely leading in that direction, but that’s a post-hoc explanation for something that already damaged our immersion, not foreshadowing or a further explanation of something that was already plausible but a mystery.
I do think it’s a really good thing to have mystery in Star Wars, not everything needs to be explained and every new story should add new mysteries. I think things being mentioned and not explained (the Clone Wars mentioned in ep 4 being the best example of that, imo) is part of what makes the universe feel vast and real, like it has a full history that you could study for years. So I don’t agree with that “an intriguing story hook is shown and never explored” is always fair criticism. Sometimes it is, but often it’s just a cool mystery that will inevitably be answered in some minor novel or comic a few years later.
Anyways, I’m not saying they should have copied Dark Empire, or demonstrate/explain exactly how Palpatine returned or how he built his fleet. They should have just hinted at it by having the resistance interact with a new military force with a different aesthetic than the New Order. Have Rey bothered by a growing darkness that she assumes is Kylo, but reveal that Kylo had felt it too and doesn’t know what it is. Show the cloning vats and Sith alchemy on Exegol before we know that Palpatine’s back.
Definitely, 100%, don’t announce the twist villain of your movie on Fortnite to generate buzz. Make less money, probably, but a much better movie. I’ve written way too much in this comment, sorry, I’m having an autism/adhd moment
Definitely, 100%, don’t announce the twist villain of your movie on Fortnite to generate buzz. Make less money, probably, but a much better movie. I’ve written way too much in this comment, sorry, I’m having an autism/adhd moment
That is still the stupidest bit of it, it’s not even revealing the twist villain that’s the issue even, like that could have built mystery if it was in the trailers and shit right, it’s using a third party studio to reveal a critical plot point in a media that is pretty young, both in it’s age and audience, and in a game that’s looked down upon by the generation that would probably be the target audience for the reveal
Also it’s time limited so it’s just a matter of time before his reveal becomes lost media, so great thing there too
I agree that it’s a pretty bad idea to bring back Palpatine, and that the execution of that idea was also really bad, but this idea has been in the Star Wars universe for a long time
What’s funny is that I didn’t know about that (I’m a movies only type on SW, never known much about the extended universe), but I actually think it’s fine as an idea. Just needed to be presented better.
I would like, for instance to know how, if at all, Palpatine and Snoke were connected. The sudden loss of Snoke in TLJ really robbed the sequels of their villain far too soon. If he had stuck around to IX, and then was revealed to be a front for Palpatine (with explanation for his survival) that would have worked better.
Still though, I really enjoyed IX, which I know is an unpopular opinion, but after TLJ, it just felt right again, even if lots of it was very silly.
In my opinion, and this is gonna be deep Star Wars legends theorising rather than canon, Snoke was almost definitely intended to be Darth Plagueis (of “the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise” fame), Palpatine’s former master. He was obsessed with Sith alchemy, cloning, biological engineering, that kind of thing, and famously could “keep the ones he cared about from dying […] but not himself”. He roughly matches the appearance of the character, with some extra scarring. He would be one of the few characters capable of producing a viable force sensitive clone (I’m ignoring X-1 and X-2, because they’re minor game characters which probably didn’t get much thought put into them) something which Vader and the Kaminoans had been working on secretly with limited success.
I think the reason that we didn’t get a Snoke=Plagueis reveal in Rise of the Skywalker (RotS) is because fans had been speculating about it from the beginning, and “defying audience expectations” was vogue in media at the time (e.g. the game of thrones final season), and extremely heavy criticism of The Last Jedi (TLJ) influenced the story team to almost completely ignore TLJ entirely, almost as if it was cursed and if they referenced any events in it, RotS would also be cursed. So they had to, essentially, cram two whole movies of storytelling into RotS, which is why the pacing of that movie is so absolutely ridiculous.
The likelihood is that we’ll never get a direct answer as to Snoke’s origins, or if we do, it’ll be in some random novel or comic. I get the feeling that Disney want to brush a lot of the sequel trilogy’s bigger mistakes under the rug, so to speak.
At least they are explaining it now. That seems to be the entire plot of The Mandalorian.
This was honestly so funny, it’s hard to be mad at them for just not even giving a shit. Yeah we could pull an explanation out of our asses that won’t make any sense, or we just throw that libe at people.
Palatine’s here, now stop asking questions and put popcorn in your mouth!
Padme dying during labor. In an advanced medical tech universe. And the lamest explanation for it “she’s lost the will to live”…
Well that’s not how girls work and it’s quite a telling the script was written by a bloke.
Never thought of this, you’re not wrong.
On the other side her dying because she lost the will to life… is kind of a good explanation for an unlikely death in such an advanced civilization.
Obviously they could simply keep her alive despite any actual medical condition. So what else could she die of… except for a spiritual (I don’t know a better description) reason.
Kind of a “so bad it’s actually good” explanation.
I know we’re dealing with human aliens, but there is actually a thing called takotsubo cardiomyopathy, also known as “broken heart syndrome”, where your heart weakens as a result of emotional trauma.
It is rarely fatal, but deaths have occurred as a result of it.
It was explained in one of the comics that she died because Vader was unknowingly siphoning her life energy to keep himself alive.
The scene is still dumb and definitely needed a better explanation but it is what it is at this point
The only head canon that makes sense is that Palpatine drained her life force in order to bring Vader back from the dead.
The only head canon that makes sense to me is that Palpatine used Padme’s life force to bring Vader back from the dead.
“That’s a good question, for another time”
That another time never happened. Sums up the sequel trilogy. Lots of setup, but no payoff.
Ugh that scene TFA derailed it in microseconds. So much stupid hand waving by JJ. That movie started on such a high note, then every minute following the opening act was like watching a bouncy house slowly deflate.
Having bombing spaceships that bizzarely seem to rely on gravity was a pretty terrible way to open a film.
They weren’t using gravity, they were electromagnetic rails that shot the bombs out of the bay into the enemy ships. I mean it’s still dumb since you could fire them from further away, just not dumb for the gravity reason.
Yeah, that kind of makes it even dumber to me.
I’m not a 100% sure I understand this. IIRC it was bombing spaceships hovering above a planet dropping bombs into the atmosphere, correct? (Totally possible that I’m misremembering!) In that case using gravity would be absolutely fine.
I could be wrong but I could’ve sworn that while they were fighting above a planet, they were still “dropping” bombs on a ship below them.
So if the rebels have a ship that works only if you happen to be fighting above a planet with a ship below you, that’s even sillier!
Oh, the bombs were meant for another ship, not the planets surface? Then indeed gravity makes little sense, or at least it’s a very straightforward and uninspired port of the concept of bomber planes.
But I guess they wanted it to fit in with everything else… :(
Any scene with older Anakin and Padme. All those love scenes were just cringe
I like the fan theory that he unknowingly mind tricked her into falling in love with him, because that’s the only explanation for how she could fall in love with someone that makes me want to hide my face in shame out of cringe.
My own head cannon is that she never actually loved him but was convinced by Obi Wan to play the role to perhaps act as a stabilizing influence.
But soon she discovers that her erstwhile side piece is a psychotic man-child with the powers of a minor god. Now things have spiraled out of her control. There’s a legitimate fear that, it rejected, Anakin could become unhinged and lose control.
After a few years in a loveless marriage she found herself pregnant and, like in a lot of actual abusive marriages, latches onto that as a means of preserving a relationship that should have been allowed to mercifully die.
This is the only way I can reconcile the terrible performance from an otherwise exemplary actress. She was playing the part of a woman playing a part.
This is why I hated Attack of the Clones.
I know the love story is important, but it was bloody tedious to watch.
I like the idea (I don’t want to call it a fan theory) that it resembles a typical “first love” relationship. Whose first relationship / young love was not cringe and full of awkward situations (for bystanders)?
She uses her powers to find Luke at the end of Episode V. (The scene you described is weird nonetheless)
The whole “REEEEE SINCE WHEN DOES LEIA HAVE FORCE POWERS!!!” shit is just…goddamn it
There was SO MUCH wrong with that movie, and you picked the most obvious, easily explained, not-in-any-way-a-plot-hole scene?
It had to be people who never actually saw the original trilogy. That’s the only explanation.
How could the daughter of the most powerful force-user possibly have Force powers?
It’s truly baffling.
Well, we’d already found out who’s Luke’s dad, so the film ended with a cliff hanger which would get people talking: why was she able to hear Luke?
I’m more mad at the execution than the fact they did it. No build up to it, and you can practically see the wire.
The issue I had with that particular scene is not that she had force powers. She comes from a force-sensitive family, so her having latent force powers makes sense. Key word here being “latent”.
What absolutely did NOT make any fucking sense is A: Leia not dying of asphyxiation when she enters the vacuum of space and B: Leia just happening to know how to use force pull without any prior training. Like, they don’t even try to hand-wave it off by saying something like “Oh, she spent some time training with Luke when you weren’t looking” or something.
She did spend time training with Luke when you weren’t looking. I mix up canon and legends but I’m pretty sure the same thing happens in both, more or less - she learns quite a lot of the basics from Luke until she has a vision of her son dying at the “end of her Jedi path”, and in both Legends and Canon that vision is fulfilled.
Hey, didn’t I cut a scene from one of those movies? Yeah that’s the one. I want to put it back in. let’s see. Ah crap, that guy there, what’s his name? Jab…Jaffa? He needs to be a slug. Can we change that? What the hell, it’s the 90s, we can find some computer nerd to do that. Needs to be bigger too. Like, erm, bigger than the frame? Will that work? Ah what the fuck keep him man sized, he’s a space monster he can change size or some shit. That bit there - whassname, Sulu, he needs to be standing on Jagger’s tail. Just make him stand on the tail. Cut him out and move him up and down it’ll look fine. Yeah sure, I’d stand on a mafioso’s tail - it’s a power move, they respect that. What’s this scene about anyway? Yada yada, removing the bounty, yada yada… yeah I remember there was something about a bounty in one of those movies. It all fits. It’s like I planned it all in advance.
Oh man, we can’t make Han look like the bad guy! Just a quick select -> translateX -20% should do the trick.
I’d stand on a mafioso’s tail - it’s a power move, they respect that.
Straight from the book “how to make a boring scene more interesting without fixing the underlying scene layout problem that gave you the boring scene in the first place”.
In this thread: People who haven’t seen the Star Wars Christmas Special.
And that’s a good thing. Don’t see it. Don’t do it. You think you’re curious, I get it. But you’ve been warned. If you try to watch it, for goodness sake, at least bring a group of friends so that someone else will understand your lingering pain.
Grandpa Wookiee watching vr porn is something no one should have to witness
Indeed!
And to clarify for anyone reading along. We are not exaggerating. That’s a thing that happened in Star Wars. It’s cannon.
It’s arguably more cannon than the books. At least Grandpa woolie dies a well deserved gruesome death in the books. There’s that small comfort.
People think it’s going to be like the room, or like watching paint dry. Something that either has a familiar sense of boredom or alternatively any amount of entertainment that can be derived from watching. This is incorrect. There is no entertainment value, nothing to extract joy out of. Just a deep sense of discomfort and the overwhelming urge to literally do anything else with your time.
You understand my pain. Thank you for that.
It’s the best movie in the series!
Especially the first incomprehensible 30 minutes!
The hoverbike scene in Boba Fett. And basically anything to do with those teenagers gang members. Their bikes remind me of kitchen aid mixers meet the power rangers. The affects are so bad, the story is so bad the music is so bad. I don’t think I found one good quality in that scene. Except it made me laugh for how bad it was.
And there is another scene when they are on battle and one of them does a “cool” spin for absolutely no reason.
My assumption was they were trying to shoehorn in the gang as a throwback to greaser hotrod culture (by way of mod scooter culture) since George Lucas was into that when he was a teenager, but it was so jarringly bad in an already bad series that it just came across as cringy and laughable. It didn’t help that those scenes were filmed incredibly clumsily and all the scooter gang characters were annoyingly tryhard.
Boba Fett, every episode except the two that are obviously just The Mando eps, fit OP’s question. The show is so bad I bet fans stopped watching SW. It’s embarrassing. It’s complete and utter garbage.
I always found it funny because they have been flying since forever, it’s just that they didn’t see any of the other movies
That’s was the scene that broke the camels back for me. Stopped watching immediately and haven’t watched anything Star Wars related since. Don’t think I ever will again either.
You’re missing a lot if you don’t watch Andor though…
At this point, I barely consider Andor to be “Star Wars”. It’s so far outside the normal shitty formula. There are like 19 real “Star Wars” shows on Disney+, and Andor just happens to share the same influences.
Sometimes I describe Andor as a 10/10 show that’s a 9/10 because it’s Star Wars
And I love Star Wars
Nope, Leia space surfing was the worst
When they gave Yoda a lightsaber for the first time. Most iconic character ruined.
Thank you. I see so many people say this was one of the best scenes of the prequels, but I can still remember my stunned disappointment when I saw it in theaters.
Yoda is supposed to be this great sage who is so powerful he never cared about violence or fighting skills. But lolnope, turns out he can actually fight, and when he does he looks like a monkey who did a rail of coke then grabbed onto a glowstick.
he looks like a monkey who did a rail of coke then grabbed onto a glowstick.
Ah, the old hyperactive pinball scene.
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Agreed, I absolutely hated that scene.
People stood up and cheered in my theater for that.
That’s kind of when I stopped caring what other people think about movies.
There are two kinds of star wars fans.
First kind: cares about consistency of plot and character
Second kind: dude it’s all a fantasy, why do you care so much lol, hey look laser sword go buzz lol
There’s a third kind who just enjoy star wars as works of art. It’s ridiculous to care about consistency when the writers don’t
That would be the second kind.
For some definition of art.
That’s why i don’t go to theatres anymore. People really need to be superfans and excited and show their excitement and be more excited than other people.
I saw some videos where people freaked the fuck out while watching engame, and people were so happy to be there for it. To me it looked like an absolute painful experience.
On first viewing it was awesome, then the reality set it after awhile
Most Jar Jar scenes.
The casino planet.
The Holdo maneuver.
Kylo killing Han.
Space popsicle Leia.
Some of these are just awful takes man, I’m sorry.
Like Jar Jar, fair enough, he’s shitty CGI, he has bad writing, and is a pretty weak addition to the prequels. Same with the Leia scene, it looks awful and ruins what could have been an impactful death, with an almost cartoonish feel at odds with the seriousness of the rest of the film.
But the Holdo manoeuvre scene is one of the most visually striking moments in the entirety of Star Wars. It has awesome sound design, great acting, it’s just a really impressive moment with real impact.
The scene where Kylo kills Han is also really well done. The lighting is fantastic, it has some great acting, again, great sound design and a really impactful moment with a lot of suspense, and Chewie’s pained reaction is unforgettable.
The casino planet isn’t a single scene and is more of a story arc, but the introduction of the Canto Bight casino is a pretty typical Star Wars scene, almost formulaic at this point, but is executed well - if you take issue with that one and not the introduction of Takadana, I’d be curious as to why.
I think the worst scene on Canto Bight is where Finn and Rose meet DJ, the hacker. It’s very awkward and stilted, the writing is pretty poor IMO, both the dialogue and the characterisation. I think DJ is a cool character and his writing is fine, but the scene itself and Finn/Rose’s behaviour is really strange.
I actually agree that the holdo maneuver was brilliantly shot, absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately for me it was kinda ruined because it made no sense in the context of the IP.
It’s like if you have horrible writing expertly delivered and acted, you can admire the actors skill but still the scene doesn’t hit for you. So I think it’s a pretty understandable take, as is really enjoying the visuals of the scene in the moment.
Yeah, I understand the perspective, I just feel like it’s a little silly. You can take almost any big moment from Star Wars and recontextualise it so that it makes no sense, but you can also come up with reasons as to why it could make sense -
Why did the Death Star have such an obvious weakness? Because the empire is arrogant and thought nobody would ever get close, or because the designer was incompetent, or because the designer was secretly a rebel (which Rogue One went with), etc.
The hyperdrive has always worked the way that the plot needs it to. It’s an often-repeated fact that hyperspace travel moves at the speed of plot. Pilots and ships seem to have absolutely different restrictions on when, where and how their hyperdrive can be engaged and how it works. We’ve been told that you can’t engage hyperdrive while in a gravity well, but pilots have done it almost as many times as pilots have been restricted by it. We’ve been told that ships can’t jump to hyperspace while they’re engaged immediately by capital ships and snubfighters, but similarly we’ve seen pilots defy those requirements.
We’ve been told that Hyperspace is an alternate dimension where objects have mass shadows and that things travelling through hyperspace have to stay away from those mass shadows, but there’s deliberately no hard facts behind how far away, or what would happen in any given situation, beyond “it would be bad”.
So clearly there are different kinds of hyperdrives, (WEG’s Star Wars RPG gave us hyperdrive classes, but they only control speed, not conditions of when you can enter hyperspace) different kind of pilots, different safety controls… the list goes on forever.
So the question for me becomes: why is this moment in particular the moment the hyperdrive jumps the shark for people? Why can’t we explain it away by saying, “a Holdo manoeuvre requires an incredible amount of control over a ship’s hyperdrive, at a level beyond what even the most powerful droid or astronavigation computer can calculate. Admiral Holdo must have either been force sensitive or incredibly lucky.” or “it’s only possible in situations where both ships have their deflector shields disabled, which almost never happens, but the special tracking ship needs to have it disabled or it can’t do tracking”, or “it’s long been theorised that it can happen, but it requires a battleship-sized ship with advanced shielding and hyperdrive for the mass shadows to conflict in such a way, and understandably few navies have ever been willing to risk a battleship to try it”, or any number of excuses for the scene to happen this one time in a way which doesn’t make it retroactively make us question why it isn’t used in every other space battle.
Yes, in retrospect, the movie probably should have chosen a reason and had someone (Poe, Leia, Rose, etc.) explain what happened, but that’s only with the benefit of hindsight. The writers probably didn’t think that the movie would get an unprecedented amount of criticism from right-leaning trolls looking to make Star Wars a battleground for the culture war for no particular reason, and thought it would make a compelling mystery and talking point for the movie. How did she do it? How does it work? etc. - which it did, just maybe not in the way they were hoping for!
Anyways, I’ve written way more than enough, but I hope I’ve given someone another perspective on the moment.
I don’t think it’s silly to be frustrated by it, also I think it’s fine to think it’s no big deal. This has been discussed pretty much to death by this point but I think what it comes down to is different people have different levels they are willing to take their suspension of disbelief to during a movie and that’s fine. For me, it was a frustrating but beautiful scene that seemed to cause a lot of important plot points even in other movies to no longer really make sense (why go for the death star exhaust with a fighter squadron when you can have a ship hyperdrive through the middle of it for example). Maybe I was already biased against it and it wouldn’t have been a big deal in isolation, but taken with everything else that had happened up to that point made it more frustrating, I don’t know.
Anyway, I’m glad you were able to look past it and just enjoy the scene as it was intended, I wouldn’t wish disappointment on anyone but unfortunately that’s mostly what I got from this scene and the sequel trilogy as a whole.
Disagree about the Holdo maneuver but I will say it really should’ve been Leia. It would’ve made so much more sense for her to go out that way.
Last three are all good.
Leia using force powers isn’t really too unexpected considering she was as strongly connected to the force as Luke and Vader, but was never actually trained.
True but that scene was still trash. She should have died.
Either that or have hinted at force powers earlier in the movie at least.
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There’s a scene from the OT that kills me. When they’re on Endor in the evening and Leia and Han are being “romantic” and it is some of the most soap opera dialogue in the whole series.
Its arguably not terrible when you read it, but watching it I was rolling my eyes. People love to hate on the Padme+Anakin romance but the Han+Luke+Leia love triangle is equally as hard to watch, in my opinion. If we’re going to give one a hard time we can’t ignore the other. Lucas just isn’t the best at dialogue
Leia holds back her tears as Luke slowly lets her go and moves away. He disappears onto the walkway that leads out of the village. Leia, bathed in moonlight, watches him go as Han comes out of the Chief’s hut and comes over to her. Leia is crying, her body trembling. He realizes only now that she is crying.
HAN Hey, what’s goin’ on?
Leia attempts to stifle her sobs and wipes her eyes.
LEIA Nothing. I - just want to be alone for a little while.
HAN (angry) Nothing? Come on, tell me. What’s goin’ on?
She looks up at him, struggling to control herself.
LEIA I…I can’t tell you.
HAN (loses his temper) Did you tell Luke? Is that who you could tell?
LEIA I…
HAN Ahhh…
He starts to walk away, exasperated, then stops and walks back to her.
HAN I’m sorry.
LEIA Hold me.
Han gathers her tightly in his protective embrace.
Funnily enough I thought it was worse when I read it. The actors at least made it somewhat believable. It was terrible though.
Out of nowhere? Luke tells her she can use the force in RotJ
To answer your question though, “I’ve been wondering. What are middichlorians?”
Sounds like a really bad film they made to show in schools for when teachers are uncomfortable with the subject
