Episode IX: Spoilers and Rumors

Hallo to all, a super fresh new from Italy. I’m on the beach with my phone but I read this rumors just now. http://www.bestmovie.it/news/star-wars-stando-agli-ultimi-rumor-il-titolo-ufficiale-dellepisodio-ix-potrebbe-essere/652566/ The rumors is the title of episode IX . Could be “ A new Order”. Please , Reylo Italian explain better than what the rumors tell to other people because my english is very poor !

giaciak2 wrote:Hallo to all, a super fresh new from Italy. I’m on the beach with my phone but I read this rumors just now. http://www.bestmovie.it/news/star-wars-stando-agli-ultimi-rumor-il-titolo-ufficiale-dellepisodio-ix-potrebbe-essere/652566/ The rumors is the title of episode IX . Could be “ A new Order”. Please , Reylo Italian explain better than what the rumors tell to other people because my english is very poor !

@giaciak2

If true, I am meh about that title initially, yet I am sure it will grow on me.

I know one thing for sure - it will set off the Illuminati / Alex Jones conspiracy theorists haha

giaciak2 wrote:Hallo to all, a super fresh new from Italy. I’m on the beach with my phone but I read this rumors just now. http://www.bestmovie.it/news/star-wars-stando-agli-ultimi-rumor-il-titolo-ufficiale-dellepisodio-ix-potrebbe-essere/652566/  The rumors is the title of episode IX . Could be “ A new Order”. Please , Reylo Italian explain better than what the rumors tell to other people because my english is very poor !

@giaciak2

"A New Order" would make sense and be pretty ambiguous since it could allude to The First Order OR the Jedi Order or both, right? Just like many people think Return of the Jedi referred to Luke when it was actually Vader or the Jedi Order in general.

@Tex While we're all watching the same movies, it seems that each sector of the fandom views them completely differently. The first reaction podcast I listened to after TLJ was an hour and a half long and focused on Luke, the entire time! Kylo and Rey were mentioned for about 5 minutes. I mean WOW, the main, and most interesting characters in the film. Luke was a big player, but he's not the focus anymore. He's there to serve the new story and characters, but most of the old fans think this is still his show. They're still rooting for Luke Skywalker, and THAT'S where their anger comes from

Tex wrote:

Chris24601 wrote:

californiagirl wrote:To the shock of no one, Richard E. Grant is NOT playing Thrawn! That he actually has to come out and say this is kind of proof how ridiculous and overblown SW speculation is.

@californiagirl
Correction; it’s proof of how ridiculous the superfans who were butthurt that TLJ wasn’t the story of SuperLuke and his daughter Rey killing the evil Kylo Ren and his master Snoke/Darth Plagueis.

These are the people who can cite chapter and verse of stories from the old EU no one’s even heard of, but also completely misread the climax of RotJ as Yoda/Obi-Wan being right that Luke had to defeat Vader in battle and (I kid you not) that Vader didn’t turn on the Emperor out of love his son, but because he felt the need to prove himself a good man for Luke’s sake.

These are people who think the only thing wrong with the prequel-era Jedi was that they were manipulated by Palpatine and that Anakin betrayed them... not that they were a corrupt institution so divorced from real human emotion they were unable to provide any real emotional support to a young man who’d lost his mother and had visions of losing his wife and children; all but driving Anakin into Palpatine’s arms and that Rey’s task is to restore it exactly to what it was before.* Yet they also think Luke should have hooked up and had a kid because... Skywalker blood?

They also seriously think that their influence is so great they tanked Solo (despite at best maybe 1% of general audiences having even watched their videos), that KK is going to be fired any day now and that RJs trilogy has already been cancelled because of how hated TLJ (which only made about a billion and a half dollars and was the most profitable film of 2017). Oh, and how dare Lucasfilm make a cartoon for the Disney Channel that’s targeted at kids instead of the 20-40-ish superfans.

These are the people we’re going to be getting spoilers interpreted by and they’re basically the worst possible intermediaries for getting any real sense of what the story is going to be because it’s all going to come through the filter of people who think some deep imagined message that Jedi must be sociopathically detached from humanity for the greater good is the truth of Star Wars; not “Love is the Answer.”

* Never mind that the whole reason for sending Luke and Leia off instead of just training them from infancy like a proper Jedi was the acknowledgement by Obi-Wan and Yoda that what the Jedi had become was a failure and that Luke and Leia would need the ‘attachments’ they would form if they had any hope of defeating the Sith.

I have a hunch that the purpose of the sequel trilogy in terms of the Jedi is that Rey and Ben will transform the Jedi into what most casual fans thought the Jedi were before the prequels turned them into emotionless space monks; actual noble Space Knights who fight injustice wherever it is found like you’d find in a fairytale.

@Chris24601

Thank you, sincerely, for taking the time to articulate this so well. Can we throw you a parade?

Seriously, these "super fans" believe that they hold power over the franchise. They're diluted, but they honestly think that TLJ was complete sacrilege and that them abstaining from Solo in the theater and spreading their diatribe was it's downfall. Please, it's cause no one really was clamoring for a Solo film to begin with (Also many other BTS factors) AND the ST's true target audience is not typically the demographic that would go see Solo anyways. The GA didn't come to the conclusion that TLJ and Rian ruined SW. Wake up "superfans"! It's saving SW.

Personally, these "superfans" are the same people who were bemoaning how George Lucas ruined their childhood. And now, NOW they want him back. Please save us George from KK and Rian Johnson. OR my favorite, that JJ will come in and fix everything in IX. Oh lord, talk about grasping at straws. Did we watch the same movies? This is the same guy who read RJ's script and said he wished he'd had the chance to direct it.

I feel bad for them, I truly do. They're stunted, stuck in their insulated "super fan" world that was left to fester in it's own self-loathing. And since they consider themselves veterans of the franchise, they feel they can sit on high and point down at other fans, newer fans, those who enjoy the new content being offered up after years of stale regurgitation. This is how it is, this is how it must be, this is the correct way to understand SW. Even though, they were completely blinded by TLJ, a blindside that did not occur in this corner of the fandom, but was rather further affirmation.

@Tex

I would chip in to buy some confetti for that parade. Or at least a drink for speaking the plain truth when so much of the dedicated fandom is an echo chamber. It's like the various factions hinted at in the ST ancilary materials, be they affiliated with the LS, DS, Imperial Remnants, Rebellion Fanboys, or Elder Houses. They all have something like the OT, EU, or PT that they've latched on to as their favorite part of SW and therefore the most important one which is going to be proved as such via LST's "this will make things right." Hence many of us being curious after seeing TFA and landing in places like Reddit or the Sunken Place where it was a bizarro world of being told what you saw on screen wasn't what was going to happen. Even now after TLJ making some things pretty clear, you still see these interpretations where people interpret their own POV as the correct one counter to anything you'd be taught in a basic literature or film studies class.

Other thing I've mentioned before about the superfan/BNF/fandom journalist phenonmena is that they're a benign version of what journalism prof Jay Rosen calls "the cult of the savvy" for political coverage

Every time the topic of what high profile fans think comes up, I'm reminded of Jay Rosen's theory of the Cult of Savvy. Which essentially is that even if commentators on a particular environment (in Rosen's example, political reporters) position themselves as being impartial observers and analysts, they almost always have their own opinions. Which can drive how they approach and interpret the subject they're discussing, rather than being objective:

here’s a trickier problem: even when the press is trying to be serious, to provide, say, “analysis” instead of a good story, it increasingly relies on an impoverished notion of [the subject matter at hand], a cluster of bad ideas that together form [what people accept as] the common sense of the craft

Where I'd say you see the Cult of Savvy playing into how you have a lot of writers, including the ones getting exclusive coverage at Vanity Fair and Entertainment Weekly, is that they're very much reporting as savvy. Breznican pushing the story that Rey was Obi-Wan's granddaughter based on things he supposedly heard was taken seriously. Until it got brutally debunked. That's a perfect example of somebody's savviness, supposedly knowing better or having insider knowledge than their readers do, shaped a story that was purely one fan's wishes/expectations:

In the United States, most of the people who report on politics aren’t trying to advance an ideology. But I think they have an ideology, a belief system that holds their world together and tells them what to report about. It’s not left, or right, or center, really. It’s trickier than that. The name I’ve given to the ideology of our political press is savviness...When you watch political journalists on a roundtable program summing up the week and looking ahead, what they are usually performing for us is… their savviness.

So let me explain what I mean by that term.  In politics, our journalists believe, it is better to be savvy than it is to be honest or correct on the facts. It’s better to be savvy than it is to be just, good, fair, decent, strictly lawful, civilized, sincere, thoughtful or humane.  Savviness is what journalists admire in others. Savvy is what they themselves dearly wish to be. (And to be unsavvy is far worse than being wrong.)

Savviness is that quality of being shrewd, practical, hyper-informed, perceptive, ironic, “with it,” and unsentimental in all things political. And what is the truest mark of savviness? Winning, of course! Or knowing who the winners are.

To the people inside it, savviness is not a cult. It is not a professional church or “belief system.” They would probably reject my terms. But they would say that journalists need to be savvy observers because in politics the unsavvy are hapless, clueless, deluded, clownish, or in some cases extreme. The unsavvy get run over: easily. They get disappointed: needlessly. They get angry–fruitlessly–because they don’t know how things really work.

Prohibited from joining in political struggles, dedicated to observing what is, regardless of whether it ought to be, the savvy believe that these disciplines afford them a special view of the arena, cured of excess sentiment, useless passion, ideological certitude and other defects of vision that players in the system routinely exhibit.  Therefore the savvy don’t say: I have a better argument than you. They say: I am closer to reality than you. Especially if you are active in politics yourself.

Now in order for this belief system to operate effectively, it has to continually position the journalist and his observations not as right where others are wrong, or virtuous where others are corrupt, or visionary where others are short-sighted, but as mature, practical, hardheaded, unsentimental, and shrewd where others are didactic, ideological, child-like and dreamy.  This is part of what’s so insidious about press savviness: it tries to hog political realism to itself.


The line about "hogging realism" is very much what you see with a lot of higher level fan generated content and discussions because it implies they have more insider knowledge about SW and LF and therefore "know better" (though now some of those fans are screaming for Rian Johnson's head). Which is why you had so many fans buy into the mass-delusion of what the ST was "supposed" to be about and why yesterday's quotes have set off certain corners of the Internet. The Cult of the Savvy is just about ridiculousness when it comes to Star Wars, but if you follow actual press coverage on things like politics, that's where it really becomes dangerous.

Tex wrote:
Personally, these "superfans" are the same people who were bemoaning how George Lucas ruined their childhood. And now, NOW they want him back. Please save us George from KK and Rian Johnson. OR my favorite, that JJ will come in and fix everything in IX. Oh lord, talk about grasping at straws. Did we watch the same movies? This is the same guy who read RJ's script and said he wished he'd had the chance to direct it.

@Tex

From what I've seen, the hardcore "fans" aka traditionalists, while the most vocal group in fandom, are certainly a minority of the SW-viewing audience. But even outside of that, I've found that most of the GA isn't really following the story of the ST very well. IX is a giant mystery. Like JJ can do whatever he wants now because there's nothing left. I hope this doesn't affect general interest in the film/box office.

That's where a hopefully good marketing campaign comes in! While I expect them to push the BFG angle for a little bit, I hope it doesn't last too long. It seems LF is aware this angle isn't very compelling, given they are relegating Resistance marketing for the cartoon and EU books and comics, but relying on Rey and Kylo for TLJ blu-ray etc. marketing. Even Luke, who had been so prominent in early TLJ marketing, took a backseat in the leadup to the movie and afterwards.

Even some fairly intelligent, non-hardcore fans see TFA and TLJ as opposite movies with no logical trajectory, made only according to the filmmaking styles and storytelling methods of their respective writer-directors. One film critic I like quite a bit (meaning he's in an actual critics association, not just some rando YT/podcast pundit), who is not at all a downer or a huge SW fan, and initially liked TFA okay enough, said recently that he is not excited about JJ coming back because the trilogy got so much more interesting under Rian.

So on a fundamental level, it gets down to a lack of faith in JJ, and to an extent Rian. That he set up what paid off in TLJ, that he will continue his story of of TLJ, that there is anything left to continue off of at all. That he does what he does with his setting up of things, but having no plan, let alone an ending, and relying on nostalgia and things viewers are familiar with, while Rian just toys with genres and expectations and does meta-commentary. This narrative makes the former look like a hack and the other one an inconsiderate jerk in the context of the ST.

And this isn't all just conspiracy theory raving fanboys. There's really a lack of discussion about IX other than "JJ will save us" or "JJ will make it lame" and the inescapable "wow, there's no story left". I get the distinct impression that no one was really allowed to acknowledge plotgate in the aftermath of TLJ. IX will have to be very clever to convince the audience that this was the intent the whole time. There's going to be a lot of explaining to do on the part of JJ, Rian, Kasdan, KK, and the SG, and possibly Adam and Daisy come IX, which will no doubt be fascinating.

Chris24601 wrote:

Tex wrote:The GA didn't come to the conclusion that TLJ and Rian ruined SW. Wake up "superfans"! It's saving SW.

@Tex
To be 100% brutally honest, it was the superfans utter inability to let go of Luke, Leia and Han that basically REQUIRED Lucasfilm to jettison the old EU.

The old EU licence holders for the novels had originally planned to phase out Luke, Leia and Han after the Vong War ended (even including poisoning Luke with a toxin that would keep him from ever being as strong in the Force as he had been) with the 20-ish Jacen, Jaina and eventually Ben Skywalker and their generation becoming the protagonists going forward while the now 50-60ish OT heroes were to have been shifted into a mentor role. THAT would have been something you could have kept as backstory and fit right in to what Mark, Carrie and Harrison would have been capable of if a sequel trilogy ever came to pass.

But superfan pushback (which is far more noticeable at the 'tie-in novel' level where a million total books sold or a comic run of 100k is HUGE... vs. the hundred million or so ticket sales for TLJ) caused them to scrap that plan, Luke got powered back up and the adage "6070 is the new 30" started being used by the writers (because novels, comics and video games where you can use artwork based on the actors in their 40s) and proceeded to stall out and then cannibalize the next generation for dramatic tension involving Luke, Han and Leia.

Throw in the superfan demand for "feats" (i.e. ever more impressive Force abilities... up to and including pulling entire star destroyers out of the sky with the Force... and superweapons) and the poor EU never stood a chance. Despite all their professed love for it, the superfans choked out its life and killed it as surely as Anakin did Padme.

@Chris24601

Yeah around the time the original members of this forum got booted from the Sunken Place and migrated here, one of the old posts (somewhere in the Imperial Archives) was about those type of fans spending $$$$ on a billboard by LF's offices in San Francisco



Which isn't cheap given the cost of anything in San Francisco. But as somebody whose interest dropped off after the OT films ended and the EU novels just never grabbed my attention, it does feel like a bit of the goose that laid the golden egg type scenario. Something that got loved far too much to the point that it ended up killing it. And while the EU is one example, it certainly feels from the type of superfan discussions that all of these factions (EU, OT, PT) are prone to this. The thing after the OT ended is that there weren't any more films for 22 years and LF became a company making content to a very niche audience. And fandom back during the OT was the GA, mass market. Versus in the time since then, it's become very niche and hence you have these superfan type of discussions/interpretations about what the story is meant to be about or where it should go. Most everybody here has experience with different parts of the franchise, but if there's a reason for "They Reylos got it right," it's likely more because nobody was wedded to the fandom orthodoxies.

@Tex I also hope IX pulls a RotK or RotS.

But with LotR, the books had been out for 45 years, so the conclusion wasn't the biggest mystery. Even those who hadn't read them might know by cultural osmosis. It's more about the thrill of seeing it play out in an epic way on screen, given that LotR was supposed to be unfilmable!

The ending of the PT was also a somewhat known quantity. By nature of being prequels, one knows some basic things about how they will end. Anakin will be Vader, the Jedi Order and Republic fall, Obi-Wan and Yoda go into exile, the twins grow up separately on Tatooine and Alderaan.

Spider Man is a different animal because those films function more as standalone comic book movies, and was not constructed as a trilogy. People were hyped by the last 2 SM movies, so they went to see a third. Now Disney's got their finger in that pie too!

It also seems worth bringing up Infinity War, which is is technically the 3rd Avengers film, though it's a part 1 of 2 finale, and part of a bigger cinematic universe. That was a global phenomenon by virtue of teasing the movie's villain in every other MCU film for the past 6 years since the first Avengers, and the infinity stones one by one for even longer, along with the promise of seeing all the newer franchises like GotG, BP, Dr. Strange and so on featured in one film with the Avengers they already knew.

I also do not believe in plotgate, though Rian had a fair amount of freedom, but LF isn't doing much to dispell rumors or false narratives, including what some officially involved people have said, including Rian. I also see the interconnecting narrative and themes, but it would seem many others, both in and outside of the fandom, do not.

Saracene wrote:and "no story left" is honestly the dumbest complaint which basically means, "the stuff I invested heavily into didn't pan out".

@Saracene

Truth!

I just think the main issue for most of the audience is they think Kylo is just evil and there's nothing much remaining that is unique about the ST. No one knew about the Ewoks to be sure, but the simple battle of Rebels v. Empire, or the equivalents in the PT and LotR, was enough for audiences at that time, but I'm not so sure about now. Not when we've been inundated with so many other similar blockbusters in the years and decades since.

The main thing is that IX needs a hook, which is not to know the ending or exact plot necessarily. IW was a semi-new story, for one, though it had been teased for a good while and took some influence from the comics. But the audience knew going into RotJ the gang had to get Han out of carbonite if possible, and that Luke would likely have to face Vader again and deal with the whole father-son thing there. And Vader's redemption is more of a plot twist than something that was gradually built up.

But if the Rey's parents thing isn't a thing anymore (and it was never really a thing to begin with), and the films have repeatedly shown Kylo to make bad, destructive, dark side decisions, to the point of being the galactic ruler and screaming he'll destroy Rey and everything else, the nuance of the character and his relationship to Rey gets lost on most of the audience. I know many here have issues with the third act of TLJ, even if we know where it's all going in the end.

The audience doesn't need to know everything going in, but there isn't a whole lot of narrative or potential character development or general conflict being noticed left outside of generic good v. evil no one really seems that invested in. It's one thing to have new plot elements, but it builds or adds onto what is already there. TLJ knocked out the foundations from so many viewers, and there isn't a lot left to build upon.

TFA marketing didn't help matters, but it was mostly catering to what fans wanted or expected to see before. That where the whole weird "chicken or the egg" thing comes in. How much is it LF, and how much is the baggage the viewer already came in with?

IX will be fine, and it has a shot of making more than TLJ, but the circumstances going into it are unlike I have seen for any trilogy or series before, so it's a little hard to gauge.

I agree that Episode IX needs a hook, but it's up to the trailer and promotion to give the audience the hook, not necessarily the previous film. There's more than a year to go before the next film is released.

I think that TFA with its mystery boxes might have created an expectation that the two years in between the films must be filled with all sorts of non-stop feverish speculations, like the films themselves are only there to fuel the in-between discussions and the audience must be pumped to see the next film right after the previous one is over. But that's not really the norm for the big franchises.

Chris24601 wrote:

Tex wrote:The GA didn't come to the conclusion that TLJ and Rian ruined SW. Wake up "superfans"! It's saving SW.

@Tex
To be 100% brutally honest, it was the superfans utter inability to let go of Luke, Leia and Han that basically REQUIRED Lucasfilm to jettison the old EU.

The old EU licence holders for the novels had originally planned to phase out Luke, Leia and Han after the Vong War ended (even including poisoning Luke with a toxin that would keep him from ever being as strong in the Force as he had been) with the 20-ish Jacen, Jaina and eventually Ben Skywalker and their generation becoming the protagonists going forward while the now 50-60ish OT heroes were to have been shifted into a mentor role. THAT would have been something you could have kept as backstory and fit right in to what Mark, Carrie and Harrison would have been capable of if a sequel trilogy ever came to pass.

But superfan pushback (which is far more noticeable at the 'tie-in novel' level where a million total books sold or a comic run of 100k is HUGE... vs. the hundred million or so ticket sales for TLJ) caused them to scrap that plan, Luke got powered back up and the adage "6070 is the new 30" started being used by the writers (because novels, comics and video games where you can use artwork based on the actors in their 40s) and proceeded to stall out and then cannibalize the next generation for dramatic tension involving Luke, Han and Leia.

Throw in the superfan demand for "feats" (i.e. ever more impressive Force abilities... up to and including pulling entire star destroyers out of the sky with the Force... and superweapons) and the poor EU never stood a chance. Despite all their professed love for it, the superfans choked out its life and killed it as surely as Anakin did Padme.

@Chris24601

I am appreciative of the open-minded superfans.  It seems you, @snufkin, and I am certain many more here fit this description, yet your minds are open.  I will pout wish that the two women (who are usually compassionate and intelligent) fit that description, as well - I mentioned them in a an earlier post - friends I drifted from, and I suspect the ST is involved. lol  It seems the majority of the superfans could not let go, which is why they are in a froth, yet I am so grateful for the superfans who are here.  As a new SW fan, due to the ST, and specifically due to TLJ, I am grateful for your knowledge about the SW mythos.  

As an aside, to me, it's obvious Disney and LF appreciate the EU, and introduce what they can, which I know the frothy superfans brush off, yet I love it.  That is interesting insight that the EU creators received pushback as well with what to do with the OT trio.

@Saracene The marketing does do much of the heavy lifting, but ideally the audience should be invested in the story of the films themselves, meaning they should be able to at least identify and follow the story and the main conflicts therin.

californiagirl wrote:@Saracene The marketing does do much of the heavy lifting, but ideally the audience should be invested in the story of the films themselves, meaning they should be able to at least identify and follow the story and the main conflicts therin.

@californiagirl

I think part of the problem is that the ST has to juggle so many things at once. It has to tell the stories of the OT characters, who the large portion of the audience is naturally going to be more invested in than any new characters. Then we have our next generation Skywalker, who's the antagonist and whose story has to be shrouded in uncertainty, so for a large chunk of the audience it might not be easy to get invested in him. Then we have our more traditional heroic characters in Rey, Poe and Finn. I think part of the "nothing to look forward to" reaction is that, for many viewers, the attachment to the new heroes is lacking. If you care about the characters, it doesn't matter if the remainder of the story looks like something you've seen before, you want to see what happens to them. I think Rian intended the ending of TLJ to be a cliffhanger like, well sith how our heroes are going to win now?? But it doesn't look like it's grabbed many people.

californiagirl wrote:@Tex I also hope IX pulls a RotK or RotS.

But with LotR, the books had been out for 45 years, so the conclusion wasn't the biggest mystery. Even those who hadn't read them might know by cultural osmosis. It's more about the thrill of seeing it play out in an epic way on screen, given that LotR was supposed to be unfilmable!

The ending of the PT was also a somewhat known quantity. By nature of being prequels, one knows some basic things about how they will end. Anakin will be Vader, the Jedi Order and Republic fall, Obi-Wan and Yoda go into exile, the twins grow up separately on Tatooine and Alderaan.

Spider Man is a different animal because those films function more as standalone comic book movies, and was not constructed as a trilogy. People were hyped by the last 2 SM movies, so they went to see a third. Now Disney's got their finger in that pie too!

It also seems worth bringing up Infinity War, which is is technically the 3rd Avengers film, though it's a part 1 of 2 finale, and part of a bigger cinematic universe. That was a global phenomenon by virtue of teasing the movie's villain in every other MCU film for the past 6 years since the first Avengers, and the infinity stones one by one for even longer, along with the promise of seeing all the newer franchises like GotG, BP, Dr. Strange and so on featured in one film with the Avengers they already knew.

I also do not believe in plotgate, though Rian had a fair amount of freedom, but LF isn't doing much to dispell rumors or false narratives, including what some officially involved people have said, including Rian. I also see the interconnecting narrative and themes, but it would seem many others, both in and outside of the fandom, do not.

Saracene wrote:and "no story left" is honestly the dumbest complaint which basically means, "the stuff I invested heavily into didn't pan out".

@Saracene

Truth!

I just think the main issue for most of the audience is they think Kylo is just evil and there's nothing much remaining that is unique about the ST. No one knew about the Ewoks to be sure, but the simple battle of Rebels v. Empire, or the equivalents in the PT and LotR, was enough for audiences at that time, but I'm not so sure about now. Not when we've been inundated with so many other similar blockbusters in the years and decades since.

The main thing is that IX needs a hook, which is not to know the ending or exact plot necessarily. IW was a semi-new story, for one, though it had been teased for a good while and took some influence from the comics. But the audience knew going into RotJ the gang had to get Han out of carbonite if possible, and that Luke would likely have to face Vader again and deal with the whole father-son thing there. And Vader's redemption is more of a plot twist than something that was gradually built up.

But if the Rey's parents thing isn't a thing anymore (and it was never really a thing to begin with), and the films have repeatedly shown Kylo to make bad, destructive, dark side decisions, to the point of being the galactic ruler and screaming he'll destroy Rey and everything else, the nuance of the character and his relationship to Rey gets lost on most of the audience. I know many here have issues with the third act of TLJ, even if we know where it's all going in the end.

The audience doesn't need to know everything going in, but there isn't a whole lot of narrative or potential character development or general conflict being noticed left outside of generic good v. evil no one really seems that invested in. It's one thing to have new plot elements, but it builds or adds onto what is already there. TLJ knocked out the foundations from so many viewers, and there isn't a lot left to build upon.

TFA marketing didn't help matters, but it was mostly catering to what fans wanted or expected to see before. That where the whole weird "chicken or the egg" thing comes in. How much is it LF, and how much is the baggage the viewer already came in with?

IX will be fine, and it has a shot of making more than TLJ, but the circumstances going into it are unlike I have seen for any trilogy or series before, so it's a little hard to gauge.

@californiagirl

Saracene wrote:I think the Episode IX will be marketed not just as the end of trilogy, but the end of trilogy of trilogies and the Skywalker Saga. So I doubt it will lean heavily on BFG who have little to do with the Skywalker family story.

I do think that the original marketing for TFA did a lot to confuse the audience about what this trilogy is. The Skywalker saga angle wasn't really pushed then; Kylo wasn't promoted as the next generation of the family but as a mysterious masked villain; Rey and Finn were promoted as the fresh new faces of the franchise. It left some people under the impression that the ST is more like a soft reboot rather than direct continuation.

Oh and "no story left" is honestly the dumbest complaint which basically means, "the stuff I invested heavily into didn't pan out". The idea that you should be able to predict the exact story of the next film based on the previous one is bizarre, because every film has to figure out its own story and bring in new elements, characters and surprises. Like, if you just watched ESB you wouldn't predict that the Ewoks would play a big role in RotJ because they're a brand new thing.

@Saracene

Absolutely agree, I mean, the whole marketing strategy of SW for US and EU (it mostly aimed at hardcore and OT/EU fandom) was a huge mistake, it made the "superfans" even more entitled to their own headcanon and completely ignored the reality. There is a joke running around SW Asian fandom that US fanboys blame the failure of TFA and TLJ's box office on Asian countries and naively thought SW crashed and burned there because Asian people couldn't understand the franchise, but ironically, Asian audience was one of the most open-minded moviegoers who foresaw Reylo would happen long before TLJ and they supported it to the point that LF and Disney could freely promote Reylo in those countries [edit]

@Saracene Totally agree as well. That may be one of the big reasons I give the ST a lot of slack, since I think it's actually much more ambitious from a story and character standpoint than the OT or PT. JJ, and Ardnt before him, knew that Luke couldn't really be in TFA because they wanted to focus on the new characters. Each of the OT3 gets one movie to be featured prominently in the ST, since because the trilogy is not about them, they can't all take center stage at once.

As much as I like the OT characters (though I was never that attached to Luke), they are highly archetypal, which is what the world needed to return to at that time. I actually think the new characters are more interesting, even if their arcs are a little messy at times. Which cycles back to the fact that so many people are so attached to the older characters that the new ones, outside of Rey's parents/Snoke mystery boxes, got kind of ignored in discussion. Han and Luke are gone, Leia's onscreen time is limited, and the theories that fans obsessed over, whether LF intended people so be so engrossed with or not, are dead. I get the less is more approach, I remember JJ saying Kasdan pushed that, but there's a point where the audience isn't getting the point at all.

@RosiePancake I know SW does little business in China, but the OT never came out there, and their box office was small when the PT came out. China the global movie juggernaut is a new thing. SW has basically no history there. Now they are finding it hard to get Hollywood films to hold well because they make so many of their own movies now, like Bollywood does. I might add that Hollywood movies, including SW, don't do well there either.

SW does very well in Japan though, especially the saga films. It was TLJ's 3rd biggest international market outside of the UK and Germany. And their marketing is Reylotastic! Maybe SW taking such influence from Japanese films helps matters.

@californiagirl About China's case, yes it was before TFA, now Reylo/Kylo even has a bigger fandom in China than Japan, which is weird because Ben already committed patricide and that act was against Chinese's Ruism, but hey, at least they could separate fantasy and reality, unlike some people and "the SW forum which should not be named". Their biggest issue with TLJ is Finn and the canto bight plotline, especially Boyega after he destroyed their precious pacific rim franchise.

That's right! They are Reylo positive with the advertising in Asia (and to an extent, Europe). With IX, I am excited to see what they will do with the marketing in those locations. In the US/Canada, it will probably be focused on Bendemption, and if he survives it or not.

Saracene wrote:But it doesn't look like it's grabbed many people.

@Saracene

which makes me wonder what kind of ending would've made them "invested"? I know TLJ wasn't perfect...but the ending was brilliant imo and made sure IX could NOT be a simple rehash of RotJ.

We have so many possibilities now- or maybe that's their problem? That they can't predict where the story will go? Why is that a bad thing?  

Night Huntress wrote:

Saracene wrote:But it doesn't look like it's grabbed many people.

@Saracene

which makes me wonder what kind of ending would've made them "invested"? I know TLJ wasn't perfect...but the ending was brilliant imo and made sure IX could NOT be a simple rehash of RotJ.

We have so many possibilities now- or maybe that's their problem? That they can't predict where the story will go? Why is that a bad thing?  

@Night Huntress

I get the sense that some viewers and fans have a feeling of nothingness, that the last two movies didn't leave narrative threads or character developments to continue to follow. Like IX will be like a separate standalone movie, and this isn't really a cohesive trilogy as promised. It's this sort of confusion regarding what the series is about and why we should care.

Rey and Kylo and the new force users of the galaxy, and maybe not having giant empires and republics, and generally not repeating the mistakes of the past are why we should care. But the end of TLJ on the surface level, which is how much the casual viewer sees, would appear to throw all the potential of that out the window. I hope they emphasize the learning through failure theme, which the end of TLJ really informs.

californiagirl wrote:

Night Huntress wrote:

Saracene wrote:But it doesn't look like it's grabbed many people.

@Saracene

which makes me wonder what kind of ending would've made them "invested"? I know TLJ wasn't perfect...but the ending was brilliant imo and made sure IX could NOT be a simple rehash of RotJ.

We have so many possibilities now- or maybe that's their problem? That they can't predict where the story will go? Why is that a bad thing?  

@Night Huntress

I get the sense that some viewers and fans have a feeling of nothingness, that the last two movies didn't leave narrative threads or character developments to continue to follow. Like IX will be like a separate standalone movie, and this isn't really a cohesive trilogy as promised. It's this sort of confusion regarding what the series is about and why we should care.

Rey and Kylo and the new force users of the galaxy, and maybe not having giant empires and republics, and generally not repeating the mistakes of the past are why we should care. But the end of TLJ on the surface level, which is how much the casual viewer sees, would appear to throw all the potential of that out the window. I hope they emphasize the learning through failure theme, which the end of TLJ really informs.

@californiagirl

@snufkin — I was a very little kid when the OT came out, so the youngest of the old-school fans are my peers. I have to say, I don’t see a lot of pushback on the ST from forty-somethings like myself, although obviously Your Results May Vary. It seems to be more of a young white male thing—and often kind of a right-wing, “incel,” mens’ rights activist thing. I may be wrong, though. And I’m the mom of three young white males who all love the ST—but it just seems like that’s where the drama is coming from on the internet.

@californiagirl — The overall plot of the OT was seemingly very simple when we were watching what was then just called Star Wars (IV)—the overarching plot was “defeat the Empire” (with Leia at the helm of that part), subplots were: rescue the princess, discover Luke’s Jedi calling, discover Han’s good-guy side. ESB was: defeat the Empire, train Luke, rescue Han and Leia. ROTJ was: defeat the Empire, redeem Darth Vader. Leia’s political goal (defeat the Empire) is the thread that ties the whole thing together, with Luke’s Jedi journey as the other big plot point and the redemption of Vader tying the two plots together going forward only at the end of ESB. ESB felt so unfinished because unlike ANH, we didn’t defeat the Empire, Luke’s training was interrupted, Han was captive, and at the end we discovered this huge family secret that Luke has yet to deal with. Obviously TLJ has that unfinished quality as well, but even more so because the Jedi vs. Empire/ Sith dichotomy in the ST is less simple than it was 40 years ago in the OT. We’ve seen the PT, in which the Jedi messed up, and we’ve seen Luke’s moment of weakness in TLJ. We knew from the beginning of TFA that the masked bad guy was connected to the Skywalker family. A lot more grey area, I guess. I don’t know what that says about our era vs. 1977, a nation still reeling from Watergate that needed a good vs. evil story. But it does make it harder to see where things are going.

Personally, I predict Bendemption, Romantic Reylo, and some sort of breakup of the First Order. But I get it how this all seems less obvious than “Luke will turn Vader and they’ll defeat the Empire.”

Lily Snape wrote:Personally, I predict Bendemption, Romantic Reylo, and some sort of breakup of the First Order. But I get it how this all seems less obvious than “Luke will turn Vader and they’ll defeat the Empire.”

@Lily Snape
As one of those barely old enough to remember the OT as it was coming out I feel the need to point out that, at the time between ESB and RotJ “Luke will turn Vader and they’ll defeat the Empire” was ANYTHING but obvious.

Heck, there was serious nerd debate over whether Vader was even the telling the truth about being Luke’s father or not (the lack of internet kept it from being in the same level as “Kylo was lying about Rey’s parents,” but the drama was there and even found its way into letters to the editor for the Marvel Star Wars comics at the time). The idea that he might be redeemed wasn’t even really on the radar either. The idea that Obi-Wan would have lied to Luke about his father and that Yoda would be wrong about the Dark Side being inescapable were alien to the viewers... why would his mentors do that to Luke? Vader was probably lying because he was irredeemably evil was what a lot of people thought.

Frankly, the idea of the Emperor as THE Big Bad hadn’t even caught on yet. Vader was the main villain in everyone’s minds and a lot of fans believed the Star Wars novelization that the Emperor was a dupe of the corrupt establishment, not the true mastermind of it all. There was no hint of a new Death Star with the Emperor aboard to create a centralized target... just a vast empire with no clear sense of how it might be defeated (worth noting is that the Rebel fleet at the end of ESB was just the medical frigate and the transports that escaped Hoth... the Resistance fleet at the start of TLJ looked far more impressive). Instead the general sense was that Luke had to defeat (not redeem) Vader to win the day.

People also didn’t have the sense that ESB was the strongest film of the trilogy. Many fans were, for want of a better term, butthurt that ESB didn’t turn out the way they expected it to based on the first film and criticized it for being such a departure from the first film.

If this sounds familiar it’s because while history doesn’t repeat itself... it does rhyme. People forget how radical a departure ESB was at the time because we’ve had 40 years to get used to the idea that Vader was telling the truth (and Obi-Wan’s certain point of view speech), that the Emperor was the true Big Bad, that a second Death Star was being built and the Rebel fleet was actually big enough to make a play at destroying it with the Emperor aboard to cut off the head of the snake.

40 years from now the way that IX will flow out of TLJ in a logical way will be obvious and self-evident to everyone; the debate will be over how the middle chapter of whatever trilogy they’re up to with one of Reylo’s grandkids as the protagonist has no clear path forward after what just happened.

* * * * *

As to the actual spoiler images; I would have been more shocked if Rey HAD been with Poe, Finn and Chewie to be honest. She’s literally “The Last Jedi” and Luke’s “Last Apprentice” (from a certain point of view) and, if Leia is still in charge, then I’d think her priority would be in Rey learning as much as possible from the Jedi texts so she can train new Jedi since the Supreme Leader and the Knights of Ren are all powerful darksiders.

My hunch is that when we catch up to Rey, she’ll actually be quite frustrated at having been kept out of the action by Leia for so long, even if she intellectually understands the importance. The chance to do something is probably going to be her inciting incident in the film. It also means I don’t expect many early leaks about her or her story since that’s the sort of thing that would be filmed exclusively at Pinewood and not on location.

Thanks @Chris24601 , it's good to have the perspective of a 'longterm' fan.

People also didn’t have the sense that ESB was the strongest film of the trilogy. Many fans were, for want of a better term, butthurt that ESB didn’t turn out the way they expected it to based on the first film and criticized it for being such a departure from the first film.

I feel your words are in fact applicable to every star wars movie released since A New Hope. Except maybe Rogue One, and generally people who love it hate the postology.

Chris24601 wrote: It also means I don’t expect many early leaks about her or her story since that’s the sort of thing that would be filmed exclusively at Pinewood and not on location.

@Chris24601

So basically, Rey is having the same treatment as Kylo during the Pre-TLJ when we had no info about his whereabouts.

@Lily Snape The hostility and more ugly behavior (like KMT's harassment) is part of a larger culture war going on which includes the online and fandom spaces. The same people who tried to 'gotcha' Andi Guiterrez and managed to get James Gunn fired. Which in this case, LF is clearly aware of it and backing their team given how Rian took the gloves off in response to those people and the NYT opinion piece. It's symptomatic of something larger and uglier going on in this current moment. Which to your point, what came out of the OT was in part GL responding to the times he was working in. Same with the PT, albeit he shaped that story with a much heavier hand and it's part of why it misfired with audiences.

@Chris24601 Another youngling during the OT and even though I was exposed to it via my decade older cinephile siblings, any discussions they had weren't about what Starlog or fledgling fandom/nerd communities were debating. ESB is like The Godfather II and that's not a coincidence because Coppola was Lucas' mentor (the old oral histories where they talk about the end of his marriage to Marcia Lucas, she very clearly loathed Coppola) and at one point considered having him direct Apocalypse Now. Audiences expected the same thing again a la TFA's use of familiar elements and characters, they got something different instead. What Irving Kershner called "a fairy tale, not a comic book." Even in the choice of writers, Leigh Brackett cut her teeth on writing pulp novels for the space opera genre but also worked closely with Howard Hawks. And Kasdan's not a genre writer as much as he writes about relationships and people figuring themselves out of the traps their hubris/faults have led them to and if they can get out of them. Even with the run up to TLJ (and the traffic stats here show that people were lurking b/c they were curious), the theories or spoilers were off the wall. Because anybody who's seen one of Rian Johnson's films or TV shows (or listened to all the podcasts he's appeared on to talk film) knew that it wasn't going to be Rey Skywalker meets her awesome Jedi dad for a purity ball and then reunites with the Beautiful Friendship Gang to defeat her evil emo cousin, Kyle Ron. It's always interesting to me how the fans of a franchise that was created and is run by cinephiles and film history buffs tend to be so myopic and ignorant of the history it's built on.

To your point about Leia keep Rey in the shadows, more than likely. Seeing as how Ben lied about her role in Snoke's death to cover his a** and bully his way into being Supreme Leader, a really easy starting point to write the next chapter is how that will play out. Hux's gonna put a bounty out on her.

New "leak" on reddit from 4LOM (wasn't sure to put it here or crack spoiler thread) is discussing the Finn, Chewie, Poe, Rose, and Maz plot line based on the leaked pictures from yesterday, which I'm sure you have all seen and were talking about, reinforcing that the Resistance links up the the cartels that so many of us speculated about months ago lol

Says that Poe's character seems to "have chemistry" with Naomi Ackie's character. Anything that has to do with Rey and Kylo is really hush hush and they seem to be filming more in Pinewood, whether separately or together.

LF is leaking Finn, Poe and Chewie stuff. All leaks from MSW to 4-LOM are about Finn and Poe. SUN leak is about Finn and Poe. JJ posted an image of Finn, Poe and Chewie. That can't be a coincidence because Daisy, Adam, Domhnall, BB8 were filming too but no word on what. So it seems to me that LF approves and feeds there leaks cause not very spoilery.

SheLitAFire wrote:New "leak" on reddit from 4LOM (wasn't sure to put it here or crack spoiler thread) is discussing the Finn, Chewie, Poe, Rose, and Maz plot line based on the leaked pictures from yesterday, which I'm sure you have all seen and were talking about, reinforcing that the Resistance links up the the cartels that so many of us speculated about months ago lol

Says that Poe's character seems to "have chemistry" with Naomi Ackie's character. Anything that has to do with Rey and Kylo is really hush hush and they seem to be filming more in Pinewood, whether separately or together.

@SheLitAFire

Here's the link/leak text:

https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsLeaks/comments/99z1xn/4lom_leak_new_info_from_the_first_act/

With the timing of those leaked set photos, I felt it was time for me to return to Starwarsleaks to add additional context, and clue you all into to everything I know so far! First of all, it’s very exciting to see story moments I’ve only heard about start to be visualized in those production stills. I still only have bits and pieces of the full story, but now that production has begun in earnest it seems pretty much every employee has a basic idea of how the first act will play out- at least from the perspective of Poe, Finn, Rose, and Chewbacca.

It’s very interesting to note that pretty much nothing about Rey is known right now, at least along the people I work with. Allegedly most of her scenes that have started filming are inside Pinewood, and almost no information ever slips out from there, even amongst the production staff.

But that’s neither here nor there. As I mentioned in a comment on the leaked photos, What we’re seeing is actually a reunion between Chewbacca and Poe & Finn; after the events of TLJ the last of the Resistance spread itself across the galaxy in ones and twos to different systems, growing grassroots rebellions from the ground up. Poe and Finn, sent by General Leia, are going from planet to planet retrieving these fledgling groups.

The small force we see in photos, shrouded in camo, is part of a paramilitary group led by Naomi Ackie’s character, who has been working with Chewbacca for months to build a homegrown resistance force. She has been described to me as smart and capable, and has immediate chemistry with Mr. Dameron. She leads them back to their base of operations, where I’ve been told we get some exposition that elaborates on the total control the First Order has.

Later on, they will go to pick up Rose, who has successfully made contact with Maz Kanata and (surprise surprise) Lando. They are gathered in an enormous cavern lit by torchlight, and I’ve been told they’re really playing up the pirate angle: lots of drinking and singing and treasures lying everywhere.

Meanwhile, the lead pirates and Resistance leaders agree that they don’t have strong enough numbers to take on the First Order alone, and that they would need an even bigger group to take them on. Eventually the Hutt Cartel is agreed on and Finn and Poe go with Rose to meet with them (see my previous leak from june). By the end of the first act the resistance has built an entire rag tag army of droids, aliens, outcasts and criminals, all ready to take down supreme leader Ren.