Exploring TROS & The Future of Star Wars...

Yes, they were, which is what really smarts.
I have little respect for Abrams now but even he wasn't the true mind behind the destruction of the Skywalker/Solos - it was those in charge at DLF. They hired him, they 'okayed' it and it was their idea. They firmly insisted on a female protagonist...but in their need to make Rey 'loved' all they did was make her a Mary Sue. Funnily enough, they did a fine job with Jyn Erso, and I often wish Reyt had been more like her.

What is such a shame is that the ST really could have been great. They had some good ideas, but executed them terribly. Instead of an epic end to a nine film saga, we got the Fall of the House of Skywalker.

If I remember correctly, they wanted Rey to have a crummy upbringing and be very alone, which is harder to do if she’s a Skywalker. Or maybe they didn’t want Luke to have actual kids. They were also decanonizing almost the whole EU, and there would have been pressure to make her Mara Jade’s kid too. Rumor has it even Filoni doing his probably Thrawn trilogy-inspired movie won’t touch the character, or the OT3, and might make a replacement character, both because of the baggage and the fact she doesn’t work in the new canon post-ROTJ timeline, and I’ve seen critique of the early 90s male gazey sci-fi tropes she fell into. Side note, I’ve seen a summary for Ahsoka, and Filoni’s got too many space wizards involved. Even Sabine from Rebels?

I believe it was actually Kasdan who thought of Reylo, yes? The TFA force bond at least. He was also a consultant on TLJ, but not TROS! Boy can I tell. He was the one who wanted to Luke and Vader to go off together at the end of ROTJ.

What's wild is that some of the fanbase would have actually liked reverse Vader, because they don't understand SW isn't supposed to be grimdark. Like they want their franchise to change with them without realizing that would make it unrecognizable and not even itself. Like just make your own space franchise at that point. These are the people also miffed at Mando for sometimes being kind of fluffy and juvenile, they want a gritty bounty hunter show that largely never existed. Like are they new here, if ANH came out today, you know some of its fans would hate it for being campy.

And Mary Sues don’t exist, the only clearly identifiable group of people who use the term unironically are fanbros who want everything to same the same and cater to their specific desires, who use it on every female character don’t like or think is too prominent or does basically anything. If Leia or Ripley or Sarah Connor came out today, they would be called Mary Sues too, but people grew up with them, so they’re free from the label. Like I wish people could just say they don't like a character or don't think she's well-written and explain why without the double standards or weirdly high standards or inventing a victim complex. It's their term, and not really anyone else's, and given that they're all fairly toxic, and have poor media comprehension and not very good taste, the rest of the world doesn't want to adopt their vocabulary.

I just hope the people making the new movie don't treat her and Rose like crap, those two characters went through it. And please don't make Finn go Reeeeey 23 times again, it was way too clingy at that point in the story.

In the meanwhile, Zack Snyder of all people is releasing a new duology of SW-ish Netflix movies called Rebel Moon, he says it's about redemption, and boy are the Reylos excited for it.

Leia, Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor were as far from Mary Sues as possible. Ripley started off as a scientist, not a warrior. Leia was not superhumanly good at everything she did. And Sarah...she started out as a shy waitress who had to be rescued and her character arc from that to Mother of the Future was a true hero's journey.
Compare these characters to Rey....all of them had to work hard to get what they wanted, even Leia, with her privileged upbringing. Rey simply had it handed to her. And what really makes me mad in TROS and everything they've done since TROS is how they hammer home how more 'deserving' she was than Ben. As Ben was a mentally ill grooming victim this is particularly repellent. I have seen real life abuse survivors of both sexes on tumblr who were broken hearted by this.
Disney have a lot to answer for.

@motherofpearl1 The whole point is that the people who call Rey, or any character, a Mary Sue wouldn't notice the difference, they only reason they don't call those older characters that is their own nostalgia, they're grandfathered in and held to different standards than new female characters. If those characters were created today, they would be mad about them for some very dumb reasons, because that's how they operate about everything, and they are literally 99% of the people who use the term outside of this forum.

And I find someone who was isolated and half-starving since childhood when we find her a little hard to believe as some spoiled thing. I don't like Rey Palpwalker any more than anyone else, but if anything I thought TROS treated her as badly and insultingly as Ben, which is surprising since she's the one who lives. Many Reylos I see are more upset about her than Kylo, what they did to them both was really unflattering to put it mildly.

Look, it's hard to take the concept seriously when the only people I see using the term in the wild just kinda suck. There's a reason no one else is using it. If the problem is a narrow conception of what female protagonists should do, I wish they would say that instead. The repetition of this kind of character in the past 10-12 years, and many have less range of emotion than Rey, isn't to the benefit of those characters or audiences either.

The people who use Mary Sue were mad the ST wasn't about Legends Luke, were mad it was a girl character who also wasn't from one of the pre-established families, were mad Han Solo died even though Harrison Ford was thrilled, were mad there was a Black stormtrooper, were mad Kylo wasn't like Vader but also would have been mad if he was like Vader. They were going to hate the ST, especially after TFA, no matter what it did, their whole purpose is outrage culture. It's hard to take "Mary Sue" as a good faith argument when it's kind of inherently a bad faith argument and that's really been it's only usage, it can't really be twisted into something more useful. It's honestly a bit of a dogwhistle, nothing good follows it, it's not actual media analysis at all.

The idea that the same people who will make a ton of rant videos about Brie Larson, and put her in random thumbnails for some reason, should be taken seriously about any piece of media, let alone a trilogy they didn't even really want, who are salty it wasn't a live-action Legends novel, who hated TROS too, are actually right and everyone who disagreed with them were dumb, delusional women who didn't know what was going on and should have just shut up and gone away, yeah, that seems kind of regressive and inaccurate.

TROS was a movie that tried to make everyone happy, a thing which literally cannot be done, especially considering different people wanted totally opposite things that negated each other. So much of what happened during that mid-late 2010s time was the weight of the prequels and EU, and Disney wanted to forget both. But since 2019 or so, LF has been noticeably more rah-rah prequels, that 20-30 year nostalgia cycle is powerful. I actually suspect the whole Legends-era Jacen Solo thing was part of why they ultimately didn't go that way with Kylo, because they already knew people didn't like that. And that was when there had still been multiple other Skywalker/Solo kids left!

Side note, TROS miraculously has a 6.4/10 rating on imdb, higher than one would suspect, and I've actually seen more people than you think who really liked the movie or at least thought it was ok. But even TLJ which got disproportionately review-bombed by like 10% of the audience has a higher rating. And there's a lot of residual ill-will from the whole experience despite that. And only a couple movies a year make a billion dollars anymore, they really can't give the Rey movie a ridiculous budget like Indiana Jones this year, or the ST movies for that matter.

I actually believed that along with Leia Rey was the person most character assassinated in TROS.

Regarding the black stormtrooper...I was fine with that. But, he was badly written. I would have much preferred Finn to be a 'darker' character, we had a 'wisecracker' in Poe.
The tv series based on the Halo computer game presented a far more accurate picture of a brainwashed child soldier.

Yes, Finn should have been treated better, all of them really. I only just remembered the other week that they made Poe a former spice runner, more than one person pointed out that was kind of racist.

Okay, last thing I'll say on the subject of Mary Sue, I swear I'll shut up! It's not a real or valid concept, but a construct made up and used by people who wouldn't mean any of us well, who don't want anyone not exactly like themselves in their fandoms or media, so I see no reason why we should take it seriously or think and talk like that ourselves. They even took the name from a fanfiction character to deride the kind of people who would write fanfiction in the first place, and any of their media preferences.

There's a rumor that the TROS reshoots that added in the Palpatine and Rey Skywalker stuff was studio mandated, and supposedly Bob Iger, who has been one of the weirdest awful corporate people this year, made them bring Palpatine back. I miss the version that was going to have Matt Smith as a sith acolyte.

In better news, I saw that the Reylos who still hang around SW are doing their big annual AO3 event. They crossed 30,000 fanfics there, and were in the top 20 ships of all time on the site. Or at least until AI programs started using it for a data training set and thousands of people deleted their fics. So gross.

A fan recently did two editions of a SW shipping poll. In the first one, she picked 60 ships and allowed bots, but Reylo still won over half the votes, like it wasn't even a contest. In the second one she removed Reylo because it already won and didn't allow bots, but still let people pick as many ships as they wanted, and Han and Leia won over half the votes. Some of the more recent stuff, even non-canon ships, did relatively well.

I think people might not be as into Hanleia or many older ships if it came out now, some people really don't want romance in anything.

Believe it or not, there are people - especially on the FICM - who are now calling the Han/Leia romance 'toxic' and that he 'kissed her against her will.' I've decided not to engage with anyone with that kind of outlook, as these days it's pointless. When I tried to point out on a news site, of all places, that the interrogation scene in TFA was a work of fiction one person proceeded to 'follow me' repeatedly while I was in conversation there, constantly lecturing me on how I must 'support the abuse of women' and 'how I should be ashamed of myself' to the extent I logged out.

I really think spicy, exciting romance is dead. And it saddens me.

Off topic...I've mentioned this before, but why are so many Finn fans filled with hate for Kylo?

If you want the spicy romance, it exists mostly in publishing (rare in TV, rarer in film), both the self-published/ebook sphere but also the big publisher sphere. Goodreads added a romantasy category to their awards this year because it's gotten so big.

Yes, I'm finding solace in reading, I'm an avid reader with a vast book collection, and I've bought Hurricane Wars - not reading until Xmas!
I find YA to be a good source of 'enemies to lovers', plenty of that in fantasy, currently reading Fourth Wing.

Regarding what I said about Finn, I think much of the hatred stems from Finn/Rey shippers...they think 'Kylo stole Finns girl', but I remember shortly after TFA both Daisy and John shot down Finn/Rey, insisting they were 'just good friends'.

I will forever dislike Disney now, which is a shame because I loved them as a kid. They chose to destroy SW, which I have also loved since I was a kid, which got me through some hard times. It's been a tough few years, one in which I needed escapism. but I have sadly been forced to accept that it won't be through SW, never again. The franchise is. to quote Luke in ROTJ, 'truly dead'. Plenty of other fans - especially those popping up on forums - still love it for the spin offs. but the Skywalkers WERE SW for me. Disney have exterminated them.

I refuse to see that as anything but deeply depressing, I'm sorry. Rian was the 'bright spark' in the trilogy and they retconned his film, which just about shows what they really are. I am not interested in the further adventures of Rey, Finn and Poe; TROS proved that as a 'Trio' they couldn't hold a candle to Han, Luke and Leia. I've spoken to some nice people who have suggested I pretend the ST doesn't exist but unfortunately I still love Kylo/Ben, who is now actually my favourite SW character of all time.

And all Disney intended to do with this amazing character, played by a first class twice Oscar nominated actor.....was use him as the rock to crush the Skywalker lineage with.

I can't believe it. I can't believe them, I'm sorry.

Please forgive the double post but...
https://screenrant.com/star-wars-adam-driver-done/

Interesting that Adam doesn't say he's 'glad' isn't it?

https://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2024/01/sharmeen-obaid-chinoy-briefly-discusses-upcoming-star-wars-film-were-about-to-create-something-very-special.html

"Driver was hosting Saturday Night Live for the fourth time in his career. When he took the stage at Rockefeller Center for his opening monologue, Driver decided to sing for the audience and make a few requests of Santa Claus.  And then he came to the moment Star Wars fans have waited for: Han Solo’s death. Driver said to Santa:

"I’d like people to stop coming up to me on the street saying, ‘You killed Han Solo.’

I didn’t kill Han Solo.  Wokeness killed Han Solo." (c)


https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/adam-driver-snl-monologue-1235832259/

Loreley wrote:"Driver was hosting Saturday Night Live for the fourth time in his career. When he took the stage at Rockefeller Center for his opening monologue, Driver decided to sing for the audience and make a few requests of Santa Claus.  And then he came to the moment Star Wars fans have waited for: Han Solo’s death. Driver said to Santa:

"I’d like people to stop coming up to me on the street saying, ‘You killed Han Solo.’

I didn’t kill Han Solo.  Wokeness killed Han Solo." (c)


https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/adam-driver-snl-monologue-1235832259/

@Loreley



That was brave Adam!
And so very very true. Wokeness also killed Kylo Ren, the Skywalkers and Star Wars itself.
It killed reylo, character assassinated Rey and Leia, and I suspect, will eventually kill Disney.

I think he was being ironic, guys, it's a comedy sketch. He's making fun of the dudebros that say everything they don't like is because of wokeness, which is really just a red flag, virtually no one who uses the term at this point has good motives.

Joke or not, he was brave to say it....I recently read on another SW forum (not the FICM) an interview with Sharmeen Obaid Chimoy, who'll be directing the new Rey film, and all she wanted to say was how 'wonderful it was', and 'about time' a woman (Rey) was going to shape the future SW universe.

I posted the full interview earlier. This lady is an activist who 'likes to make men uncomfortable' so Ben Solo not returning - let alone reylo actually happening - is only to be expected.
DLF obviously do not want romance in their films these days. I doubt if even Finn fans will get what they want. It's the 'women don't need men' agenda that concerns them now.

I have just seen Ms Chinoy on youtube actually boasting how much she enjoys 'making men uncomfortable'....I am genuinely baffled as to why.
Apparently she is a friend of KK's which explains her choice of director, but I can't help but wonder just who is going to want to see this film, apart from die hard Rey fans. At the end of the day it isn't activist propaganda, it's a SW film for crying out loud.
People want escapism with films such as these. I really think Daisy is wrong to want to make this film. I wonder if she will try to get John Boyega a role in it, as they are friends, but if I was a male actor I would avoid it like an active volcano.
It sounds awful.

An unfortunate number of men active in SW fandom, and really many fandoms, are plain awful and just bash everything and everyone that isn't like them or that isn't made for them, this would be the most relevant thing for what she's saying. Frankly, romance would make them uncomfortable, they see it as weak and copdependent. Even now with more options, SW (and movies/TV in general) has had fairly limited representation in general for actors and crew, even with Rey they kind of bungled it. I hope they do better by her, and all the characters, than TROS. If anything, I see some people have concern SW is still made for that group of people, although they're less OT-oriented and more PT/animated show-centric now, because millennials are the largest generation and most of the workforce, and gen Z is mostly adults now too.

Seen some interesting things recently that generation Alpha, the group younger than gen Z, isn't into movie/TV-centered franchises as much because they were raised on social media, online video, and content creators on smartphones and tablets sometimes before they could talk. Like their version of fandom is very different than the generations above them. SW is trying to get kids young with their high republic Jedi preschool cartoon and Grogu and the sw kids YT channel, and they have the adult/older teen fanbase kind of, but not as much in the middle where the SW fanbase used to be.

“Making men uncomfortable” bits have nothing to do with SW and its fan base, they’re from old interviews about her documentary work exposing honour killing practices in Pakistan. You can’t go by clips, context is always important.

Ah, whatever....I think that DLF would be better suited to making tv series about SW nowadays, and leave the 'big budget' films alone for a while. Several of their blockbusters have underperformed at the box office while their tv stuff has been for the most part successful.

My only regret is that they killed all of the Skywalkers off. It's tainted the entire saga now...it seems as if all of their sacrifices were for nothing.

Off topic.....someone said that the Ferrari movie is underperforming at the BO; I hope not.

I actually think SW leaving movies alone for a while is a good thing, they burned so much goodwill with TROS, plus the fact tons of franchise movies, especially superhero ones, did consistently bad to mediocre this year. Audiences are picky about going to theatres at all now. Go away long enough to make people actually miss you in theatres, without being so long as to make people not care like Indy 5.

Oh, I forgot to include this clip of Matt Smith talking about how his role was probably Palpatine's son. I remember in the early leaks he was some sort of sith acolyte, or he got possessed by Palpatine's evil force spirit or something, which tracks. Like no guarantee it would've been good, but at least it would have made a little more sense. Those reshoots to shove in somehow Palpatine has returned/Rey Palpatine/Rey Skywalker really were the worst decisions.

https://twitter.com/mattsmithbrazil/status/1743313009320079681

Ferrari unfortunately is underperforming, it made $24 million so far with a $95 million budget. I love Adam but it feels like he hasn’t had a true winner since Marriage Story back in 2019, though on paper he’s been working with some top shelf big name directors.

As for SW, the TV ratings are not exactly transparent so I’ve no idea how well all those TV series are doing, but I can’t help but think that the very existence of TV SW dilutes the big screen specialness. Why leave home for a cinema when you can get all the lightsabers, Jedi and spaceships at home?

Sorry to hear that, he deserves better, Ferrari was released at a time when people were flocking to see Xmas 'family' fare like Wonka so that didn't help. I haven't seen it, but I really enjoyed 65, it should have been a bigger hit.

Regarding Film V TV, doesn't help much that shows like Mando were far better made than TROS - even without Ben's fate it was a truly terrible film.

It seems the rest of fandom in the past few days also found out the Sharmeen clips about making men uncomfortable were from 8 years ago! We were collectively duped!

Jon Favreau just got announced to direct a SW movie, The Mandalorian & Grogu, in place of the season 4 he wrote before the strike, to film this year. No doubt they'll make more money off this than putting it on the streamer, I just hope it translates into movie-length well. A season of Mando would only have to be cut in half to be a film, they're not very long. I did hope they would stick to the original season, but whatever. People seem very excited. I did think it was weird that Filoni with no live-action film experience, and questionable live-action writing and directing skills, with everyone else in the LF stable better than him in this regard, got the massive teamup conclusion movie, while Favreau who made all these things with him and created the whole Mandoverse thing, and has a track record of usually successful live-action films, didn't get a movie. Guess he does now.

@Saracene TV diluting the impact or effect of movies was something Kevin Feige specifically said about the MCU too, they put out about as much TV as SW on top of 3 films a year, so they have to pull back now, because superhero media has mostly done badly lately. Streamers and studios in general announced they would make less stuff over the past year.

Currently amusing myself reading the 'leaks' doing the rounds on youtube....latest one apparently has Rey giving birth to Finn's baby who grows up to become the 'balance of the Force'.

Hi all Happy New year ! Did anyone see the latest headlines - Adam Driver saying he’s not coming back to Star Wars :
https://variety.com/2024/film/news/adam-driver-star-wars-set-exhausting-reprise-kylo-ren-1235865213/amp/
Is he telling the truth or is this one of those Ewan McGregor moments when he was told not to say he wasn’t coming back to fans ( until he announced he could ). I like to stay optimistic as you know I am on here but this has got me anxious about their future plans . There are things happening at Disney behind the scenes as we know - Daisy Ridley saying she had Quick Look at draft script and plans for Rey and it surprised her because it wasn’t going in the direction she thought it would ( whatever that means) and Disney pulling some of its shows off its platform as if they never existed ie willow ( so you can’t get it anywhere because it’s not on dvd ).

Yes, I saw that - he said they were 'doing things, but not with me.' Sad but not surprising.

Also, they are making a 'Mandalorian' film, presumably instead of series four.

Yeah I would have preferred season 4 of Mando, they had even written it, but the strike delayed it. The fact is that a movie will make more money. Streaming either isn't profitable or studios pretend like it isn't. It also takes the pressure off the Rey movie to bring back SW to theatres and make tons of cash, it's in a sandwich with 2 Faveau/Filoni projects.

Rian's TLJ coffee table photo book is getting published next year. Someone even checked the ISBN number and Library of Congress number to double check it was real, but there's no cover this far in advance.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1419756540/ref=x_gr_bb_amazon?ie=UTF8&tag=x_gr_bb_amazon-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1419756540&SubscriptionId=1MGPYB6YW3HWK55XCGG2
https://bookshop.org/p/books/star-wars-the-last-jedi-director-s-album-rian-johnson/20951546?ean=9781419756542

Daisy did an interview where she said she wants to do a romcom because she loves them so much. Adam and so many actors have said they want to do romcoms, let them please!

Ewan had to pretend he wasn't signed on to Obi-Wan even when he was. Harrison was cranky about doing SW again but he came back twice! Hayden was a pariah but has featured in multiple new SW projects too. Someone as loved as Adam will make an appearance in some form at some point.