Official TROS Spoilers discussion

They shouldn't have had Rey be the protagonist if they had no idea (or too many ideas)about who she was. I enjoyed TFA and TLJ, but there many things I disliked that I glossed over hoping that as a whole the ST would work . After TROS, everything I disliked about the prior episodes (especially TFA) are now actually red flags I chose to ignore.

I remember thinking that Han's death was a sacrifice to save his son, now I just see it as an excuse to kill him off as well.

Apparently the scene where he stroked Adam's face was Harrison's idea. Abrams didn't want it but Harrison pushed for it.

Oh that's funny!
I disagree with them regarding the first two films, TFA was good, TLJ was great, which is why TROS issuch a disaster area!!

There's a new Roll Out short, the ones with the BB8 roll-y characters, with Ben. Needless to say, half my timeline has instantaneously turned into blue butterflies.

Geralt_Riv wrote:

@Geralt_Riv
Genius! Thanks so much for sharing this. I laughed and laughed!
It’s what it deserves!

californiagirl wrote:There's a new Roll Out short, the ones with the BB8 roll-y characters, with Ben. Needless to say, half my timeline has instantaneously turned into blue butterflies.

@californiagirl

He's so adorable.

DeeBee wrote:

Geralt_Riv wrote:

@Geralt_Riv
Genius! Thanks so much for sharing this. I laughed and laughed!
It’s what it deserves!

@DeeBee

Yes, me too. lol

Geralt_Riv wrote:

@Geralt_Riv


"Finn who is still fighting against all odds to keep himselft in the movie" So true

Just seen this
https://www.indiewire.com/2019/12/jj-abrams-rey-kylo-ren-star-wars-kiss-explained-1202199074/
JJ couldn't get any sillier if he tried.
Still, maybe it's to be expected as he's a Luke/Leia shipper....

Darth Snoopy wrote:They shouldn't have had Rey be the protagonist if they had no idea (or too many ideas)about who she was. I enjoyed TFA and TLJ, but there many things I disliked that I glossed over hoping that as a whole the ST would work . After TROS, everything I disliked about the prior episodes (especially TFA) are now actually red flags I chose to ignore.

@Darth Snoopy

I disliked it already at the time, but Rey and Leia’s hug in TFA was a massive red flag and a good indication of how JJ bends the story around Rey no matter how unearned and forced it is. I just had no idea that he was going to take it to whole new heights in TRoS.

I've repeatedly defended Rey to people who claimed she was a Mary Sue. In TFA, her ability to fly a ship was actually mentioned in the film, in the conversation she'd had with Finn that she'd flown a simulator but never the real thing - although they were talking so fast it took epeated viewings to understand what they were saying!

Her skills as a mechanic and knowledge of languages was also easily explained. She'd spent fifteen years scavenging from spaceships and mingling with droids and aliens of all kinds, so she would have picked up numerous different languages. As for her beating Kylo.....that was due to his deteriorating physical condition and the fact that he didn't want to kill her.

Rian developed Rey beautifully in TLJ. He made a point of showing how Snoke easily got all her secrets out of her, and how she only managed to beat his guards with Kylo's help. Her ability to move rocks was explained by her natural raw power, which Kylo also shared.

But... nowadays when the antis and the haters call her a Mary Sue there's nothing I can say to contradict them. TROS has thoroughly destroyed my argument. And Rey with it.

Saracene wrote:

Darth Snoopy wrote:They shouldn't have had Rey be the protagonist if they had no idea (or too many ideas)about who she was. I enjoyed TFA and TLJ, but there many things I disliked that I glossed over hoping that as a whole the ST would work . After TROS, everything I disliked about the prior episodes (especially TFA) are now actually red flags I chose to ignore.

@Darth Snoopy

I disliked it already at the time, but Rey and Leia’s hug in TFA was a massive red flag and a good indication of how JJ bends the story around Rey no matter how unearned and forced it is. I just had no idea that he was going to take it to whole new heights in TRoS.

@Saracene

I think one of the problems that JJ Abrams has is that he looks at star wars from an out of universe perspective - he doesn't deliberate an in universe logic or character perspective or even as an audience (questioning intentionality and what is presented on screen). I recall him saying that the tfa hug was a mistake - but, it shows how he doesn't focus on narrative logic.

@motherofpearl1
I'll admit that I like Rey as a character concept, less in her execution. Again, if Rey as a character was not defined or worked as they envisioned her - they should have rethought the question of a protagonist. Though there A and B plots in the OT and PT (even with the valid criticisms they get), they always felt more like balanced ensemble films. Each character had their own goal, and then they converge when the plots meet. Rey had a lot of screen time, yet very little character growth (which was thrown out in 9). But then again, that happened with all of the characters. No matter what people's views on TLJ were, none of the main characters were stagnant - the mistake was that the writing on 9 ignored all of that.

I can't help but appreciate TLJ more and more, it still astonishes me that they claimed that Rian had 'written them into a corner'.
He practically handed everything to them on a plate. It was SW for the 21st century. They blew it.

Darth Snoopy wrote:I think one of the problems that JJ Abrams has is that he looks at star wars from an out of universe perspective - he doesn't deliberate an in universe logic or character perspective or even as an audience (questioning intentionality and what is presented on screen). I recall him saying that the tfa hug was a mistake - but, it shows how he doesn't focus on narrative logic.

@Darth Snoopy

JJ said that the TFA hug was a mistake in a response to loud complaints from fanboys that Leia ignored Chewie. But to me it was an indication that he’s still not seeing the core problem. The problem is not that Leia doesn’t hug Chewie and lets him walk by, the problem is that in-verse Leia has zero reasons to hug Rey. As established by the movie, to Leia Rey is just Finn’s friend whose well-being and safety wasn’t her priority, as she pretty much put it to Finn. But then Rey is suddenly this super-special VIP who merits a personal meet-and-hug (many Reylos here tried to fill in the gap by the theories that Leia felt Rey through the force, or she knew how special she was to Ben through the force, but that’s just trying to do the movie’s work instead of the movie).

motherofpearl1 wrote:Just seen this
https://www.indiewire.com/2019/12/jj-abrams-rey-kylo-ren-star-wars-kiss-explained-1202199074/
JJ couldn't get any sillier if he tried.
Still, maybe it's to be expected as he's a Luke/Leia shipper....

@motherofpearl1

Oh man, what a coward!
How to ruin one of the few genuine moments in this crap with nonsensical "explanations".

Saracene wrote:

Darth Snoopy wrote:I think one of the problems that JJ Abrams has is that he looks at star wars from an out of universe perspective - he doesn't deliberate an in universe logic or character perspective or even as an audience (questioning intentionality and what is presented on screen). I recall him saying that the tfa hug was a mistake - but, it shows how he doesn't focus on narrative logic.

@Darth Snoopy

JJ said that the TFA hug was a mistake in a response to loud complaints from fanboys that Leia ignored Chewie. But to me it was an indication that he’s still not seeing the core problem. The problem is not that Leia doesn’t hug Chewie and lets him walk by, the problem is that in-verse Leia has zero reasons to hug Rey. As established by the movie, to Leia Rey is just Finn’s friend whose well-being and safety wasn’t her priority, as she pretty much put it to Finn. But then Rey is suddenly this super-special VIP who merits a personal meet-and-hug (many Reylos here tried to fill in the gap by the theories that Leia felt Rey through the force, or she knew how special she was to Ben through the force, but that’s just trying to do the movie’s work instead of the movie).

@Saracene

This sums up the problem with Rey in general - she doesn't make sense in universe, she only makes sense if you go by film-makers intention to make her the center of the story and automatically enbraced (literally and figuratively) by OT characters. But they never tried to give it a narrative logic because the mystery of who she was was their priority together with making her a role model for girls. Nothing in the movie was driven by her character, hance why she randomly collects OT memorbailia without earning them (that includes inexplicable appreciation by OT characters).

For example, there's no valid reason why Han and Chewie would particularly like Rey more than Finn but here we are. Vague explanation is that she can fly the Falcon and Finn can't so Han&Chewie relate to that. Still, it doesn't really cut it and it becomes really jarring when she starts collecting Falcon, saber, Han's job offer, "Chewie likes you", Leia's hug, Kylo's . just too much for one character. And with the exception of Rey and Kylo meeting, the rest is totally random. She just runs into MF. She's just called by the saber cause coincidently at the right place at the right time. Teedo just rides by her ATAT with captured BB8 who has the map to Luke. She just runs into Han. At least Kylo was seaching for BB8 and heard What Girl was with him so he changed his goalpost to searching for What Girl. But the rest was random af. Heck, She just runs into Finn because he went to Nima Outpost on the same day she was getting her paycheck. Etc. It's always that things just happen to Rey who rolls with it and barely Rey making things happen because she has no interest in anything. She's literally connected to Skywalker drama because it came to her and she went along without having an actual motivation to be involved.

Someone said not long back that Luke's journey was different because he earned everything he got, but Rey literally had it handed to her.
She was loved by everyone she met.

rey has no investment in FO vs Resistance. her only connection to it is that FO was shooting at her because she had BB8. If there was no BB8, they wouldn't shoot. Simple. Compare that to Luke who not only wanted to become a pilot so he could join the rebelion (he has a table convo with Owen about it) but Empire kills his forster parents so reason becomes perosnal, more so that mere adventure spirit that guided his interest in joining beforehand.

So rey gets swept away by accident and her motivation to take BB8 to resistance is that she heard the legend of Luke Skywalker which turned out to be real. W.T.F. That is not a proper motivation to help Resistance. Moreover, Finn admits he wasn't with the Resistance after all, thus removing her equaly weak "well, I'll do it for this guy I met 5 min ago" motivation but she keeps firm to deliver the task because? Who knows.

You get the picture.

I can't help but think, looking at this post TROS, it would have been far more interesting if Rey HAD taken Kylo's hand at the end of TLJ. It didn't necessarily mean she would turn to the dark, it could have been simply that she thought she could use her influence on him for good.
Let's face it, why would Rey be so invested in the Resistance? Just what exactly had they done for her? Finn was the one who came back door her, the others were more concerned with destroying SK base. Which they would have done regardless of her being on it. All the 'for the greater good' twaddle is something I really would have loved to have seen addressed in the ST. It would have been completely fresh and a new direction for SW. Rian did his best, but even he had to follow corporate rules, and I bet one of those was 'no grey Rey'.

If TROS had been more about the conflict between two warring factions, one led by a former 'bad guy' trying to do something good, the other led by a 'good guy' who refused to give up fighting, how fascinating would that have been?
George Lucas actually did something along those lines with the PPT trilogy - the Jedi were shown as firmly entrenched in old traditions that needed to evolve, the New Republic too complacent, and tolerant of horrors like slavery. Luke's words "it's time for the Jedi to end" were spot on.
The one thing I didn't like about TLJ was Rey's snotty, superior expression as she slammed the door in Kylo's face......it was the beginning of Saint Rey the Magnificent. Looking objectively at her character, just exactly WHAT had the Resistance done for her? Han went to SK to destroy it, not rescue Rey. That was Finn's idea. The New Republic didn't do anything to help a little girl sold into servitude.
The only person bar Finn who gave a toss about Rey was Kylo. It was Kylo who first offered to teach her, Kylo who listened to her on Acht To, Kylo who fought back to back with her.

Kylo who killed his master for her.

Which was what made her reaching for his sabre after that pathetic request all the more heart-rending.

What a wasted opportunity they had. This could have been a new era for SW. Instead they gave us a rehashed second rate version of ROTJ, and a heroine so u real she's inhuman.

The most sympathetic character in the entire ST was Ben Solo. The one they discarded like used toilet paper.

I didn't have a problem with what Rey did. She thought Kylo would turn to the good side, but it turned out he hadn't and was going to proceed to kill the rest of the Resistance, so she took the saber and left to help the Resistance. She shut the door on him because he chose evil and wanted her to join him and help kill people she cares about. He was a destructive presence in her life.

That said, I have lots of problems with Rey in general. But they are mostly about the poor character development. It doesn't feel like anyone making the movies really deeply got into Rey's head to explore WHO she really is. By the end of the trilogy most of the characters are shallow and meant to represent things like legacies or previous characters (Poe = bad Han Solo copy, for instance) rather than be complex fleshed out characters in and of themselves. This was a problem before TROS with the exception of Luke and Kylo who were better developed than the rest. TROS finalized it. It managed to make every character even more shallow than before even managing to undo any character complexity for Luke from TLJ, and making the trio characters make very little sense at all.

The ST is unwatchable to me at this point because these characters suck. I like some psychology, some philosophy, some world building, myth building, things to actually THINK about, and TROS is a really stupid movie that pulled the rug out from under the ST, exposing it as a whole lot of nothing. Furthermore I never thought the Skywalkers represented some fairy tale legacy of goodness given that this "legacy" began with someone going very dark, and I don't feel warm fuzzy feelings about "Skywalkers" as the most special thing in the universe, nor do I care about "legacies."

It's as though the premise for Rey's character is: imagine the perfect character you see as worthy of inheriting the Skywalker Legacy, this really special legacy of goodness. Or, if there was a character who could be your "ideal Skywalker" what would that character be like?

One person: I would be really charmed by Rey if she kept handing that light saber back to Leia, the light saber Anakin slaughtered the younglings with AKA the LEGACY saber, saying that one day maybe she'll EARN it even though it called her in the first movie.

Another person: To be worthy of the Skywalker Legacy, Rey needs to demonstrate the sort of compassion Luke did in saving his father, so WHAT IF she actually knows all about how Luke saved his father already and aspires to be like him and goes off to try to save Kylo Ren against all odds!

(It basically feels like what Rey does is contrived and about what she is supposed to represent rather than flowing out of a clear character concept for her.)

I always thought the reason Rey failed in turning Kylo was because where Luke wanted to save Anakin for Anakin, Rey wanted to save Kylo so he could save the Resistance.

Once again he played second fiddle to the'greater good'.
I always wondered if Kylo truly had 'chosen evil.'. He told Rey he could bring a 'new order' to the galaxy. I genuinely don't think he killed Snoke to seize control, I think that thought occurred to him AFTER he'd killed Snoke.
He wanted to 'kill the past", and start afresh. He had probably the right idea but went about it in the wrong way.
His fury afterwards I'm absolutely sure was because. Rey had broken his heart. From his point of view, he'd offered her the galaxy and she'd ran off with his grandfather's sabre - which was his by right - and left him to die on a crippled ship to join a terrorist group. That was how he saw the Resistance. We see the partisans during WW2, Kylo saw Al Qaida.
Once again, shades of grey but TROS threw it away to rehash the OT. I think either Abrams and Terrio don't have an original idea in their heads, or the entire ST was simply created to erase Lucas's characters and their descendant so they could do it better.

I don’t think that SW is really made for the shades of grey to be honest, and even when it feebly flirts with them (like Rogue One did) it eventually snaps back to the good vs evil mode. At most it’s “flawed good vs evil”, which is what the PT is basically about. Yes the Jedi and the Republic are flawed, but Palpatine and his rise to power are still 100% evil and bad.

Also, there’s nothing wrong with the heroes fighting for the greater good rather than “what’s in it for meeee”, it’s just that on its own it’s a boring and bland motivation without any personal reasons to go with it. None of the ST heroes except Rose have any real attachments to anywhere in the galaxy or suffered a personal loss because of the FO.

Rey couldn’t turn Kylo because Kylo made up his mind on what he wanted to do (take over the galaxy to bring in the new order) and on what he wanted Rey to do (join him). And Kylo is just better at dominating the conversation than Rey - if you look at their previous interactions in TLJ he always dominated them and had the last word, with the exception of the hut scene where for once he backed off and just listened to Rey. In the throne room scene however he just steamrolled over her.

motherofpearl1 wrote:I always thought the reason Rey failed in turning Kylo was because where Luke wanted to save Anakin for Anakin, Rey wanted to save Kylo so he could save the Resistance.

Once again he played second fiddle to the'greater good'.
I always wondered if Kylo truly had 'chosen evil.'. He told Rey he could bring a 'new order' to the galaxy. I genuinely don't think he killed Snoke to seize control, I think that thought occurred to him AFTER he'd killed Snoke.
He wanted to 'kill the past", and start afresh. He had probably the right idea but went about it in the wrong way.
His fury afterwards I'm absolutely sure was because. Rey had broken his heart. From his point of view, he'd offered her the galaxy and she'd ran off with his grandfather's sabre - which was his by right - and left him to die on a crippled ship to join a terrorist group. That was how he saw the Resistance. We see the partisans during WW2, Kylo saw Al Qaida.
Once again, shades of grey but TROS threw it away to rehash the OT. I think either Abrams and Terrio don't have an original idea in their heads, or the entire ST was simply created to erase Lucas's characters and their descendant so they could do it better.

@motherofpearl1

I feel this. Since TFA I thought that Ben's redemption road was going to have to be a long and tough one, especially if they wanted to avoid having him die just like Vader did. That's a lot of narrative work to do and I thought Rian did his share. He humanized Kylo and had him kill the big bad guy, but also created a bump in the road with their fight over the saber.

Completing that redemption arc was going to be the toughest challenge of the final chapter, and it turned out to be way out of JJ and Terrio's pay grade. I re-read my own script for IX (written a few months after TLJ) today and when I was writing it I gave a lot of thought to how to tell a credible tale of redemption. What I came up with is that 1) Time has passed and Leia has died, 2) Kylo is a huge conflicted mess, isolated, conflicted and largely letting Hux run the show, and the main plot of the movie begins with a force skype where Ben and Rey touch and he tells/shows her what he went through when he killed Han. That leads the way to 3) Rey understanding him, believing in him, and putting her status with the resistance and her friendships on the line in order to basically rescue Kylo.

It's a lot to accomplish in one movie. There's no space for Poe running around, no space for bringing Palpatine back. But it does give Rey a purpose and a character arc. I don't know whether my redemption story for Ben is really believable. But I do know the crux of it is that he has to start the last chapter sitting around thinking "Maybe I should have saved her friends and THEN asked her to join me." And when he bares his soul to her, she's inspired to take a big risk to love him and help him. And THAT is what saves the freaking galaxy.

Saracene wrote:I don’t think that SW is really made for the shades of grey to be honest, and even when it feebly flirts with them (like Rogue One did) it eventually snaps back to the good vs evil mode. At most it’s “flawed good vs evil”, which is what the PT is basically about. Yes the Jedi and the Republic are flawed, but Palpatine and his rise to power are still 100% evil and bad.

Also, there’s nothing wrong with the heroes fighting for the greater good rather than “what’s in it for meeee”, it’s just that on its own it’s a boring and bland motivation without any personal reasons to go with it. None of the ST heroes except Rose have any real attachments to anywhere in the galaxy or suffered a personal loss because of the FO.

Rey couldn’t turn Kylo because Kylo made up his mind on what he wanted to do (take over the galaxy to bring in the new order) and on what he wanted Rey to do (join him). And Kylo is just better at dominating the conversation than Rey - if you look at their previous interactions in TLJ he always dominated them and had the last word, with the exception of the hut scene where for once he backed off and just listened to Rey. In the throne room scene however he just steamrolled over her.

The problem with the'greater good' is where do you draw the line.
During WW2, legend has it that the British government were aware of the imminent bombing of Coventry, yet kept quiet so as to protect their spies. Hirohito, who committed as many war crimes as Hitler, was allowed to live while Nagasaki and Hiroshima were obliterated.

There seldom are 'good guys' and bad guys in war. I really wanted to see SW explore that. The irony is, Terrio and Abrams wanted to depict the ST trilogy as a simple black and white fairytale....but Kylo and Rey were anything but black and white. And the ending of this film was as far removed from a fairytale happy ending as it could have been.

So there was a screenwriters livestream with a surprise guest, and that guest was JJ. Apparently there's some parts of TROS he's proud of, but said he would have done a lot of things differently if he'd had more time. He also said that Rey was meant to be a conduit between Luke and Leia. Again with the twins, seriously it's weird and I don't understand the obsession. Aside from not being what literally anyone took away from TFA or TLJ. Nevertheless, it further solidifies that they didn't ultimately let Rey be her own character, she's just there for OT characters. It's almost like they don't understand what a new character is or does.