The Force Will Be With You ... Always
October 21, 2019 7:19 PM Subscribe

The latest (and final?) trailer for "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"
posted by computech_apolloniajames (281 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite

WANT.
posted by Chronorin at 7:22 PM on October 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

Robot Chicken has ruined Palpatine for me.
posted by jenkinsEar at 7:26 PM on October 21, 2019 [13 favorites]

Horses?

Anyway, carry on.
posted by selfnoise at 7:28 PM on October 21, 2019 [13 favorites]

“Always.”

Crushed me.
posted by ColdChef at 7:30 PM on October 21, 2019 [27 favorites]

I like Star Wars.
posted by bondcliff at 7:32 PM on October 21, 2019 [8 favorites]

"But I do." DEAD
posted by Kitty Stardust at 7:32 PM on October 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

Why, yes, I will be seeing this. Probably opening weekend. Maybe in Dolby Cinema.

Oh holy shit, tickets are already on sale! BRB
posted by hippybear at 7:37 PM on October 21, 2019 [5 favorites]

Wow, Fandango is totally hammered at the moment. I guess others saw the trailer, too!
posted by hippybear at 7:41 PM on October 21, 2019

Horses?

Space horses.
posted by feckless at 7:53 PM on October 21, 2019 [27 favorites]

Space horses with tusks.

Website is still hammered. I've never had this kind of problem buying movie tickets online before. Wow.
posted by hippybear at 7:55 PM on October 21, 2019 [4 favorites]

Can Rey touch the non-corporeal Force, or can Leia touch the corporeal? Hmmmm. I hope we see Obi-Wan too, even if it's just for a moment. And Luke becomes Darth Vader in my wildest dreams.
posted by Brocktoon at 7:56 PM on October 21, 2019

Okay, 8am Sat Dec 21 Dolby Cinema 4th row center seats purchased. Now I can ignore all this for 2 months!
posted by hippybear at 8:03 PM on October 21, 2019 [4 favorites]

ColdChef, the moment I heard Luke start with “the force will be with you” I knew that was coming, but it still got me, both with a strong desire to hear it again, and a massive callback to what the series has been for me throughout my life. I’m nervous about all the talk that they wanted to undo a lot of Last Jedi, but for now, this brings me back to my childhood in ways I didn’t expect, back to the days when I thought the Fox fanfare was part of the soundtrack to Star Wars, because I’d watched them so much.

I can’t wait. Space horses be damned.
posted by Ghidorah at 8:09 PM on October 21, 2019 [6 favorites]

Anyone else think the space-horses look like Ookla the Moc’s equort from Thundarr the Barbarian?
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:10 PM on October 21, 2019 [23 favorites]

Can Rey touch the non-corporeal Force, or can Leia touch the corporeal?

I don't think Leia is dead in the film series, despite Carrie Fisher no longer being with us.
posted by hippybear at 8:18 PM on October 21, 2019 [10 favorites]

How are we, like, 15 comments into this and no one has mentioned C3PO? I have been basically staring at the wall ever since I saw that bit, trapped in an endless loop of childhood Star Wars nostalgia and grieving for a fictional character.

Also, that scene seemed very like Dobby’s last scene in Deathly Hallows part 1, and Leia’s one-word line was similarly Potteresque. They’re pulling all the heartstrings.
posted by TEA at 8:29 PM on October 21, 2019 [14 favorites]

Where's Jar Jar?
posted by sammyo at 8:32 PM on October 21, 2019 [9 favorites]

Most of that had me at like an 8.5 or 9 on the meter but somehow the cavalry charge jumped me to like a 15. I don't understand it at all. I just want it.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:34 PM on October 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

It would be an interesting way to frame the trilogy of trilogies if the first episode has the activation of C-3PO and the final one has the deactivation of C-3PO.

I once had a very intense very stoned dream state watching of (probably) Empire Strikes Back where (this was pre-prequels) my imaginings ran to be where the entire 9 movie series was about R2-D2 maneuvering himself to be in exactly the right place to detonate himself and bring an end to the Bad Guys. R2-D2 having been, for the entire 9 movies, a "smart" bomb which was disguised and left to its own devices to manipulate himself into being taken to where he needed to be, the more circuitous route the better so he couldn't be discovered. The first movie would begin with his activation, and we'd basically follow him from there until he finally reaches his destination.

It was a pretty great version of the whole story, really.
posted by hippybear at 8:37 PM on October 21, 2019 [33 favorites]

It’s Carrie’s birthday today.

“Always”
posted by anastasiav at 8:37 PM on October 21, 2019 [30 favorites]

Starring the reanimated corpse of Carrie Fisher
And you know she'll have the best performance of all the actors.
posted by Nelson at 8:41 PM on October 21, 2019 [5 favorites]

ROSE TICO IS BACK, BITCHES, AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP HER.

Except give in to the dark side of marketing and erase her from the merch, I guess.
posted by RakDaddy at 8:45 PM on October 21, 2019 [45 favorites]

Yeah, Rose Tico is definitely my main for this series now.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:52 PM on October 21, 2019 [7 favorites]

Except give in to the dark side of marketing and erase her from the merch, I guess.

I know the Disney Films VP in charge of marketing for the SW movies. (He also supervises the production of the trailers, btw.) I'll drop him a line and DEMAND Rose merch!

and also beg for tix because man that trailer pushes all of my buttons...
posted by martin q blank at 8:55 PM on October 21, 2019 [8 favorites]

Where's Jar Jar?

YOU TAKE THAT BACK!
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:00 PM on October 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

Many things promising about this, and yeah, glad to see Rose back.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:08 PM on October 21, 2019

Definitely turned on the waterworks watching it, yes they are definitely pulling out all the sentimental stops for IX.

My three-year-old son was so excited watching the trailer that he had to get up and spin around until he fell down. He loves the Millennium Falcon. He hasn't seen any of the other movies and was very bummed to learn that while he is allowed to watch the trailer he won't be seeing this movie anytime soon.
posted by potrzebie at 9:08 PM on October 21, 2019 [6 favorites]

I was 10 when this phenomenon first started, and massively swept up in Star Wars love.

I’m 52 now. It’ll be bittersweet to see the last installment, but I’m definitely going to be a part of it.

My friends are all 50-something SW nerds, too. We’ll have to do a marathon of all the movies soon, before any of us starts dying off.

Always, indeed. 42 years, and counting.
posted by darkstar at 9:13 PM on October 21, 2019 [34 favorites]

Where's Jar Jar?

How wude!
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:15 PM on October 21, 2019 [6 favorites]

Where's Jar Jar?

Heesa leaving
On that midnight train to Jar Jar
Said heesa going back to find
A simpler place and time
posted by rodlymight at 9:17 PM on October 21, 2019 [36 favorites]

My three-year-old son was so excited watching the trailer that he had to get up and spin around until he fell down. He loves the Millennium Falcon.

I love the Millennium Falcon, too. I once spent something like 40 hours building a paper craft model of it that was intensely detailed, only to have a visiting cat pick it up and carry it around like prey and ruin it. Someday I will find the ambition to redo that project. I have all the .pdf files.
posted by hippybear at 9:20 PM on October 21, 2019 [8 favorites]

We’ll have to do a marathon of all the movies soon

Remember, the preferred viewing order is IV, V, II, III VI for the first two trilogies.
posted by hippybear at 9:21 PM on October 21, 2019 [8 favorites]

Where's Jar Jar?

Jar Jar died in episode 8, when the rebel ship was blasted open and all of those rebel leaders were sucked into space.
posted by Groundhog Week at 9:22 PM on October 21, 2019 [4 favorites]

I'll certainly see it, but it's got a lot of work to do to try and turn the sequel trilogy around.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:25 PM on October 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

There were some pretty awesome new chords in the glorious old music.
posted by bryon at 9:26 PM on October 21, 2019 [4 favorites]

it's got a lot of work to do to try and turn the sequel trilogy around.

I honestly have no idea where they're taking the story next and what the title has to do with where they're going and the fact that it's such a black hole is truly fascinating as it's possibly the Best Kept Secret Ever and this is why they didn't cast Tom Holland.
posted by hippybear at 9:29 PM on October 21, 2019 [4 favorites]

It would be an interesting way to frame the trilogy of trilogies if the first episode has the activation of C-3PO and the final one has the deactivation of C-3PO.

Obligatory Auralnauts Creepio:
What of our bargain? You promised me flesh!

So hard to pick between Auralnauts and RobotChicken for best parody...
posted by Ryvar at 9:31 PM on October 21, 2019 [12 favorites]

That's seriously wrong in all the right ways.
posted by hippybear at 9:35 PM on October 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

My three-year-old son was so excited watching the trailer that he had to get up and spin around until he fell down.

I'm old and tired, but I'm with him in spirit. Your little trey spins for all of us.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:37 PM on October 21, 2019 [4 favorites]

And honestly, one thing I have loved about the Star Wars movies in some kind of weird way, is that some sound engineer had to select and insert servo motor noises in the background of every scene and coordinated with every movement that C-3PO has done. Like, that is total sincere dedication to a craft.
posted by hippybear at 9:37 PM on October 21, 2019 [6 favorites]

I think J.J. Abrams is very solid action film director, and I'm glad he directed this one. So on that score all is well. What these movies come down to, though, is a solid script. The Last Jedi was well shot by Ryan Johnson, but the script, I thought, was kind of all over the place. Frankly I find Star Wars in general to be "all over the place," but some films are tight and self-contained. All they have to do with this is bring things to a satisfying end. And I mean END. No cutesy cliffhangers or some such nonsense. I want finality: death, tragic bad choices, and a glorious win for Our Hero (Rey).
posted by zardoz at 9:37 PM on October 21, 2019 [10 favorites]

Auralnauts called it with the Singularity Engine and Creepio.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:38 PM on October 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

Getting an Interstellar vibe from those monster waves. I'd love to see TARS make a cameo appearance.
posted by vverse23 at 9:41 PM on October 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

Wait wait wait... could those waves be happening on the rain/water planet that designed the clones in Episode II?
posted by hippybear at 9:42 PM on October 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

Is that how the Emperor has stayed hidden -- he's been on a planet that's been deleted from all the records generations before?
posted by hippybear at 9:49 PM on October 21, 2019 [3 favorites]

I am so conflicted about the way they set the Star Wars main theme at the end of the trailer to That Chord Progression That Has Been In Every Movie Soundtrack For About A Decade Now.

I want to hate it, but I think I loved it.
posted by straight at 9:57 PM on October 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

I hope they don't cave to "fan" resistance and walk back elements of THE LAST JEDI, because that movie was the business.

The trailer looks promising. JJ Abrams can direct the living hell out of movie, but only when he's given good material to work with.
posted by brundlefly at 10:02 PM on October 21, 2019 [14 favorites]

Space Horses? Fine.

Space Horses with BB-8 rolling full speed by their side? I AM HERE FOR THIS. YES.

(especially especially because he does that adorable little head-turn that looks like a cartoon character turning his head and sticking out his tongue to show that he's really running hard)
posted by straight at 10:08 PM on October 21, 2019 [4 favorites]

Untitled BB-8 Game

I'll just leave that here.
posted by hippybear at 10:09 PM on October 21, 2019 [30 favorites]

Also, very cool how Rey and Kylo discover that Han Solo actually fell into a carbonite freezing bath instead of dying and instinctively, unanimously decide we've had enough of That Guy and smash rather than defrost him.
posted by straight at 10:15 PM on October 21, 2019 [4 favorites]

The Falcon has a circular dish again. (Which I did not notice in the trailer. Thanks to @spaceshipsporn on Twitter for the still photo.)
posted by bryon at 10:24 PM on October 21, 2019

If there's time travel in this Episode, I will write a stern letter to my Congressman declaring my outrage!
posted by hippybear at 10:25 PM on October 21, 2019 [3 favorites]

All they have to do with this is bring things to a satisfying end. And I mean END.

Jar Jar turns out to be Agrajag, and they all die on Stavromula Beta.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:29 PM on October 21, 2019 [21 favorites]

Or the entire rebel force, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, is eaten by a small dog.
posted by hippybear at 10:33 PM on October 21, 2019 [30 favorites]

Untitled BB-8 Game

Lightsaber in the lake
posted by Cash4Lead at 10:37 PM on October 21, 2019 [12 favorites]

Re: the wacky Gungan everyone* loves to hate -- Jar Jar Binks actor 'considered suicide' after Star Wars prequel backlash (The Guardian, July 4, 2018)

* Except some kind folks, like Frank Oz, who loved the character.

[And TIL the character was based on Goofy, and Michael Jackson had been eager to take on the role with the help of prosthetics, but director George Lucas instead chose to make Jar Jar computer-generated.]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:37 PM on October 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

I knew Ahmed Best had a hard time of it. That article is illuminating, however.
posted by hippybear at 10:47 PM on October 21, 2019

Is that Snoke's voice? I don't want more Snoke, I really liked how his tired old villain shtick was just cut off in VIII as the dumb toxic bullshit it was.
posted by coolname at 10:47 PM on October 21, 2019 [4 favorites]

(It's Palpatine.)
posted by hippybear at 10:54 PM on October 21, 2019 [5 favorites]

It's too bad that Disney didn't pick up the franchise before the prequel trilogy, because having actual Goofy in the crew would have been awesome.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:11 PM on October 21, 2019 [9 favorites]

They either should have given the entire trilogy to J.J. Abrams in the first place and forced him to plot the whole damn thing out from the start, no mystery boxes bucko, or committed to their initial "each episode gets a director" plan but forced the three to work out the saga together. As it stands, whether this movie is good or not, it will be remembered as Disney caving in to fan outcry and reinstating Abrams, after he dealt Rian Johnson a bad hand with the cliffhanger to the first film.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:00 AM on October 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

Honestly, how it dealt with the cliffhanger of the first film was the most minor of the problems of 8.
posted by hippybear at 12:08 AM on October 22, 2019 [6 favorites]

You're not wrong, but I attribute part of the setting (lack of scale) issues to the fact that 8 takes places immediately after 7, meaning that the entire film happened scant days after the original film, meaning that every hero's journey, the classic heroes' ends, the rise and fall of the First Order, the fall and rise of the Republic and the Resistance, seemingly take place within a week or two.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:12 AM on October 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

So they really are going to go with the true force is the friends you meet along the way ending on this? I mean that is the go to Disney answer for almost everything, but still...
posted by gusottertrout at 12:30 AM on October 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

If the print ads aren’t as compelling as the first StarWars movie’s, 40-odd years ago (a full sheet of black with just the title, then on the facing page Darth V’s profile, helmet and cape - total badassery) ... at this point that’s all I really want from these films one or two remarkable images. Kylo was pretty good for just that.
Actually, it comes down to H.Hawks’s definition of a good movie, “Three good scenes and no bad ones.”
Frankly I can’t see the decommissioning of C3PO in any way falling into the former category, how could it possibly avoid anything but total emotional manipulation... grrr...
posted by From Bklyn at 12:59 AM on October 22, 2019

Why would they even tease such a tearful end to a beloved character? I had assumed C-3PO was about to go on a suicide run or something equally heroic.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:07 AM on October 22, 2019

can't wait to see rey whack that greasy whiner kyle ron's head right tf off
posted by poffin boffin at 1:23 AM on October 22, 2019 [16 favorites]

Why would they even tease such a tearful end to a beloved character? I had assumed C-3PO was about to go on a suicide run or something equally heroic.

The tease can go either way, getting people to think it could be a suicide mission only helps draw interest. I'd guess that it's more that C3PO and maybe R2D2 are going to take the Falcon as a distraction while the others ride to battle or some such, making it look like a suicide mission, only to have the Falcon, as it always seems to do, swoop back in at the last minute or something. Or not, could be any number of other possibilities as well of course including C3PO sacrificing himself and maybe the Falcon too if that "one last look" line was said because C3PO thought the rest of them were headed towards their deaths.
posted by gusottertrout at 3:56 AM on October 22, 2019

I'm guessing the C-3PO scene precedes the one from the previous trailer in which he's shown with red eyes?
posted by thomas j wise at 4:29 AM on October 22, 2019

Those look like horse + boar hybrids. Boarses?
posted by xigxag at 4:38 AM on October 22, 2019

Where are the frakin’ porgs?!?
Episode 8 has been mentioned. It was an OK movie, I guess. The problem was it felt like one of the better odd numbered “Star Trek” movies (I’m thinking “Star Trek: Insurrection”): it would have made a great episode of a TV show, I guess. But for a tentpole “Star Wars” movie continuing a story we grew up with and now share with our kids, it was…lacking.
That said, I struggle with the timeline*. Rose and Finn’s “get the code breaker” thing took a day or two, which I could see the Resistance being chased by the First Order being in alignment potentially maybe. But Rey’s Jedi training didn’t line up. Then again, it wasn’t that much shorter than Luke’s. Maybe being a Jedi is the equivalent of a certification boot camp?
Seriously, where are the porgs?!?
I’m a bit nervous about C-3PO. He was always a borderline annoying character. Now, he seems to be getting a ton of screentime. Maybe they’ll pull it off?
Jar Jar’s fate was described in one of the novels. Long story short; he wound up a beggar and a clown on Naboo.
I’m buying a Rose action figure, damnit.
bryon: Thank you so much for the link to @spaceshipporn!
One last time: porgs?!?

*Some may suggest the relativistic effects of space travel. “Star Wars” never tried to be hard SciFi, so I’m not fully buying that. It wasn’t until Episode 8 that fuel* got mentioned for the first time.
posted by MrGuilt at 4:49 AM on October 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

I remember reading an interview with Lucas in a magazine in probably 1979 where he talked about the series being 9 films but I didn't think that I'd have to wait forty more years to see them all.

I'm of the, probably minority, opinion that The Last Jedi was the best Star Wars film so far and I was disappointed to hear that Abrams was coming back for Episode 9. He's a good action director with a great visual style but I've never been totally happy with any of his films. Also the screenwriter's credits are for Argo, Batman v Superman and Justice League which doesn't give me a lot of confidence.
posted by octothorpe at 4:54 AM on October 22, 2019 [25 favorites]

Remembering the good old days, when space conflicts arose from malfunctioning trade negotiations.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 5:01 AM on October 22, 2019 [9 favorites]

Obligatory to keep some of what I consider horseshit to become calcified into uncontested conventional wisdom: The Last Jedi was the best Star Wars movie full-stop.
posted by Navelgazer at 5:09 AM on October 22, 2019 [37 favorites]

Of the last seven Star Wars movies, I thought that only one was any good.

I just ... can't get excited anymore.
posted by kyrademon at 5:09 AM on October 22, 2019 [5 favorites]

At 1:01 when the Falcon swoops down into view, the Ghost from Star Wars: Rebels is visible just to the right of it.
posted by Fleebnork at 5:18 AM on October 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

ColdChef, the moment I heard Luke start with “the force will be with you” I knew that was coming, but it still got me, both with a strong desire to hear it again, and a massive callback to what the series has been for me throughout my life.

And the "always" that follows is Leia's voice.

F E E L S
posted by Fleebnork at 5:21 AM on October 22, 2019 [7 favorites]

I’m on the Last Jedi bandwagon. I thought it was the best main series film since Empire, honestly. I don’t think people were ready for a movie about heroes utterly failing, and the consequences of their failure. There were indeed things that clunked, things that could have been done better. But VII had Abrams doing his thing were he ignores the accepted constraints of telling a story in a world that isn’t his, where he junks anything that doesn’t fit the story that he has in mind. He did it with Force Awakens just like he did it in his Star Trek movies. Maybe he’s a good writer/director, but he’s lazy. And I’m prepared to be disappointed in this movie, like I was with VII, but I’m hoping for the best.

(ANH, ESB, TLJ, Rogue One, RotJ, Clone Wars (Tartakovsky), Clone Wars, RotS, AotC).
posted by Ghidorah at 5:22 AM on October 22, 2019 [23 favorites]

I’m on the Last Jedi bandwagon. I thought it was the best main series film since Empire, honestly. I don’t think people were ready for a movie about heroes utterly failing, and the consequences of their failure.

Of my friends who are big nerds about this stuff, the ones who hated TLJ seemed to either 1) be people who read ALL OF THE EXTENDED UNIVERSE stuff and were mad about the movie ignoring all of it, and/or 2) thought Luke should be the same person he was 30 years prior, with no change in belief or personality.

As someone who has had a lot of disappointment and malaise over the years, I greatly identified with Luke and his bitterness.
posted by Fleebnork at 5:38 AM on October 22, 2019 [36 favorites]

Is it just me or does it look like, towering over Rey, Palpatine is in some kind of.. mech?
posted by Chaffinch at 5:46 AM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

So it appears I'm not the only one to be more resolved than excited to see this. By this point I simply want to see the saga through; eerily I find that I'm approaching this film in the same manner I approached GoT S8 earlier this year. I really hope that doesn't bode anything!

Honestly I'll be glad and relieved to see the Skywalker Saga in the rear-view mirror. There are so many other stories to tell in this universe, and I'm more excited for those. "The Mandalorian" premieres in a couple weeks! Clone Wars S7 in February! The Cassian Andor series will start shooting next year, as well as the Obi-Wan series. And I still hold out hope for a buddy travelogue starring Ahsoka Tano and Sabine Wren....
posted by The Nutmeg of Consolation at 5:56 AM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Jar Jar’s fate was described in one of the novels. Long story short; he wound up a beggar and a clown on Naboo.

Seriously? Man, that's harsh. I'm put in mind of those two new characters on Lost everyone hated, so the showrunners were like, "You hate 'em so much? Fine. We'll bury them alive!"
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:56 AM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

can't wait to see rey whack that greasy whiner kyle ron's head right tf off

I want his ass killed dead. This is a war? A Star War, even? People die. It even has more impact emotionally when dead characters stay dead, instead of becoming happy Force ghosts, IMHO. But you know he's going to get redeemed in some goddamn Force Kumbaya ceremony at the end.
posted by thelonius at 6:08 AM on October 22, 2019 [6 favorites]

I'm looking forward to the inevitable remake of all nine movies.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:57 AM on October 22, 2019 [5 favorites]

What the hell was that in the middle with Rey and Ren together swording something that looked mechanical? Very much a feel of people who have just teamed up. Hope I'm wrong because homeboy needs to not be redeemed.

Some clickbait I read somewhere indicated that it was a statue of Vader's helmet.

I'm just trying to remind myself that much, maybe most, of what these teases might seem to mean is probably not what they actually mean.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 7:02 AM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

This is where we find out the entire nine movies were a dream in R2-D2’s mind, right?
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:02 AM on October 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

I swear to god if they try to redeem Kylo Ren with Rey's love and acceptance or some other such abusive shit I will explode. All I want from this movie is Carrie Fisher *sob* for Kylo to have a pathetic ending worthy of a pathetic character.
posted by lydhre at 7:05 AM on October 22, 2019 [9 favorites]

Just came to chime in that yes, The Last Jedi was basically everything I've wanted from a Star Wars movie since they announced the sequels, and the people who didn't like it can go suck a egg.

I honestly believe that 20-30 years from now, when whoever it is that buys Disney finishes the next nine-film/six-TV-show/twelve-video-game saga, people are going to talk about TLJ in the same way that SW fans currently revere The Empire Strikes Back. And the haters will pretend that they loved it all along.

(PS: This trailer is great, I can't wait to see the new one.)
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:13 AM on October 22, 2019 [28 favorites]

Some clickbait I read somewhere indicated that it was a statue of Vader's helmet.

Seeing some speculation online that this scene, as well as the one with what looks like an iceberg floating in space might be the abandoned Cloud City on Bespin.
posted by anastasiav at 7:17 AM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm looking forward to the inevitable remake of all nine movies.

Pre-sequel trilogy, I thought one way they could improve the prequels would be to do some sort of time-jumpy movie, where half the action takes place in the Prequel era, and half takes place in the classic. Build to the penultimate movie, where the Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker reveal was how it closed, so it'd be kinda along the lines of:

Episode One Maps to TPM, but less cheesy, an older Anakin, and no Jar Jar or Trade Negotiations. It closes with a “Fifty Years Later” cut to Darth Vader chasing the Blockade Runner, and introducing Luke and Leia.
Episode Two Covers ANH, with some TPM rolled in. This introduces Han Solo, etc. CW would be tweaked a bit to be less procedural.
Episode Three Opens with Hoth from ESB, and leads to Luke’s training. Intercuts with Anakin as a padawan.
Episode Four Focus is on the Clone Wars, and Anakin becoming disillusioned with the Jedi, and marrying Padme. Ties to Darth Vader being cruel throughout the galaxy.
Episode Five This is the business on Bespin from ESB merges with RotS. Cool intercut of Luke and Vadar’s battle with Kenobi’s and Anakin’s. Ends with the Vader reveals.
Episode Six would be Vadar’s redemption arch from RotJ. I would have had put Order 66 in this movie, and likely ended with Luke and Leia’s birth and Kenobi going into hiding.

It doesn't have to be six movies, and obviously a lot of stuff would have to be shifted around. The catch is the story is too well known for some of the reveals to have impact.
posted by MrGuilt at 7:20 AM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Seeing some speculation online that this scene, as well as the one with what looks like an iceberg floating in space might be the abandoned Cloud City on Bespin.

9_9
"It would be unfortunate if I…had to leave a statue of myself here."

Surely there's a limit to how much nostalgia-wanking galaxy-tourism even a J.J. movie would put us through!
…Right?
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 7:20 AM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

As someone who has had a lot of disappointment and malaise over the years, I greatly identified with Luke and his bitterness.

Yes. I think this is the biggest reason for the ill-conceived distaste for The Last Jedi among some older fans. Luke's arc—idealistic hero to cynical hermit who has closed himself off to The Force—just hit too close to home for some people. They also miss the ultimate message of Luke's arc: It's never too late to care again, to get involved, to remember who you were when you were younger.

The Last Jedi is not only the best Star Wars film since Empire, it's one of the best big studio movies of the twenty-first century.
posted by vibrotronica at 7:22 AM on October 22, 2019 [43 favorites]

So let me get this straight: the plot of this movie is that 3PO is essentially subliming, having himself uploaded into the Falcon's computer substrate so that he can shack up with Lando's old girlfriend, and Lando comes out of retirement to stop him?

Not what I expected, but I guess I'll see it
posted by COBRA! at 7:29 AM on October 22, 2019 [21 favorites]

I loved The Last Jedi. I love bitter Luke way more than I ever loved dewy eyed Luke, not that there was anything wrong with that. Characters evolving is scary to some fans, I get it, but nostalgia only gets you so far. Plus, Mark Hamill is a gem of a man and he plays a grump like a master.
posted by lydhre at 7:30 AM on October 22, 2019 [20 favorites]

So let me get this straight: the plot of this movie is that 3PO is essentially subliming, having himself uploaded into the Falcon's computer substrate so that he can shack up with Lando's old girlfriend, and Lando comes out of retirement to stop him?

If you look at the backgrounds in that scene, he's for sure not on the Falcon. Don't know where he is, but it is absolutely not on the Falcon, or even on a space ship.
posted by anastasiav at 7:34 AM on October 22, 2019

If you look at the backgrounds in that scene, he's for sure not on the Falcon. Don't know where he is, but it is absolutely not on the Falcon, or even on a space ship.
posted by anastasiav

god dammit, you just rendered all of my slashfic non-canon
posted by COBRA! at 7:36 AM on October 22, 2019 [5 favorites]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
posted by sugar and confetti at 7:43 AM on October 22, 2019 [7 favorites]

The Solo and Rogue One movies were the best of the entire bunch. The writers/ directors were able to develop characters in the universe but not have them make nice with all of the stupid canon baggage from the first 3 AWFUL movies. And I say that as a close-to-50 yr old who had the posters, toys and even BEDSHEETS when I was a kid. George Lucas created a cool universe and then wrote/ directed movies with the most cliche fantasy tropes that may have ever been committed to film. The storytelling and dialogue is awful. And I say that as someone who LOVES the trailers of the new movies but then is terribly disappointed watching what passes as storytelling in these awful films. The new movies are just another cash grab by Disney taking advantage of our love of nostalgia.
posted by photoslob at 7:44 AM on October 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

Surely there's a limit to how much nostalgia-wanking galaxy-tourism even a J.J. movie would put us through!
…Right?

I am here for the nostalgia-wanking galaxy-tourism. Episode VII could have been 2 hours of the Millennium Falcon targeting computer and I would have been ok with that.

I could get into a frozen cloud city where they go to retrieve Luke's Fitbit or whatever from his hand.
posted by bondcliff at 7:47 AM on October 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

Guys, these movies are explicitly modern myths. Check out the Heroine' Journey. Rey isn't going to kill Kylo. Rey & Kylo are Jungian figures, and the Jungian narrative is about integration/reconciliation.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 7:53 AM on October 22, 2019 [15 favorites]

I don't want her to kill him. I just don't want her to condone his behavior and enable his heroic redemption.

Honestly, modern myths or not, female characters deserve more agency and respect than that.
posted by lydhre at 7:57 AM on October 22, 2019 [15 favorites]

I dunno. I watched the trailer and, frankly, was just kind of befuddled. But Rian Johnson took almost everything that JJ Abrams set up in TFA and pretty much just tossed it all out the window in TLJ. Is JJ returning the favor for ROS?

I hope so. Johnson's gall was just flooring - Get hired to make the second movie in a trilogy, then bin and/or ignore every single story thread introduced in the first movie? That's like getting hired to build an addition to a house and deciding to leave and make an outhouse instead. And when the homeowner complains about it, you just smirk and say you were subverting expectations about house additions.

In my ideal Episode 9, Rey wakes up, says "what a strange dream" then picks right up where Episode 7 ended.
posted by FakeFreyja at 8:09 AM on October 22, 2019 [5 favorites]

MetaFilter: just another cash grab by Disney taking advantage of our love of nostalgia.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:11 AM on October 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

It's too bad that Disney didn't pick up the franchise before the prequel trilogy, because having actual Goofy in the crew would have been awesome.

"Hello! Do you have a moment to hear the Good News about Kingdom Hearts?"
posted by The Bellman at 8:12 AM on October 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

Johnson's gall was just flooring - Get hired to make the second movie in a trilogy, then bin and/or ignore every single story thread introduced in the first movie? That's like getting hired to build an addition to a house and deciding to leave and make an outhouse instead. And when the homeowner complains about it, you just smirk and say you were subverting expectations about house additions.

Nothing compared to Episode V's abandonment of the WELL-established plotline where Luke and Leia go with their yuzzem budies to the temple of Pomojema in order to get a kaiburr crystal. What the hell happened with the Mimban swamps? The wandrella? These late-to-the-party fanboys crowing about how great Empire was, it's like they just heard of Star Wars yesterday and are jumping on the bandwagon. Furthermore, I
posted by sugar and confetti at 8:17 AM on October 22, 2019 [41 favorites]

I liked the parts where there were lightsabres.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:21 AM on October 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

At 1:41, there's what looks like a Y-wing, the unloved workhorse of the Rebellion, doing an awesome barrel roll while splashing a pair of enemy fighters.

Okay, I really want an X-wing, but failing that I'd most definitely take a Y-wing.
posted by Gelatin at 8:36 AM on October 22, 2019 [5 favorites]

You want more Y-Wing love? Here you go. Enjoy!
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:39 AM on October 22, 2019 [6 favorites]

At 1:01 when the Falcon swoops down into view, the Ghost from Star Wars: Rebels is visible just to the right of it.

Oooooh! Oh, will there be a green-haired pilot onboard? Or maybe Ahsoka? She would only be in her 70s, I think.

... turns out I'm possibly more excited about the Rebels tie-in than I am about this movie, because I suspect JJA will throw everything I liked about TLJ out the window.
posted by suelac at 8:40 AM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Whatever you think of Abrams, or Johnson, Disney really messed up in not getting their directors to freaking talk to each other more and coordinate this saga.
posted by Apocryphon at 9:00 AM on October 22, 2019 [7 favorites]

Where are the frakin’ porgs?!?

I hated the porgs nearly as much as I did Jar Jar. Stupid useless freakin' things. Their only excuse for being in the movie was to CGI out all the puffins.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:09 AM on October 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

Count me as another who thinks TLJ is great, and who gives no small amount of side-eye to those claiming it is worse than any of the prequels.
posted by Gaz Errant at 9:09 AM on October 22, 2019 [10 favorites]

You want more Y-Wing love?

Or just listen to that Stevie Nicks song blah blah just like the Y-wing does whatever blah yadda
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:10 AM on October 22, 2019 [18 favorites]

It makes me profoundly sad to live in times where redemption myths are not viable. However, I never really got that Vader tossing the Emperor over the balcony was that profound a redemptive act and really it seemed to be about Lucas's dad issues. But...seeing that evil continue through the next generation has reconciled me to it some, like, ok, Vader/Anakin got a Force-ghost (maybe an eternally tormented one despite smiling at the party?) but that that evil spun down through Kylo Ren seems kind of right to me, on that end.

(I agree that redemption-by-woman should not be, or at least not often be.)

I really appreciate that Han Solo and General Organa were sucky parents (I'd like to see Disney make THAT into a series), and I imagine that Carrie Fisher's death would have pooched it if nothing else but I was kind of hoping that this would be a mother-son type arc to match the father-son one, and Rey would just plain be a random badass Jedi who saves the day because why not? It's like Han Solo coming back in for the shot in Ep IV, he doesn't have to be the chosen one. If anything I like that the Rebellion itself has always been a group effort. Luke on his own cannot take down the Death Star and so on.

Anyways, I will go see it.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:14 AM on October 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

Starring the reanimated corpse of Carrie Fisher

On the one hand, Carrie Fisher had filmed at least a portion of her scenes for this movie prior to her death, but on the other the makers of Star Wars are in no way above using CGI fuckery to bring someone back to life.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 9:18 AM on October 22, 2019

I just ... can't get excited anymore.

They have pills for that now, you know.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:19 AM on October 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

Yay, glad to see others are hyped about this, even if I'm not!

I was really rooting for the first of these, but it went sideways and TLJ didn't do much to improve that in my opinion (yes, yes, I'll catch you outside). Here's hoping that this wraps things up in a satisfying way.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:21 AM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Count me as another who thinks TLJ is great, and who gives no small amount of side-eye to those claiming it is worse than any of the prequels.

I don't think it was a bad movie. Certainly better than at least two of the prequels, maybe all three depending on what you're judging on. I just thought the storylines started in TFA were interesting. I wanted to see how they turned out but instead the several interesting plotlines were trashed and a single much less interesting one was introduced. Not to mention the story that was left certainly wasn't enough to fill 150 minutes of movie.

I keep thinking about a mom telling her kid a bedtime story and promising to finish it the next night. The next night, dad stumbles into the room drunk and tells the kid to forget that silly story NOW LET'S TALK SPACE CASINO.
posted by FakeFreyja at 9:23 AM on October 22, 2019 [8 favorites]

I liked the trailer but, man, it never looks good in these films when there's a long shot of characters running while holding lit lightsabers. Something about the CGI just makes them look clumsy and childlike.
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:27 AM on October 22, 2019

The next night, dad stumbles into the room drunk and tells the kid to forget that silly story NOW LET'S TALK SPACE CASINO.

The next night dad stumbles into the room and tells the kid to forget all that stuff about being in the right family and that it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from, it matters what you do, and tells the kid that the Force isn't for Skywalkers or Jedis or Sith -- the Force is in us all and belongs to us all, even the nobodies who are children of filthy junk traders.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:31 AM on October 22, 2019 [29 favorites]

and tells the kid that the Force isn't for Skywalkers or Jedis or Sith -- the Force is in us all and belongs to us all, even the nobodies who are children of filthy junk traders

...or a slave of the SPACE CASINO who's a kid just like you.
posted by Gelatin at 9:35 AM on October 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

I'm not remembering any interesting Episode VII plot arcs abandoned in Episode VIII.
posted by vibrotronica at 9:52 AM on October 22, 2019 [14 favorites]

I didn't catch this on first watch: at 1:49, Rei and Kylo are standing in the wreckage of the Death Star from Return of the Jedi. You can see the circular window and Palpatine's throne in the background. I assume some of the other wreckage in the trailer is also Death Star remnants. That would suggest that the forest Rei is running through at the beginning of the trailer is on Endor.
posted by dephlogisticated at 9:55 AM on October 22, 2019 [5 favorites]

TLJ's handling of failure and loss as tools for growth, as well as the unshackling of the Force from ridiculous blood=destiny bullshit, place it at the top of the franchise for me.

Anyone complaining about the loss of JJ's mystery box plotting from VII, you've either forgotten or don't yet realize... it's another mystery box. Inside the first mystery box. It's mystery boxes all the way down. It's all JJ knows how to do.
posted by Gaz Errant at 9:57 AM on October 22, 2019 [23 favorites]

It never looks good in these films when there's a long shot of characters running while holding lit lightsabers. Something about the CGI just makes them look clumsy and childlike.
It's not the CGI. Lightsabers only exist because of the Rule of Cool, and are one of the dumbest, least safe weapon ever imagined (Wolverine's claws are next). Real Jedis would be covered with scar tissue and missing most of their body parts.
posted by elgilito at 10:17 AM on October 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

They're protected from light saber injury by the Force, duh.
posted by octothorpe at 10:19 AM on October 22, 2019 [7 favorites]

That would suggest that the forest Rei is running through at the beginning of the trailer is on Endor.

CGI EWOKS. IT'S HAPPENING.
forget the porgs
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:23 AM on October 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

hippybear: "(It's Palpatine.)"

Who is Meesa JarJar (so that answers all questions)
posted by chavenet at 10:35 AM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

The most fascinating thing to me is all the people who watched the Original Trilogy, know State Wars was bought by Disney, watched 7 and 8, watched this very trailer, and yet still think Kylo Ren isn't getting a redemption arc.
posted by muddgirl at 10:49 AM on October 22, 2019 [15 favorites]

And that there is any chance that Rey is going to straight up murder him, just like Luke murdered Vader at the end of The Return of the Jedi.
posted by muddgirl at 10:50 AM on October 22, 2019 [8 favorites]

For all of the plaudits and prejudice that The Last Jedi receives for subverting expectations, it still followed ESB’s beats and themes more or less- not as slavishly as TFA did to ANH, but enough.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:52 AM on October 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

Is Lumpy in this, because I need to know how Lumpy turned out.
posted by misterpatrick at 10:55 AM on October 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

I will dutifully see this. I have low expectations for any of these flicks since the first prequel. So maybe that's why I leave the theater generally happy and then completely forget the film a week later.

All I remember from the last one was it looked good, was mostly in focus, and a bunch of the characters did stuff that had zero consequence. Rose and a man destroyed a casino for some reason. A bunch of alien horses were let loose, which we were supposed to feel good about. Even though there was no explanation of their origins or natural habitat. Perhaps they all starved to death running wild on an the casino planet with no suitable food source.

Laura Dern was in it, doing things and saying lines of dialog. So was Carrie Fisher.
posted by SoberHighland at 11:01 AM on October 22, 2019 [9 favorites]

Rey isn't going to kill Kylo.

fine then i will
posted by poffin boffin at 11:02 AM on October 22, 2019 [29 favorites]

Are those wild casino space horses the ones from the new trailer, too?!

(Or maybe borrowed from a Many-Colored Land picture?)
posted by wenestvedt at 11:11 AM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Palpatine almost kills Rey.
Kylo kills Palpatine, redeeming yet dooming himself in the process. RIP Kylo.
...but

There is a clone.

DARK REY IS THE FINAL BOSS!!!
posted by MrGuilt at 11:16 AM on October 22, 2019

Is Lumpy in this, because I need to know how Lumpy turned out.

He was radicalized by watching neo-fascist holograms online and joined the New Order. His first assignment was Starkiller Base, which subsequently exploded.
posted by dephlogisticated at 11:22 AM on October 22, 2019 [5 favorites]

Three-quarters of the way through the movie, during an enormous battle scene, Kylo Ren and half of the other characters turn into dust and drift away. Rey’s lightsaber continues its Kylo-ward arc, cutting through the motes, setting some on fire. The glowing remnants of what had been Kylo Ren catch the breeze, flying up into the night sky, and get lost among the stars.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 11:27 AM on October 22, 2019 [7 favorites]

They're protected from light saber injury by the Force, duh
Well I was at a Jedi training session a few days ago in Paris and a bunch of ~~Narutos~~ padawans ended up in ER, which made Palpatine really happy.
posted by elgilito at 11:30 AM on October 22, 2019

MrGuilt's theory is pretty plausible imo. And if that is the waterworld cloning planet, having clones yield Dark Rey would sure fit with the infinite mirror scene in Last Jedi.
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:31 AM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

I liked Last Jedi a lot, but I've always been much more of a Star Trek fanatic. That makes managing expectations super easy.

The trailer was pretty good, but I loved the rearranged theme.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 11:52 AM on October 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

CGI EWOKS

*CG-woks
posted by The Tensor at 11:54 AM on October 22, 2019 [5 favorites]

I've said it before, but whoever is doing the trailer music for the Disney Star Wars movies has been putting together some masterful stuff. It just tugs at all my fanboy heartstrings.
posted by dellsolace at 12:01 PM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Chaffinch: Is it just me or does it look like, towering over Rey, Palpatine is in some kind of.. mech?

I just rewatched it and it sure as hell looks like the mechanical thing in which the figure wearing the Palpatine-esque cowl is…sitting?…is walking jerkily forward as if on robotic/mechanical legs. That…may be hard to pull off in a non-stupid fashion. I mean, yes, General Grievous is precedent, but…that does not disprove it being hard to pull off in a non-stupid fashion.

Relevant TV Tropes link.

Maybe ROS opens with a flashback sequence inverting the Two Towers opening, in which it is revealed that, while plummeting down the Death Star shaft, Palpatine got into a smacking-fight with a rancor or something, and that big blue explosion that signalled the end of ROTJ's climax is actually what comes out of a rancor when it explodes.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 12:25 PM on October 22, 2019

I'm 45, my earliest memories are of playing Star Wars with my brother. Luke's arc in TLJ floored me. Luke has been there my whole life, probably my first hero, and he FAILED. He's bitter and disappointed. Then Yoda smacks him around a little, this kid Rey won't let up, and he goes and pulls this brave, bad ass, incredible move. I swear to god, I actually tear up every time I think about it. Life is hard and disappointing and you fail and you can still be Luke Fucking Skywalker at the end. It was so moving to me. I still can't believe they let Rian Johnson do that.
posted by Mavri at 12:29 PM on October 22, 2019 [63 favorites]

I keep thinking about the weird planet in Clone Wars with the Embodiment of Good and Embodiment of Evil brother-sister pair and dreading the idea that that is where Kylo and Rey are heading.
posted by emjaybee at 12:32 PM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

What about the dagger in Rey's hand (!) in the explodey Vader helmet clip with Kylo?

I also see Palpatine's (or some..)fingers creepin' in that over the shoulder shot..
posted by djseafood at 12:39 PM on October 22, 2019

I also don't really get what interesting plot TLJ was supposed to subvert. I can only guess that it was how it was hinted that Rei was probably in the Skywalker lineage? And then Kylo tells her that her parents were nobody? I guess I don't think that that plot point was very interesting to begin with, being the most obvious thing in the world, and I don't think that TLJ really subverted it. Not really. Why would you trust what Kylo says?

It would be really cool if Rey was a nobody, that would be the more interesting direction. But (and especially now that JJ is back at the helm) that's not what happens in Star Wars movies. It is going to turn out that Rey is a Skywalker. The twist this time is that she's a clone of Leia!
posted by team lowkey at 12:52 PM on October 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

The twist this time is that she's the illegitimate daughter of Leia and Luke, who, to prevent the scandal from derailing Leia's political career, was hidden away on a remote desert planet. ("You turned out OK—it'll be good for her!")
posted by The Tensor at 12:58 PM on October 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

Anakin was a nobody though. I mean sure, weird Force virgin birth, but it's no more/less plausible that Rey also has one or two nobody-parents and was touched by force protozoans.

(Actually, it'd be pretty funny if Kylo is all about ~his legacy~ and then finds out that Rey is the Force's chosen mirror of Vader, or something.)
posted by nakedmolerats at 1:03 PM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

I don't think I would so easily brush past god's chosen vessel via virgin birth as a "nobody".
posted by team lowkey at 1:09 PM on October 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

I'm surprised that no one has noticed that BB-8 now has a sidekick (ok not that surprised...it looks like a desk lamp)...sooo...a sidekick's sidekick's sidekick's sidekick? It's like a fractal made out of Scrappy-Doo. :/
posted by sexyrobot at 1:10 PM on October 22, 2019 [6 favorites]

(Sorry, I know BB-8 is cool and clever and all, but it's basically the equivalent of the TV Trope "Have a Baby!" Like "where's R2-D2?" "Oh, over there, dusty, sitting in the corner where he just straight-up died" "Oh fuck. What the hell happened?" "Who gives a shit? Everybody look at the cute baby!")
posted by sexyrobot at 1:18 PM on October 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

EVERYONE: These are fucking Disney films about never-ending war.

I'm old enough to have seen the first SW flick in the theater as a young lad. So I loved the first three. The first prequel had me excited to be back in that universe when I was around age 30. It kind of fell flat, and I was disappointed. Oh well. I thought JarJar was lame, but I never hated him the way he came to be hated. The next two were boring as hell and I barely remember them except six-pack Yoda and... Midiclorians. The Midiclorians made me fully NOPE out of interest in the franchise. Such an unbelievably stupid plot point.

The revival of the series has been better, and more enjoyable. I really liked the last one, whatever it was called. The main problem with it was not much really happened. Bunch of characters ran around and accomplished little. I liked Luke's disillusionment, turning into the grump old guy like I had become. And his return to kick-butt in the end was cool. But the "comedic" way some of it was handled (Luke tossing the lightsaber over his shoulder, for example) was poorly done. "Rose" and "Lenny" (or whatever that character's name is) were given a pointless task that went nowhere, just so they could be in the film. Secrets were kept by characters just so there'd be a plot. I can't remember the exact details, but Laura Dern and Leia withheld info from the Han Solo-reboot guy? Something like that.
...

Big reason why I prefer fantasy to sci-fi is that sci-fi (usually) ends up trying to explain crazy crap like The Force in a way that us basic-educated folks in the Western hemisphere can understand. Which inevitably makes the concepts suck. And leads to Midiclorian crap —and little kids with helmets practicing with light sabers—in a big budget movie, passed off as serious and important. Stop explaining the unexplainable, please.

Also, the Expanded universe can eat a bag o' salted dicks for all I care. Apparently, the galaxy has unlimited resources for everything, unlimited power, fuel, space travel... but there's people selling scrap junk? To whom? Why? And why do all the aliens exhibit bilateral symmetry?
posted by SoberHighland at 1:45 PM on October 22, 2019 [5 favorites]

I also don't really get what interesting plot TLJ was supposed to subvert.

Alright, I'll bite. There are a few, but whether you think they were interesting subjective I suppose.

1. Yes, where Rey came from. Whether or not it is important, or whether it would be cooler if she was a nobody, the story was being told that she was something special. And it was reflected in her arc - she is a super badass for a mysterious reason. Why? If she WAS something special, that is an interesting story. If not, it's just competency porn. You're right, it would be stupid if it was something as predictable as a lost Skywalker, but something has to be up with her to make her hero arc even work in a basic storytelling sense.

2. What happened to Luke before his fall, the actual showdown between him and Kylo (and the Knights of Ren that TLJ retconned out of existence). The oops my lightsaber went off on accident storyline was weak gravy. I guess this storyline wasn't so much scrapped as severely truncated. There is the setup for the story, and the end with Luke wanting to die. The only middle is a nonsensical scene about Luke accidentally turning on his laser gizmo.

3. Snoke's plan and where he came from. All he does is tell Kylo off and then die. What a wet fart.

4. Captain Phasma, a very cool character and coincidentally the shiniest. What a cool bad guy she is going to be! Oops, all she gets to do is be a hostage and then die. Ugh.

5. Kylo's daddy issues. Like the character or not, he had depth and the beginning of an arc. In 8 he just is a bad guy for no reason. His Vader obsession isn't even mentioned again outside of a one-off line by Snoke and him crushing the vader helmet. And where did that come from? Why does he care to much? Who knows!
posted by FakeFreyja at 1:50 PM on October 22, 2019 [6 favorites]

The last time I thought of clever filmmaking and Stars War was that bit in the beginning of that one when the stormtrooper gets blood on his helmet and it becomes a way for the audience to follow along with an individual stormtrooper in subsequent shots, differentiated from all the other identical troopers.

That was a good idea.
posted by glonous keming at 2:30 PM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

...she is a super badass for a mysterious reason. Why?

Um, because the Force is with her?

The oops my lightsaber went off on accident storyline was weak gravy.

Of all the complaints people have about TLJ, this one is the most baffling. Luke reached into Ben's mind and discovered he'd already fallen to the Dark Side. In shock, he ignited his lightsaber. That's 100% in character for a Jedi. Have you even seen a Star Wars movie? Why did you think Jedi trained in lightsaber dueling?

Kylo's daddy issues. Like the character or not, he had depth and the beginning of an arc. In 8 he just is a bad guy for no reason.

They included the first flashback in Star Wars history to give us more insight into his character. You were literally just complaining about that specific scene...?
posted by The Tensor at 2:33 PM on October 22, 2019 [11 favorites]

I'm the biggest fan of the sequels I know (I watched The Last Jedi once a week for the 52 weeks after it came out), and I've been basically on the edge of my seat for the last two years. But, the spoilers I've read in the past few weeks have kind of chucked an ice bucket over my head. I'm hoping against hope they turn out to be false rumors, and with reshoots going so late that's a distinct possibility, so I'm still planning on going opening weekend if I have the money. Always in motion the future is. However, I'm not quite the giddy schoolgirl I was a month ago.

I did just seriously choke up at the Jedi vs. Sith: the Skywalker Saga animated video from the Star Wars Kids YouTube channel, tho.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:34 PM on October 22, 2019

I think I would've been happier without any of the Original Trilogy actors in the sequels.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:47 PM on October 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

Those plot deviations in TLJ pale are not out of line with prior subversions and contradictions. I mean, Luke and Han were rivals for Leia’s affection and then out of the blue she’s Luke’s sister? Vader is a garden variety bad guy who killed Luke’s dad long ago, but nope, Old Ben was lying, Vader was Luke’s dad all along? Obi-Wan was a coward to boot, completely leaving out the fact that he nearly killed Anakin himself. Who btw with his vaunted force attuned senses noticed nothing the whole time he was torturing his daughter? And it was implied that all the living Light Side force users save Luke (and “another" aka Leia) had been wiped out by the time of ROTJ, then it turns out that despite Order 66, the SW universe was fairly teeming with Jedi and other force users in various degrees of hiding. Meanwhile Admiral Motti in ANH had made it sound as if Vader was the only surviving practitioner of an old-timey religion that had virtually faded into myth, even though the Jedi and an entire Jedi infrastructure had been ubiquitous only 20 years previously. And infamously, mysticism was retconned as midichlorians.

I mean, I don’t really have a problem with any of those twists, but to ignore that the whole series is retcon on top of retcon to begin with is not fair to TLJ.

I might as well throw in my annoyance at fans who claim that Leia’s “flying” was inconsistent with prior utilizations of the force. It was well established in the original trilogy that Jedi telekenetically move massive objects and in the prequels that they can alter their trajectory in free fall. Leia was doing the same, just pushing herself, made much easier by being in a microgravity environment. Besides which, many of the films introduced new or enhanced force powers, not just TLJ.
posted by xigxag at 3:11 PM on October 22, 2019 [21 favorites]

Snoke's plan and where he came from. All he does is tell Kylo off and then die.

That was the best part*! Snoke was terrible and was, in true JJ Abrams style, never going to pay off. Acknowledging he was an alien McGuffin who just existed to move Kylo's story along and eviscerating him ASAP was a bold move that I appreciated.

*OK, OK, salty old Luke (blue milk nonwithstanding) was the best part.
posted by davros42 at 3:47 PM on October 22, 2019 [18 favorites]

"The next night dad stumbles into the room and tells the kid to forget all that stuff about being in the right family and that it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from, it matters what you do, and tells the kid that the Force isn't for Skywalkers or Jedis or Sith -- the Force is in us all and belongs to us all, even the nobodies who are children of filthy junk traders... "

...but without the dumb space casino.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 3:58 PM on October 22, 2019

IMO, trashing the space casino was part and parcel of the whole "this isn't all about the big machers and the noble bloodlines and the Huxes and the Tarkins and the people with the biggest toys and the folks who used to think they owned all the answers anymore" ethos of the film in general. This is literally not a game anymore.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:20 PM on October 22, 2019 [6 favorites]

OH MY GOD

I just booked my wife and I for Disneyland right before Thanksgiving. I didn’t even realize this movie was headed down the chute this year, because I am not a big Star Wars fan.

This trailer made me cry in FIFTEEN SECONDS. Our day at Disney is gonna be weird.
posted by mwhybark at 4:23 PM on October 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

xigxag: "I mean, I don’t really have a problem with any of those twists, but to ignore that the whole series is retcon on top of retcon to begin with is not fair to TLJ."

To me, SW is one good movie, one excellent movie, and then a bunch of mistaken moves that occasionally put together some enjoyable moments.
posted by Chrysostom at 4:25 PM on October 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

blue milk nonwithstanding

Luke wasn't raised in a temple or a hangar bay; he was raised on a poor-ass dirt farm. He's gonna milk whatever stands still long enough
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:38 PM on October 22, 2019 [23 favorites]

Luke knows you can milk anything with nipples.
posted by The Tensor at 4:46 PM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

I have nipples Luke, could you milk me?
posted by wabbittwax at 5:00 PM on October 22, 2019 [7 favorites]

The blowback to that one scene is probably the most mystifying to me. OK, I know not everybody shilled for agricultural education as hard as I have, but is that big a segment of the audience really so divorced from the fact that the milk they drink comes from the breasts of mammals? That that's... literally how milk works?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:20 PM on October 22, 2019 [8 favorites]

I think the concern was that Luke had not married the space-walrus in question, and nevertheless, seemed to be getting the milk for free.
posted by wabbittwax at 5:44 PM on October 22, 2019 [13 favorites]

"You tried to drag me back into the space war, you pissed off the fish nuns, and you never even said hello to my wife!"
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:04 PM on October 22, 2019 [16 favorites]

Okay, I really want an X-wing, but failing that I'd most definitely take a Y-wing.

Not just those, but there were pretty clearly also B-wings, which is great, because as we all know, the B stands for BEST. BEST-Wing.

(Personally, I not only loved the milk thing, as a sort of "Oh, you want to stay here and follow me around, let me show you how terrible this existence I eke out really is" thing, I love his weirdly proud grimace after drinking it, like a dad who tries to show how tough he is by eating the spiciest hot pepper. "Yeah, it hurts... oh YEAH, and I LIKE THE PAIN..." grimace, whimper "OOOH YEAH!")
posted by Ghidorah at 6:32 PM on October 22, 2019 [6 favorites]

At 1:41, there's what looks like a Y-wing, the unloved workhorse of the Rebellion

oh my god how the dumb little twelve year old geek in me lost his fucking mind when the lumbering y-wings of Gold Squadron did their torpedo run in Rogue One and toasted that star destroyer. You want grow your hair long, get in the papers, and score lots of (preferred gender)? You fly an x-wing. You want to blow up a few million credits of Imperial hardware? You fly a y-wing.

I was also profoundly nerdthrilled when the x-wings owned all the beach walkers; all those many many schoolyard "what would happen if the x-wings at Hoth had flown the anti-armor mission instead of those chintzy snowspeeders?" arguments, suddenly silenced.

Also, TLJ is a beautiful mess and PORGS UP.

I'll be seeing Rise early in the run. Hopefully JJs endlessly recursing nesting box of mysteries has been fed to the sarlaac.
posted by Sauce Trough at 6:59 PM on October 22, 2019 [11 favorites]

You want grow your hair long, get in the papers, and score lots of (preferred gender)? You fly an x-wing.

Hmm.

A-Wing pilot? Maybe a mix of Prius hyper-milers and vape-bros who tweak their vapes to produce the biggest possible cloud, and deeply believe everyone wants to hear about?

B-Wing pilot? Would they even socialize with the fighter pilots? Wouldn't they just sit in the cafeteria with the frigate captains, smugly thinking about how they could destroy their frigates entirely on their own?
posted by Ghidorah at 7:47 PM on October 22, 2019 [6 favorites]

A conversation with a B-Wing pilot:

"Well, actually, the B-Wing excels in multiple roles..."

"Well, actually, the offset gyro-stabilized cockpit is a superior design because..."

"Well, actually, the B-Wing carries enough firepower to..."
posted by jason_steakums at 8:06 PM on October 22, 2019 [14 favorites]

A-Wing pilot? Maybe a mix of Prius hyper-milers and vape-bros who tweak their vapes to produce the biggest possible cloud, and deeply believe everyone wants to hear about?

Star Wars Rebels kinda y-winged the a-wing, if you know what I mean. After that show, my headcanon is that the A-Wings are the P-36 Hawks of the Star Wars universe; a mediocre interwar design that you buy from some creep on a casino planet because you can't afford the leading edge stuff.

And the Rebel pilots who flew those pokey old crates? Those heroes are the Rebellion's true believers, instinctive antifascists of every age, class, and species, reluctant but dogged fighters who would have been first in line to join the International Brigades in 1936. They are optimists. They still believe that the New Republic they're birthing won't be the sclerotic mess that the Old was. So the stereotype is that A-Wing pilots are earnest, and beautiful, and doomed.

B-Wings, those huge hosses are driven by hella butch brickhouse-looking sapients who know how to turn wrenches and weld shit to other shit. The intense maintenance required by the B-Wing is actually a feature to these people. The stereotype is truck nuts, Calvin-peeing-on-an-A-Wing stickers, and a speeder on blocks in the driveway. Look closer, though: all B-Wing pilots look fantastic in formalwear.
posted by Sauce Trough at 8:31 PM on October 22, 2019 [12 favorites]

Whoa there, jason_steakums, the ~~fedora~~ trilby wearers you're thinking of are in the A-Wing hanger, on your left.
posted by Ghidorah at 8:31 PM on October 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

Man, I wish I had adequate words to tell y'all just how much I love Metafilter. This place is the absolute best. I mean, where else am I gonna find people riffing on the personality types of $N-wing pilots??
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:33 PM on October 22, 2019 [22 favorites]

this is the only place I want to be a Star Wars fan
posted by Sauce Trough at 8:35 PM on October 22, 2019

I was just going to call y'all a bunch of geeks and nerds, but I'll go with echoing Greg_Ace's comment.
posted by hippybear at 8:36 PM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'll be satisfied with this movie as long as someone finally gets the titular line.

"Ah, boy... I'm just tired of all these star wars."
posted by dephlogisticated at 8:38 PM on October 22, 2019 [6 favorites]

I just want the V-Wing airspeeder from the first Rogue Squadron game to gain more recognition.
posted by Apocryphon at 8:45 PM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

$N-wing pilots??

As you know Bob, the $N-wing is the SW equivalent of the VF-1.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:47 PM on October 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

Sauce Trough, I never really watched Rebels as closely as I probably should. I knew there were scenes with A-Wings, and yeah, I did indeed love A-Wings, too. I know the show evolved a lot from the early seasons, but I really just couldn't get into it as much. I'll try to give it another go, if only because that sounds like an interesting take on the ships.

This might sound dumb, but one little issue I've had but never thought about much until now, is that it's pretty rare in Star Wars to really get an idea of how fast things are going. I mean sure, space and physics are a thing, but I'd love for anyone in an A-Wing to look like they're smooshed into their seat by the acceleration they're enduring. Instead of that weird, just sort of floating here image you get from the pilots in whatever ship they're piloting, it would be cool to see.

That, and the bits I saw of Rebels, maybe it's the animation style, but A-Wings (to me, at least) shouldn't ever look like they're stationary, especially against a reference point like a lumbering cruiser. They should be the excessively energetic corgis of Star Wars, running around all over the place, flailing at larger ships with their stubby, nearly useless little ~~legs~~ blasters.

A-Wing Corgi

X-Wing Golden Retriever

Y-Wing Basset Hound? (Ugly, built like a tank, kind of dumb)

B-Wing St. Bernard
posted by Ghidorah at 8:47 PM on October 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

I was into V-wings before they were cool
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:47 PM on October 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

I was just going to call y'all a bunch of geeks and nerds

Look it's not our fault Y-Wing pilots are clearly Hufflepuffs
posted by jason_steakums at 8:58 PM on October 22, 2019 [16 favorites]

jason_steakums, that maps so, so perfectly. I mean, as long as we all accept X-Wing pilots as Ventrue.
posted by Ghidorah at 9:51 PM on October 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

Stars War, surely.
posted by darkstar at 11:01 PM on October 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

Also, I fell in love with the A wings in the X-Wing video games.

Lightly armored, yes, but the fastest, and amply armed with rockets. Oh, I was a hell of a dogfighter back in the day...
posted by darkstar at 11:03 PM on October 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

Metafilter: hella butch brickhouse-looking sapients who know how to turn wrenches and weld shit to other shit.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:54 PM on October 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

As a "TIE Fighter" player I would like to point out that A-Wings are hella annoying plus ineffectual.
posted by away for regrooving at 12:16 AM on October 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm sorry, X-Wing pilots are clearly more Brujah than anything else.
posted by dogheart at 1:16 AM on October 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

(ANH, ESB, TLJ, Rogue One, RotJ, Clone Wars (Tartakovsky), Clone Wars, RotS, AotC).

One of the things that REALLY pissed me off was the demotion of Tartakovsky's Clone Wars to Extended Universe.
posted by mikelieman at 4:56 AM on October 23, 2019 [3 favorites]

Luke's story in The Last Jedi is one of the best things about that film, and people who don't see it as a decent continuation of his story are simply wrong - if it has a problem it's too perfect. Let's strip the Force and mysticism away and see it for what it is.

After the war, Luke, a genuine war hero, doesn't have a clue how to reintegrate himself into civilian life. He tries his hand at teaching, but when something bad happens his combination of war-honed reflexes and untreated PTSD cause him to react for a split second as if he was under attack. He doesn't directly hurt anyone but he terrifies them and realises he probably shouldn't be teaching children. Instead he follows in the footsteps of not one but both his mentors, exiling himself to the middle of nowhere. The middle of nowhere he chooses is at once both like and unlike where he grew up (he gets seas rather than a desert) and he uses his aunt and uncle's trade of farming in a harsh and beautiful environment that would have sounded like fiction when he was a kid (moisture farming to by the sea). Rather than the blue milk of his youth he now farms green milk (farmers realising that milk comes from somewhere before it does the supermarket).

And when someone arrives he tries to put her off the way Yoda did him. The history isn't repeating but it's rhyming, and not in the forced way of The Force Awakens. He keeps trying to put her off but she convinces him that he still has something to offer the galaxy and he then goes on his own terms and in a way that is spectacular and saves everyone?

In what way is this not a good use of Luke? And in what way does it not answer the single biggest hook The Force Awakens left me with - not "Where was Luke?" but "Why was Luke hiding?"

As for Snoke and Rey's parents, Johnson treated caffeine-free diet Palpatine with all the respect he deserved, and the Rey parents reveal was definitely worthy of the series that gave "I am your father" and added back some of the mysticism to The Force that ham handed midichlorians had taken away, making the Jedi something other than a eugenics project. It was also simultaneously a twist and the obvious answer as the best ones are.

Best Star Wars since Empire
posted by Francis at 5:01 AM on October 23, 2019 [45 favorites]

> hella butch brickhouse-looking sapients who know how to turn wrenches and weld shit to other shit.

This needs to be a series holy shit like "black sails" or whatever but "Y WINGS" and it's like Taxi where it's all shot in the garage, and told by stories and there's a core crowd of mechanics and pilots and they come and go and break hearts and get shot down or lost and come back and OMG this would be the best thing ever
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:07 AM on October 23, 2019 [6 favorites]

He keeps trying to put her off but she convinces him that he still has something to offer the galaxy and he then goes on his own terms and in a way that is spectacular and saves everyone?

In what way is this not a good use of Luke?

Some of my nerd friends were mad because Luke only saved the day as an illusion instead of battling the bad guys nose to nose in a manly fashion. They impugned his manhood and accused him of cowardice.

I think they're silly, but that was the opinion I saw expressed.
posted by Fleebnork at 6:52 AM on October 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

Also, I love you guys for the extended "Fighter Pilots be like this" commentary.
posted by Fleebnork at 6:52 AM on October 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

Of all the things that annoy me about humans and their reactions to artistic choices, the worst is when they get all boo hoo, you killed off my favourite character, I'm going to ignore the narrative reasons why and just have a bloody cry about it to everyone in earshot. I mean, fuck off with your unrealistic self. Characters die, especially 40 years later and in the heat of battle (even if it was only staged in his mind, on his side anyway. Obviously I'm talking about Luke here).
posted by h00py at 6:57 AM on October 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

One of the things that REALLY pissed me off was the demotion of Tartakovsky's Clone Wars to Extended Universe.

Damn. I hadn't heard that, and yeah, it pisses me off. It was the first bit of Star Wars that showed how amazing properly trained Jedi Masters could be (a bit over powered, but seriously Mace Windu losing his light saber and still taking out an army of droids on his own?) drawing from flipping Yoda absurdity and extending into something awesome. It made Grievous actually frightening, and also explained why he was wheezing (again, Mace Windu). The animation style was perfect, and it's dilution into cheesy CG was what put me off the series that came after.

It was amazing, and each bit was a perfect two to three minute story that perfectly captured Star Wars, as well as helped make sense of the lunacy of the prequels.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:00 AM on October 23, 2019 [5 favorites]

This is more related to Star Wars the overall phenomenon than to the latest trailer, but after a recent-ish rewatch of Logan's Run I really feel like I understand the impact better. Like, LR came out the year before Ep IV and was a big hit, state of the art science fiction movie. And it's leaden and looks like shit (compare, say, C-3P0 to this bullshit). The budgets were a little different--$7M for LR to $11M for Ep IV,--but still, no wonder people shit their pants if Logan's Run was where the bar was previously.

Also, imagine the alternate universe where LR became a generation-spanning IP franchise and we were now getting all misty at a trailer implying the looming death of that bullshit robot linked above.
posted by COBRA! at 7:23 AM on October 23, 2019 [3 favorites]

well slow down a minute, Box wasn't exactly a robot
posted by thelonius at 7:32 AM on October 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

Right, he was a bullshit robot
posted by COBRA! at 7:39 AM on October 23, 2019 [8 favorites]

Wow. I loved loved loved the Last Jedi, and I'm more than a little apprehensive that Abrams will erase or rejigger some of the things I loved about it, but this looks like what I was hoping for in an end to the 6-move saga (in my world the prequels still don't exist), and I am 99.5% in for this movie (with the missing .5 because I already loathe whatever the gnome-furbie-creature is that they half-show wiring C3P0)
posted by Mchelly at 7:43 AM on October 23, 2019

But have you noticed that the prequels are becoming more acceptable with time and nostalgia. Who would have thought?
posted by h00py at 7:59 AM on October 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

A Y-Wing version of the 70’s TV classic “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” would be hella cool especially if it started John Larroquette as the squadron commander.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:17 AM on October 23, 2019 [6 favorites]

But have you noticed that the prequels are becoming more acceptable with time and nostalgia.

You shut your mouth with your lies!
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:18 AM on October 23, 2019 [5 favorites]

But have you noticed that the prequels are becoming more acceptable with time and nostalgia.

I suggest you google "star wars prequel fanedit" and select one of them. They generally resolve the most significant issues.
posted by mikelieman at 8:27 AM on October 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

I was really surprised by all the hatred for Last Jedi. I saw it in the theater the weekend it came out and loved it (with a few quibbles) and then started reading all this stuff about how Rian Johnson ruined Star Wars which I wasn't expecting at all. I still don't quite get all the anger at it.
posted by octothorpe at 8:35 AM on October 23, 2019 [4 favorites]

Fish, plankton, sea greens and protein from the sea!

Building on Francis's awesome comment:

Even before he knew who his real father was, Luke's greatest fear was that he would become another Vader. Now, I don't know how much of Anakin's history he'd been able to learn post-ROTJ. But, since he did quest after Jedi history, he may have been able to either find stuff out or make inferences. If he knows about the slaughter of the younglings at the Jedi Temple, and if he knows that Vader and other Dark Siders have justified themselves by claiming their bad acts served the greater good (hey, at least the space trains always ran on time), then of course that split second of instinct when he drew his weapon on a student would have made him think, OK, it's finally happened, now this is the only way I can keep from doing more harm than good.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:35 AM on October 23, 2019 [11 favorites]

You can see the circular window and Palpatine's throne in the background. I assume some of the other wreckage in the trailer is also Death Star remnants. That would suggest that the forest Rei is running through at the beginning of the trailer is on Endor.

Yet no Ewoks. If they made the Endor Holocaust canon they would get oceans of respect from me, and piss off a lot of people, most of whom I am fine with pissing off. (And not because I hate Ewoks. In fact, partly because I like Ewoks.)
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:22 AM on October 23, 2019 [4 favorites]

Everybody is entitled to their personal opinion, but TLJ was excactly what I didn't want from a Star Wars movie.

The heroes were not working as a team and trusting each other, the tone was wrong (that banter from Poe at the beginning, Luke's dismissal of the lightsaber, ...), FUEL! since when does those ships have fuel this is Star Wars not Star Trek, its space fantasy not science fiction, that ridiculous chase that made no sense at all with people coming and going, the casino ...

There were many faults with TFA but the erasure of things that were setup is just weird, and it didn't feel natural, you could see it wasn't what it was built it for and that made those moment more grating.

It's SW, I don't expect subversion of tropes, groundbreaking stories or anything smart, I just want to be entertained and fan-serviced.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 10:00 AM on October 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

But have you noticed that the prequels are becoming more acceptable with time and nostalgia.

Wut??!?! I think they've gotten even worse.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 10:01 AM on October 23, 2019

I’m still thankful that the prequels exist because Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor and no one will ever convince me otherwise.
posted by lydhre at 10:12 AM on October 23, 2019 [3 favorites]

FUEL! since when does those ships have fuel

Since 1977, when this guy turned that red valve and moved to unhook that hose before the attack on the Death Star.
posted by The Tensor at 10:25 AM on October 23, 2019 [13 favorites]

Since 1977, when this guy turned that red valve and moved to unhook that hose before the attack on the Death Star.

This guy is set dressing exactly like the welders we see everywhere.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 10:42 AM on October 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

This a story about heroes and villains, not about heroes being low on fuel for most of the movie in a universe where this has never been much of a concern for anybody.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 10:44 AM on October 23, 2019

This a story about heroes and villains, not about heroes being low on fuel for most of the movie in a universe where this has never been much of a concern for anybody.

Were you similarly outraged by The Empire Strikes Back's LUDICROUS AND FRANCHISE-RUINING "broken hyperdrive" plot?
posted by The Tensor at 11:28 AM on October 23, 2019 [11 favorites]

But have you noticed that the prequels are becoming more acceptable with time and nostalgia.

Wut??!?! I think they've gotten even worse.

They're still terrible, but you've got a whole generation out there who saw them as little kids, and therefore have some fondness for them.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:57 AM on October 23, 2019 [4 favorites]

Children have notoriously bad taste, although I will allow that baby shark song is catchy.
posted by maxsparber at 12:03 PM on October 23, 2019 [3 favorites]

you've got a whole generation out there who saw them as little kids, and therefore have some fondness for them.

Much like the relationship between George Lucas and the Buster Crabbe FLASH GORDON and BUCK ROGERS serials, hey what?
posted by Devoidoid at 12:10 PM on October 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

Were you similarly outraged by The Empire Strikes Back's LUDICROUS AND FRANCHISE-RUINING "broken hyperdrive" plot?

Well wait a minute. If you have a hyperdrive, it can surely break, right? That seems more believable than some kind of giant creature that lives inside asteroid craters, at least.
posted by thelonius at 12:14 PM on October 23, 2019

I, having seen it on UHF TV before I saw Star Wars, showed my girls the first Flash Gordon serial to give them the proper cinema-historical context before showing them Star Wars (the Despecialized Edition, natch).
posted by The Tensor at 12:16 PM on October 23, 2019 [3 favorites]

...If you have a hyperdrive, it can surely break, right?

Ugh, and that lame "cough-cough-cough" noise the hyperdrive made every time it failed! THERE'S NO PLACE FOR CORNY HUMOR IN STAR WARS WHICH HAS A VERY SERIOUS TONE YOU GUYS.
posted by The Tensor at 12:19 PM on October 23, 2019 [7 favorites]

I dunno if you're supposed to be taking these movies this seriously.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:26 PM on October 23, 2019 [3 favorites]

that banter from Poe at the beginning

Han Solo: Uh, had a slight weapons malfunction. But, uh, everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here, now, thank you. How are you?
posted by Fleebnork at 12:43 PM on October 23, 2019 [13 favorites]

Were you similarly outraged by The Empire Strikes Back's LUDICROUS AND FRANCHISE-RUINING "broken hyperdrive" plot?

That was an inconvenience that had to be overcome in like 15 minutes, not the driving force behind the entire B plot (and led to the utter devastation of the Resistance which appears to have like five ships lol)
posted by Apocryphon at 1:30 PM on October 23, 2019

The Falcon's hyperdrive is broken from the beginning of the movie and doesn't get fixed (thanks, Artoo!) until like five minutes before the end. The inability to escape to hyperspace is the reason for the asteroid chase and for heading to Bespin. It drives the entire Han-and-Leia plot, and determines the location for the end of Luke's plot as well.
posted by The Tensor at 1:43 PM on October 23, 2019 [10 favorites]

That was an inconvenience that had to be overcome in like 15 minutes, not the driving force behind the entire B plot (and led to the utter devastation of the Resistance which appears to have like five ships lol)
posted by Apocryphon

It literally is the driving force behind the entire B plot, though. First, busted hyperdrive off of Hoth leads them into the asteroid field. Then the busted hyperdrive in the asteroid field leads them to Cloud City. Then the busted hyperdrive outside of Cloud City finally gets fixed and overcome. It's the lynchpin of all of the non-Luke action in the second and third acts of the movie.
posted by COBRA! at 1:43 PM on October 23, 2019 [4 favorites]

Wow, TLJ is really more derivative of ESB than I remembered.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:51 PM on October 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

That was an inconvenience that had to be overcome in like 15 minutes, not the driving force behind the entire B plot

Uh, yeah, it's also what ultimately leads to Han getting frozen in carbonite and sold to Boba Fett, and what causes Luke to prematurely end his training and rush in to confront Vader. Actually, without the broken hyperdrive, the only events left are the escape from Hoth and Luke finding Yoda, and the movie is done in 45 minutes. B-plot? It's actually the triggering event of the entire A-plot.

I am 100% on team Rian-Johnson-did-not-break-the-franchise.
posted by Dixon Ticonderoga at 2:01 PM on October 23, 2019 [11 favorites]

I suppose the sub-lightspeed chase feels more like a crawl in TLJ. You have the Casino Planet jaunt, which I don't have as much of a problem with as other people do, but the rest of the "action" (the C-Plot?) is just brightly-lit Star Wars starship mutiny intrigue and a handful of CGI ships getting blown to smithereens, which looks flat and unimpressive than all of the aforementioned locations visited in the quest to fix the hyperdrive.

Perhaps if they were able to somehow combine the Casino Planet plot with the ship mutiny plot it would both be more visually interesting, and solve people's complaints about the Casino Planet feeling like a pointless detour?
posted by Apocryphon at 2:04 PM on October 23, 2019

Perhaps if they were able to somehow combine the Casino Planet plot with the ship mutiny plot

Yeah, like, what if the whole point of the casino plot was to solve a problem in the main "chase" plot, and what if the mutineers were in contact with the people on the casino planet AND the timing of their mutiny was triggered by the seeming success of the casino plot EXCEPT OH HOLY SHIT the hacker guy they picked up on the casino planet betrays them and the mutineers are defeated and WHAT WILL BECOME OF OUR HEROES?!?

Too bad they didn't come up with something like that.
posted by The Tensor at 2:16 PM on October 23, 2019 [5 favorites]

Too bad they couldn't make the chase sequence look less like a snail race despite all that.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:18 PM on October 23, 2019

This guy is set dressing exactly like the welders we see everywhere.

nope, he's in the script

THREEPIO
Hang on tight,Artoo, you've got to
come back.

Artoo beeps in agreement.

THREEPIO
You wouldn't want my life to get
boring, would you?

Artoo whistles his reply.

All final preparations are made for the approaching battle.
The hangar is buzzing with the last minute activity as the
pilots and crewmen alike make their final adjustments. The
hum of activity is occasionally trespassed by the distorted
voice of the loudspeaker issuing commands. Coupling hoses
are disconnected from the ships as they are fueled.
posted by Sauce Trough at 2:19 PM on October 23, 2019 [5 favorites]

now that that's settled, I would like to share some transformative opinions on the heroes and villains of the 2016 Democratic primary
posted by Sauce Trough at 2:21 PM on October 23, 2019 [6 favorites]

Sauce Trough, I never really watched Rebels as closely as I probably should.

Rebels is a pretty good show. Some of the storytelling is pretty basic, like it's aimed at ten-year-olds, but that's probably a feature rather than a bug.

Its greatest strength, I think, is the genuine Star Wars feel it has, something impossible to quantify, an effect that actually drags you back to being a ten-year-old yourself. And before Rogue One came out, they did a fantastic job making Vader terrifying, showing the effect he has on B-list heroes.

The A-Wings are definitely more capyberras than corgis, alas.
posted by Sauce Trough at 2:28 PM on October 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

It's actually the triggering event of the entire A-plot.

Like the DeLorean in Back to the Future, the hyperdrive is a sentient being that uses strategically-timed breakdowns to manipulate the course of events for its own inscrutable purposes.
posted by dephlogisticated at 2:49 PM on October 23, 2019 [5 favorites]

oops
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 3:10 PM on October 23, 2019

Luke's story in The Last Jedi is one of the best things about that film

Also, after Rey and Kylo demonstrate that being strong in The Force means carving up your enemies with awesome light-saber moves, it's wonderful that Luke shows up and saves the day without killing or even physically harming a single person. Not even a droid!
posted by straight at 3:21 PM on October 23, 2019 [11 favorites]

Knowledge and defense—never for attack.
posted by The Tensor at 3:38 PM on October 23, 2019 [6 favorites]

So I've been trying to remember how they flew the Falcon to Cloud City with a broken hyperdrive, and for the life of me, I got nothing.
posted by thelonius at 4:08 PM on October 23, 2019

There's no explanation given in the movie. They just...went there.
posted by The Tensor at 4:11 PM on October 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

In the Star Wars universe everything is right next to everything else.
posted by soundguy99 at 4:22 PM on October 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I figured hyperdrive is for traveling long distances really fast, while hypodrive or regulardrive or whatever it's called is for traveling shorter distances more slowly. Which was why they had to look for the nearest safe port.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:33 PM on October 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

And hypudrive is for parallel parking.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:35 PM on October 23, 2019

I believe there's some deuterocanonical stuff about every starship carrying a (slow) backup hyperdrive that has to be installed in emergencies like this. I prefer my headcanon: the Falcon's hyperdrive couldn't be used in the usual pull-the-levers-and-go manner, but given time, Han and Chewie were able to rig up a temporary solution that let them manually "prime" the hyperdrive, buckle TF up, trigger a short jump (maybe a light year?), then clean up the mess and do the whole thing over again. This meant it took a while (at least a few weeks) to get to the Anoat system, which also gives Luke more than just a few days to train with Yoda...
posted by The Tensor at 4:43 PM on October 23, 2019 [3 favorites]

hyperdrive
hypodrive
hypudrive...

let (e, o, u ...) = x

hypxdrive!

problem solved. it was the hippecks generator.
posted by mwhybark at 4:58 PM on October 23, 2019

The hippodrive increases your horsepower.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:10 PM on October 23, 2019 [5 favorites]

omg deuterocanonical!

_{Seriously, that is a baller word}
posted by Sauce Trough at 5:42 PM on October 23, 2019 [5 favorites]

At any sub-light speeds, another solar system is going to be years or decades away but trying to make any sense of Star Wars physics is just going to make your head hurt. None of it makes a bit of sense.

I think it's in the novelization of ESB where it's described that Luke, flying to Dagobah in an X-Wing, puts himself into some kind of Force-based hibernation so he can survive the lengthy trip. Or something like that. It's a throwaway thing in the novel that isn't ever even alluded to in the film.
posted by hippybear at 5:59 PM on October 23, 2019

The hippodrive increases your horsepower.

It's also extremely heavy and requires a lot of water cooling, but on the other hand it's practically bulletproof.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:57 PM on October 23, 2019 [4 favorites]

I actually have the ESB novelization from when I was a kid, I should dig it out and check what it says about this hibernation stuff.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:13 PM on October 23, 2019

Too bad they couldn't make the chase sequence look less like a snail race despite all that.

It's not a chase, it's a Pit-and-the-Pendulum situation where doom is inexorably getting closer and closer... unless you can find a way to escape and/or derail it before it gets to you.

It could just as easily have been a "We've only got 22% shields left -- we have less than 2 hours before the First Order breaks through!" if you really wanted to see something you'd already seen a dozen times before in other sci-fi movies.
posted by straight at 9:23 PM on October 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

Does anyone think it’s weird that, with whatever language/written system they use (which is clearly not English), they name their ships after letters they don’t use and shouldn’t know?

edit: I don’t doubt there is a 4000 word wookiepedia article explaining this
posted by Ghidorah at 9:28 PM on October 23, 2019 [5 favorites]

The hippodrive increases your horsepower.

It's also extremely heavy and requires a lot of water cooling, but on the other hand it's practically bulletproof.

One might speculate that it permits small interstellar craft to be relatively unaffected by moderate swamp submersion, and based on some comments upthread, may enable some sort of “Force-based hibernation,” er that is, hipponation.
posted by mwhybark at 11:54 PM on October 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

Does anyone think it’s weird that, with whatever language/written system they use (which is clearly not English), they name their ships after letters they don’t use and shouldn’t know?

Such as?

I mean, yeah, we hear the films in English... but that's kind of a moviemaking convention? Are they supposed to film them in Galactic Basic with English subtitles or something?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:47 AM on October 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Ghidorah, I do think it's kinda weird, but I couldn't form it into a concrete-enough thought to bring it into the thread. It's definitely, IMO, an artifact of laziness that picks at the scab of the language question. Fans will shellac right over it in the name of fun but it's an immersion-breaking convention for me.
posted by glonous keming at 4:50 AM on October 24, 2019

The Underpants Monster, honestly it’s something that just sort of occurred to me. I just think it’s odd that they put the effort into having a visibly non-English written script, and yeah, I just sort of realized, if they don’t have English script dot dot dot.

I mean, obviously a movie or series as solidly in the American mainstream as this isn’t going to do a lot of subtitles, so yeah, they speak (for the most part) English.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:58 AM on October 24, 2019

Letter designations never bothered me. Droids acknowledging orders by saying "Roger Roger" on the other hand...
posted by Devoidoid at 7:59 AM on October 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

The text used to (mostly/sometimes) just be in English; check out Kenobi turning off the tractor beams in the despecialized edition
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:01 AM on October 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Droids acknowledging orders by saying "Roger Roger" on the other hand...

Which brings us to the eternal question, "Why don't the droids just connect via space-wifi?"
posted by mikelieman at 8:18 AM on October 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Droids acknowledging orders by saying "Roger Roger" on the other hand...

Which brings us to the eternal question, "Why don't the droids just connect via space-wifi?"
posted by mikelieman at 10:18 AM

....which line of thought and subsequent consideration of implications leads us to the inescapable conclusion that we see R2-D2 have gratuitous computer sex with all kinds of other machines (the Death Star, Cloud City, the Falcon, a bunker...), depravedly gratifying itself when he could be communicating wirelessly
posted by COBRA! at 8:33 AM on October 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

Does anyone think it’s weird that, with whatever language/written system they use (which is clearly not English), they name their ships after letters they don’t use and shouldn’t know?

No they don't. They say the Galactic word for "spaceship" and we hear it translated into the English word "spaceship." They refer to a ship by some letter in their alphabet, hyphen, their word for "wing" and we hear that translated into some letter from the English alphabet, hyphen, the English word "wing."

Why would you think that everything they say is translated except for the letters used to designate the spaceships?
posted by straight at 8:40 AM on October 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

For instance an "X-Wing" in their language is probably

[whatever letter in their alphabet looks most like the shape of an X]-[the word in their language for 'wing']
posted by straight at 8:47 AM on October 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

okay but how did the beans get ON the plate
posted by sugar and confetti at 8:50 AM on October 24, 2019 [12 favorites]

....which line of thought and subsequent consideration of implications leads us to the inescapable conclusion that we see R2-D2 have gratuitous computer sex with all kinds of other machines (the Death Star, Cloud City, the Falcon, a bunker...), depravedly gratifying itself when he could be communicating wirelessly

"R2D2 holds the record for most bleeped out swear words in a movie ever" (warning: reddit)
posted by mikelieman at 8:58 AM on October 24, 2019 [6 favorites]

The retcon explanation for things like "X-Wing" and "B-Wing" is High Galactic (with Greek letters similarly explained as Old Tionese).

It's a source of continuing disappointment to me that when Stephen Crane assigned the existing Aurebesh letter shapes to sounds in about 1993, he didn't take care to ensure that Aurebesh Xesh looked roughly like an X-Wing (if not necessarily like a Latin X), Yirt like a Y-Wing, etc. This would have prevented the need to come up with High Galactic later (in 2010). Come on, nerds, you're nerding professionally—try to get it right!
posted by The Tensor at 9:32 AM on October 24, 2019 [6 favorites]

For posterity (and because I keep meaning to look it up), here's the section on backup hyperdrives from West End Games' Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game (1987):

Most starships carry backup hyperdrives—underpowered, slow, and antiquated drives with very limited range, for use in emergencies. Ion drives can propel a craft at sub-light speeds, but if a ship's hyperdrives are damaged while between stars, relying on ion drives would mean spending years or decades getting to the nearest star. Backup drives, while slow by the standards of regular hyperdrives, can at least let a starship limp to a nearby system in a matter of days or weeks.

Backup hyperdrives have a maximum range of 10 light years, and must be reconditioned in a spacedock after each use. As a result, if forced to use its backup drives, a ship's choices of destination are limited. the gamemaster must tell the players what star systems are nearby—usually, there will be three to five—and let them decide where to go to.

Since most systems have never been visited, or visited only once, there will frequently be only scanty information available on the characters' choices of destinations.

Han: Then we got the find a safe port somewhere around here. Any ideas?
Leia: No. Where are we?
Han: The Anoat system.
Leia: Anoat system. There's not much there.
Han. No. Well, wait. This is interesting. Lando.

posted by The Tensor at 11:04 AM on October 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

The text used to (mostly/sometimes) just be in English; check out Kenobi turning off the tractor beams in the despecialized edition

"Hi, I'm Reddy Kilowatt reporting a dangerous overloaded octopus connection in Sector 5!"
posted by Devoidoid at 12:24 PM on October 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

Maybe I should just wait for Topher Grace's fan edit.
posted by ZeusHumms at 12:47 PM on October 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

The text used to (mostly/sometimes) just be in English; check out Kenobi turning off the tractor beams in the despecialized edition

Which was also a silly change. I have no idea why people would be fine with listening to people speak in English but balk at seeing written words also translated into English.

If the POV characters in a scene can read something, the audience ought to be able to read it too.
posted by straight at 1:30 PM on October 24, 2019

Huh. You learn something new every day!

Original tractor beam scene
Remastered tractor beam scene
posted by sugar and confetti at 2:38 PM on October 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

"R2D2 holds the record for most bleeped out swear words in a movie ever" (warning: reddit)

I am pretty sure that Chopper in Rebels is voiced like Kenny in South Park, the voice actor says an endless stream of profane things that are processed in post to make it broadcastable.

when I listen to him in the show I just imagine a voice actor yelling "fuck fuck fucking fuck motherfucker piss shit goddamn" like he's George Carlin on 3x-speed shuffle.
posted by Sauce Trough at 3:05 PM on October 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

Concur: Chopper is way more foul-mouthed (and cranky) than R2-D2.
posted by suelac at 3:21 PM on October 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

This is where we find out the entire nine movies were a dream in R2-D2’s mind, right?

The metal dome casing on the top of R2-D2 pops off, to reveal that he IS the snowglobe.
posted by Gray Duck at 7:20 AM on October 25, 2019 [4 favorites]

I strikes me now that Rose Tico, of everyone we've ever seen in Star Wars, is by far the most Hufflepuff, radiating kindness, not giving a shit about glory, just there because there is the place where good can be done. And that's a hard line for a character to walk for many reasons, not the least of which is coming off as too much of a Pollyanna, but damned if Kelly Marie Tran doesn't pull it the fuck off.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:26 AM on November 8, 2019 [5 favorites]

If the POV characters in a scene can read something, the audience ought to be able to read it too.

Wasn't there a fan theory for a while that everyone in the Star Wars universe was illiterate? Maybe I just dreamed that.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 11:57 AM on November 8, 2019

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