Duel of the Takes
November 15, 2020 1:11 PM   Subscribe

Before J. J. Abrams took over Star Wars: Episode 9, Colin Trevorrow wrote a complete script for the movie, originally named Duel of the Fates. The alleged script is online and includes notable differences from the final movie (e.g. no Palpatine, greater roles for Finn and Rose) as well as some similarities. A rich set of concept art of the movie also leaked. posted by adrianhon (51 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
This all dates back to February; how did I not hear of it until now? The final movie's story was, so, so terrible. Seriously, Palpatine? That was your big idea, to recycle the villain from the last two trilogies? And all the dumb little things like Finn and Rose both being sidelined. This alternate story sure sounds more true to what could have been.
posted by Nelson at 1:47 PM on November 15, 2020 [8 favorites]


A script that did not meet the approval of Jenny Nicholson. "Thumbs down, the lions are out... I'd rather go with the devil we know, which is also very bad."
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 1:50 PM on November 15, 2020 [11 favorites]


30 pages into the script and I’m having a great time.
posted by minervous at 1:54 PM on November 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


i've never read a script before and i have to say this is really good reading.
posted by danjo at 1:55 PM on November 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


Geez, I even like the name better.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 2:32 PM on November 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


[samneill] I would like to have seen this movie. [/samneill]
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:41 PM on November 15, 2020 [5 favorites]


Whether Trevorrow would be able to execute on this is another matter. This is the guy who got tapped to direct Jurassic World with only one feature under his belt after Spielberg saw his short, and kinda biffed it - then made The Book of Henry, which as I understand it was so bad that Disney was spooked and cut him loose from Star Wars. It's fun to think about what might have been, but I'm worried that he might have bungled Episode 9 even worse.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 2:42 PM on November 15, 2020 [11 favorites]


That was your big idea, to recycle the villain from the last two trilogies?

And apparently that wasn't even settled upon until DURING production.
posted by brundlefly at 2:42 PM on November 15, 2020 [9 favorites]


This....definitely has some problems. Many minor ones and a few big ones. But if you gave me this, and a transcript of the Rise of Skywalker we got, and said they were both possible first drafts for Episode 9, I'd say this one was a lot more fixable with a few more drafts and revisions.

Really, though, I still just think it was a bonkers decision to not let one writer/team of writers at least plan out the basics of the whole trilogy in advance of Episode 7. There was never really any fixing that.
posted by mstokes650 at 3:19 PM on November 15, 2020 [47 favorites]


Wow, I never watched Episode 9, I'm beginning to see why I never even knew it came out. Usually I hear about these things through osmosis, what a horrible plot line. There should be a rule in writing against abusing the bringing back dead people plot line. A chekhov's gun for death. "Use the force Luke" made sense, and didn't really impact the plot. If Obiwan came back and actually helped Luke fight, that's different and makes death meaningless from a plot perspective. I'm sure a writer can better sum up why that is.

Now the greatest script that never got made, Gladiator 2, inexplicably written by Nick Cave, manages to get around this in that he goes to the afterlife on a journey and comes back. For some reason, and I can't explain why, that's materially different than someone coming back and using the Force as a sort dues ex machina for every inconvenient point of continuity.
posted by geoff. at 3:27 PM on November 15, 2020 [6 favorites]


Really, though, I still just think it was a bonkers decision to not let one writer/team of writers at least plan out the basics of the whole trilogy in advance of Episode 7. There was never really any fixing that.

I loved The Last Jedi and it might be my favorite Star War but I did wonder at the end, "how are they going to get out of this?". The answer was of course that they just ignored the whole film and did a sequel to the first one. I'm still too pissed off at the whole thing to revisit it and read this script.
posted by octothorpe at 4:50 PM on November 15, 2020 [30 favorites]


The Mr Sunday Movies podcast recently posted a rundown of the plot points in Trevorrow's script, accompanied by delightfully cartoony CGI...
posted by Ian A.T. at 5:08 PM on November 15, 2020 [8 favorites]


I participated in a Zoom table read and critique of this script, (I played Kylo/Ben) and while the Finn & Rose plots were much stronger, the Rey & Kylo/Ben plot was terrible.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 6:34 PM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]


Is it supposed to be funny that the concept art included a picture of Finn screaming "REY!"? I found that funny.
posted by Emmy Rae at 7:21 PM on November 15, 2020 [3 favorites]


Reading this script made me understand Episode IX much better. While reading, I could picture Kathleen Kennedy going through this script, highlighting things she considered important, and then handing that to JJ Abrams to make sure he includes her highlights in his version.

Best example: in Treverrow’s script, everyone gets a medal at the end and the stage direction makes fun of the fact that Chewie finally gets a medal. The stage direction, not the dialogue. In Abram’s film, resistance lady hands Chewie a medal and says to him: there you go, you should have gotten that a long time ago.
posted by papineau at 7:54 PM on November 15, 2020 [4 favorites]


I loved The Last Jedi and it might be my favorite Star War but I did wonder at the end, "how are they going to get out of this?". The answer was of course that they just ignored the whole film and did a sequel to the first one. I'm still too pissed off at the whole thing to revisit it and read this script.

The first thing I said to my friend after TLJ ended was basically that there was going to be a group of Star Wars fans who love this movie and think this is one of the best Star Wars films and there is going to be another group of fan who hate it just as passionately. And they will argue forever about it.

Rian Johnson basically split the fanbase. I'm not sure who could have stuck that "landing". Hard agree that basically having writers hermetically sealed from each other and not working together was the root cause of the whole debacle.
posted by eagles123 at 9:36 PM on November 15, 2020 [2 favorites]


I often tinker that palpatine, the secret sith nesting base of the dark side, the bloodline was most likely written for one main reason: Ion Holm and you have to admit the corpus of his work entails far more treacherous characters then palpatine so actor driven storyline, it's a factor.
posted by clavdivs at 11:25 PM on November 15, 2020


Except Emperor Palpatine was played by Ian McDiarmid, not Ian Holm.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 11:40 PM on November 15, 2020 [4 favorites]


It seems now that J. J. Abrams never understood what either Star Trek or Star Wars were about, and was still given reins to both. It's possible that neither did Kathleen Kennedy nor Colin Trevorrow. Not sure about Rian Johnson; TLJ went in such a weird direction after TFA that it almost felt like he was trolling.

Given how much I've loved Jon Favreau's approach to The Mandalorian, I would have loved to see what he could have made of the sequels. But apart from that, the SW universe is pretty much dead to me now. Any future installment needs to receive near-universal praise for me to bother checking it out.
posted by jklaiho at 12:29 AM on November 16, 2020 [7 favorites]


Bah. The Rise of Skywalker and The Last Jedi are my two favorite Star Wars movies, so this matters not.
posted by Chronorin at 12:34 AM on November 16, 2020


>J. J. Abrams never understood what ... Star Wars [was] about ... neither did Kathleen Kennedy nor Colin Trevorrow. Not sure about Rian Johnson; TLJ went in such a weird direction after TFA that it almost felt like he was trolling.

Johnson's close of Last of the Jedi meant that the force is in everyone, not just those accredited by the Merch-and-Jedis-ing Licensing Board, which probably looks like Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism. I guess that tells us Disney can't tell stories that differ from the studio's power structure. Beyond that, it gives back the Expanded Universe to fans for fanfic.
posted by k3ninho at 1:23 AM on November 16, 2020 [9 favorites]


I agree with other people here that the root problem in Episode 9 wasn't J J Abrams or Kathleen Kennedy or anybody specifically - it was whatever caused them to commit to making a trilogy and then not set out the overall plot for the trilogy in advance of making the first installment. It would have hung together better if Abrams had done all three, I'm sure, but the incoherence created by having someone else do the middle one and then letting the original person come back for the third and ignore most of the second? That was completely avoidable.

Any further movie trilogies need to be planned in advance, and I hope they've actually learned that.
posted by mathw at 2:42 AM on November 16, 2020 [3 favorites]


Kylo Ren's connection to Rey is just too flimsy to have any sort of emotional payoff or stakes. They have practically nothing in common, no shared experiences, and no conflicting motivations other than Rey having been randomly sorted onto a different team. The story tries *so* *very* *hard* to make Force dyads a thing, and yet it's a weak enough concept that the narrative flow has to be repeatedly broken to emphasize just how telepathic and space-warpingly strong their connection is.

Compare this to Adora and Catra in Noelle Stevenson's She Ra. They don't need some stupid Force dyad nonsense to live rent-free in each other's head. They're connected because they have unresolved emotions for each other and a shared history of abuse and favoritism which keeps driving them apart especially after Adora "discovers" her "destiny" and leaves/abandons Catra to go join the rebellion. We know that they're obsessed with each other and we don't need the occasional angsty long-distance telepathic chat session between them to reinforce this.

If you ask me, Season 5 of She Ra was the best take on Episode 9 and that whole series in general was just so much better and more satisfying than the entire Star Wars sequel trilogy.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:16 AM on November 16, 2020 [12 favorites]


I thought Trevorrow got the SW gig not after one short but after the feature Safety Not Guaranteed. And wasn't his firing from SW as much about his corrosive (and maybe sexist IIRC) personality as his commercial failure on The Book of Henry? I was under the impression that movie tanking was the final straw after he'd already burned bridges with Kennedy.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:28 AM on November 16, 2020 [2 favorites]


Any further movie trilogies need to be planned in advance, and I hope they've actually learned that.

just quoting to this bit but only as representative to the sentiment it carries - while i definitely think that's a very good idea, the problem is everyone thinks they're kevin feige, who somehow could shepherd a multiverse with a vague inkling of which threads to pick or leave without much of a hard plan (for evidence i submit the overall shift between the originally intended whedon-led mcu tht ended with age of ultron to the eventual switch to the russos which was basically a success in logistics than anything more strategic than that), but... there's only one kevin feige. who's going to admit, in that highly paid nepotism-filled echelon of hollywood, that they might need something more prosaic than just inspired direction? i submit to you as well, the dceu merry-go-round.
posted by cendawanita at 6:16 AM on November 16, 2020 [5 favorites]



I'll cut them some slack on the not planning out the entire trilogy thing. As far as we've been lead to believe, the prequel trilogy was planned out from the beginning, and it felt stiff, over-determined, and narrow. We ended up with an entire movie whose plot was nothing more than an excuse to indulge in seeing characters meet for the first time (the line "Anakin Skywalker, meet Obi Wan Kenobi" was even prominently featured in the trailer!) and only a promise that all these events will become significant later on.

Done correctly, having three movies successively build off each other could have worked.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:38 AM on November 16, 2020


The Last Jedi was, in addition to being a pretty good Star Wars movie, fundamentally wrestling with the notion of fandom and what it means to tell new stories in a universe or framework that you grew up with.

Rose's fangirl adoration of Finn at the start of the movie--where the "story" she's heard contrasts with the actions he's actually taking--pays off in the later twist when Del Toro's character, given our expectations in this universe around rogues with hearts of gold, ultimately turned out to just be out for himself. The "story character" versus "real character" contrast plays out several other times throughout the movie, too--Kylo and Luke both face it, and so does Rey when she sees her ancestry as an endless line of herself.

And then there's Kylo's "let the past die" versus Rose's "save what you love" dichotomy, which is barely even subtext when we're talking about fandom. (Rose is the damn heart of that movie and if there's one specific reason I haven't bothered to see RoS yet, it's the fact that she gets shoved to the side.)
posted by thecaddy at 7:23 AM on November 16, 2020 [20 favorites]


I agree that this had some problems, but I would definitely have preferred to see these problems on the big screen.

Obviously some of this was unfilmable because of Carrie Fisher's death, but a lot of the elements were much more satisfying and built in a much more logical way on the previous instalments.

Rose was actually there, instead of being sidelined in a narratively inexplicable way because shitty fans threw a temper tantrum. I wasn't a fan of Finn still being the inept comic relief at the beginning, but he eventually got the story arc that his background was practically begging the writers for (and didn't just run around screaming "Rey!!!!" for the entire movie). The romantic subplot with Poe? Eh, I'll allow it. They could have gone with either Finn or Poe, but TLJ sets up a Finn/Rose relationship which I think it would be annoying to retcon away, so Poe is fine! I like that the ultimate message is that Rey doesn't have to sacrifice human attachments to be some kind of force nun, and the old Jedi rules were full of shit.

The Rey / Kylo / force woo woo destiny subplot was probably the weakest link, but this was still way better than the ridiculous Palpatine Ex Machina power level 100000 boss level fight we got in the actual movie, so whatever. It's fine. A minor observation: I liked that Leia's force influence pushed Kylo towards making a good decision rather than distracting him at a critical moment so that Rey could stab him (WTF). I also liked that we actually saw the Knights of Ren, and they had individual names and were important. I liked that Hux got to progress to be the Big Bad instead of being sidelined as yet another comic relief character and replaced by some random new bad guy.

The political situation picks up where we left off. We can actually see the impact of the events of TLJ, and how stretched thin the resistance is. I liked the McGuffin of the communications lockdown and the ancient Jedi transmitter -- it was easy to understand and had flavour. I liked that the Resistance tried to blow up a First Order fleet which was a reasonable lots of ships (rather than a bajillion squillion ships that filled a whole planet and were fully crewed by secret troops that were apparently just there chilling on the magic Sith planet the whole time). I like that the plan (yet another attempt to blow up a Big Dumb Object by hitting a single vulnerable spot) actually failed. I liked that they hijacked a big ship (they never do that! Why don't they ever do that?!).

I thought that this would be a much shorter comment, but clearly I have some unresolved feelings. I live in hope that this will someday become a bootleg animated fan film.
posted by confluency at 8:33 AM on November 16, 2020 [18 favorites]


The last trilogy wasn't movies, it was pageants.
posted by sexyrobot at 9:49 AM on November 16, 2020


I still can't believe people give JJ Abrams shit for this (and I say this as a person not particularly enamored with Abrams.) Here is a guy who started a trilogy very, very cautiously. He looked at how poorly the prequels were received and wisely decided to reboot these films by giving us a measure of familiarity with the original trilogy: the falcon, the deathstar, the lonely pilot on the desert planet, etc. This wasn't a great movie, but it definitely felt more like the original trilogy, and that was comforting. I left that film thinking "okay, that wasn't amazing, but it's a pretty good setup for the rest of this trilogy. This definitely feels more like SW than the prequels did."

And then Rian Johnson comes in (and this comes from a guy that like Rian Johnson's work) and like a toddler let loose on an electric train set, just trashes the entire thing. He kills both BOTH villains, a movie ahead of time, he gives Leia some weird-ass Neo in the matrix post-death Force powers, he gives half the heroes a side plot involving saving space horses that literally has zero effect on the main plot of the film. He literally upends all of the themes of Star Wars, which could have been interesting, but he replaces those themes with an incoherent mess.

And then Carrie Fisher dies for real.

And THEN they hand the reins back to Abrams and say "wrap this up." Can you imagine? Your Obi Wan character dies in real life, and the director who came before you wiped out all of the major villains before the final movie. What do you do with that? Yes, sure, bringing back the emperor was dumb as hell, but honestly, what is the alternative? Just a straight-up Rey vs Kylo fight? Maybe. I haven't read this script yet, I'm sure there would have been better ways to do this, but I don't think JJ Abrams is the problem here. The problem is Kathleen Kennedy decided to make a trilogy ahead of time, with no sense of the major story points in that trilogy. That is the dumbest thing I can imagine. How do you say "we're going to make a trilogy" and then sit down and plot out the first film and then NOT at least get the major plot points for the other two?
posted by nushustu at 9:57 AM on November 16, 2020 [4 favorites]


I know hindsight is 20/20, but what they SHOULD have done is beat out the story for all three films ahead of time to finish the big, classical Skywalker SW story, probably with consistent producers/directors/writer. Then they should have hired Rian Johnson to do one of their one-off stories and let him go nuts. And if it does well, then let him do a couple more. That lets you move SW in a new direction.
posted by nushustu at 10:02 AM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]


Lucas clearly made up the first three films (IV, V, and VI) as he went along, and that was an unprecedented success (from a studio's point of view). Then he made three movies that were conceived as three movies ahead of time and, while still successful, was nowhere near the world-conquering success of the original trilogy.

Given that history, it's not at all clear that the best way to do the next three films was to plot them all out ahead of time instead of making them up as you go.
posted by straight at 10:10 AM on November 16, 2020 [5 favorites]


How do you say "we're going to make a trilogy" and then sit down and plot out the first film and then NOT at least get the major plot points for the other two?

Because Hollywood doesn't make movies to tell stories. They make movies to make money. It's not at all unusual for a film to have a release date and no concept of what it's actually going to be about beyond "Spider Man."

Granted it would have been a really good idea to have somebody in charge who would listen to pitches and work out the broad arcs of the trilogy before turning writers loose. But it's not anywhere close to surprising that they did no such thing.
posted by Naberius at 10:12 AM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]


Well if we're armchair producing here I'll have a go. The Force Awakens was a fine movie, bringing us back into Star Wars after so long, but it did that by leaning on callbacks and references to the point where I walked out thinking that it if the rest of the trilogy did the same it was going to be pretty lame. I remember when Rian Johnson was named as the director for the next movies and I was overjoyed. (Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure when it was announced he was supposed to be directing both VIII and IX) And while I was willing to cut JJ Abrams slack for using nostalgia as a crutch (somehow the Mandalorian manages to avoid this tar pit with aplomb) Rian Johnson was having none of it. The Last Jedi's very first moment sets the tone. Just as Luke impetuously tosses his lightsaber over his shoulder, Rian proceeded to trash plot point after plot point that JJ had spun up, rejecting his blatant retelling of the stories we already know, and then managed take that messy starting point and tell one of the best Star Wars stories ever.

I love The Last Jedi. It subverts some old tropes in meaningful ways (Rey has mysterious parentage -> but she is responsible for herself) while elevating others (second best line in the movie is Yoda telling Luke "we are what they grow beyond") It manages to callback gracefully (how cool was the mirror-cave scene?) and had multiple battles that felt totally Star Wars.

I think the argument here between "they should have plotted it all out in advance with multiple directors" vs. "flying by the seat of your pants worked fine for George Lucas" misses the fact that in this particular case they said JJ was going to be a one movie director, then handed it to Rian who's distain for the first movie was apparent in the first scene, and then handed it back to JJ who just tried to finish the trilogy he'd started. No doubt he was offended, too, by how Rian had shit all over his work. The steering wheel was spun back and forth as these two directors yanked control from one another and so of course it ended up as a mess.

I wish that Rian Johnson had just been given control of IX as was originally announced, but that probably would have delayed the movie a year which was not gonna fly with Disney's money plans. That's the script I'd love to read.
posted by macrael at 10:29 AM on November 16, 2020 [10 favorites]


By the time they started TFA, there had already been one phase of Marvel movies that showed the advantages of at least mapping out some plot in advance. By the time TFA came out, there had been two phases. I feel like they could have done some planning for either the trilogy or at least the last two movies.
posted by snofoam at 10:58 AM on November 16, 2020 [2 favorites]


So, I have never seen any of the movies except the first two of the most recent trilogy. I watched the first one and was somewhat interested but occasionally confused. They found the Millenium Falcon (me: why are people clapping? my spouse: that's the millenium falcon. me: the 'old piece of junk'?). It was fun, it was fine.

I really enjoyed the second movie. A bunch of new stuff happened, I was actually afraid for the main characters and they didn't all just walk away with no more than a dramatic facial scratch.

Then, everything I heard about the third movie made it sound stupid. Somebody evil from before is back? ok. good for them. What's the truth about REY?!?! IDK, I am still not clear why the other characters are so obsessed with her. Will Kylo Ren stay evil? Almost certainly yes!

This movie, on the other hand, sounds like a good time. I would watch this.
posted by Emmy Rae at 11:11 AM on November 16, 2020 [2 favorites]


And then Rian Johnson comes in (and this comes from a guy that like Rian Johnson's work) and like a toddler let loose on an electric train set, just trashes the entire thing. He kills both BOTH villains, a movie ahead of time

TLJ established that Kylo Ren was the villain all along. He had a chance to turn back from the Dark Side, and enthusiastically chose evil—no redemption arc this time. (And then JJ 180° retconned this because, I dunno, male and female leads have to kiss?)

...he gives Leia some weird-ass Neo in the matrix post-death Force powers

She took a deep breath and used telekinesis.

...he gives half the heroes a side plot involving saving space horses that literally has zero effect on the main plot of the film.

They bring back the slicer who betrays the cloaked ships and nearly get everybody killed. TLJ is about the Resistance outmatched, on the ropes, flailing around. Everybody's trying to do SOMETHING that seems to them like the right thing to do, but they're not working TOGETHER and it nearly destroys them. It's the middle part of a trilogy!
posted by The Tensor at 12:05 PM on November 16, 2020 [9 favorites]


Partway through this script, and yes, I would have rather seen this made than the hot mess that was Rise Of Skywalker. There are three things that combined to wreck this last movie in my opinion: first, bringing back Palpatine. Oof, that was destined to be a reach in the best of circumstances. Second, trying to appease the fans that despised The Last Jedi. That was going to lead to incoherence, no matter what they did. And third, the insistence on keeping Leia in the movie. They only had so much footage of her available, which meant they were limited in what they could do with her, and yet they kept her in and it forced them to write around the limitations.

I'm one of the people who *loved* The Last Jedi. Part of that is, as it is for many people, the subversiveness of the movie. The Resistance doesn't win pretty much anything at all in this movie. Who are Rey's parents? Nobody, truly nobody. And that's not just fine, it's great. The series doesn't have to be about the same group of people in every aspect of the plot. Having her as a scavenger who has powers she doesn't understand is a perfect foundation, she doesn't need more backstory than that. The exposition of the rich people making their money selling to both sides is a nice nod to the gray areas that exist in real life. Ackbar meeting his end in the way he didn't - poof, he's gone - hey, that's what war is in reality. Kylo Ren killing Snoke subverts the whole "we're gonna get a boss fight in the next movie with Snoke" trope, and sets Kylo up as the Supreme Leader of the First Order, with his impulsiveness and obsessions. Luke Skywalker becomes the legend the galaxy needs, not the warrior that the Resistance was expecting. And at the end of the movie, the entire Resistance fits on the Millennium Falcon. How do you write yourself out of that? You find a way, likely using guerrilla warfare, because this sets up an ultimate comeback narrative. Instead, ROS pretty much just disregarded TLJ. The Resistance is back in business like nothing ever happened. (Also, the cinematography in TLJ was just stunning.)

Going forward, I'd like to see more stories from Star Wars, as opposed to keeping a foot in this timeline. Solo was... fine, but we didn't really need an origin story on him. Rogue One was fantastic, with familiar characters as only a side piece to the real story. The galaxy is a huge place. There's a whole Outer Rim to explore. There's tons of planets and civilizations. Let's expand this universe.
posted by azpenguin at 12:55 PM on November 16, 2020 [17 favorites]


I can't remember where I saw this, but supposedly there is a movement within Disney to just chuck episodes 7-9 into a memory hole and start over. I'm in favor of that. Each film had some great scenes, moments, and characters, but they'd be better served by just starting over. This means no Carrie Fisher or Harrison Ford, which is too bad, but they need to give it to Favreau or someone else who understands what made episodes 4-6 so appealing in the first place.
posted by chaz at 12:57 PM on November 16, 2020 [4 favorites]


Are we doing spoilers here? Can you spoiler a script that never got made?
posted by nakedmolerats at 1:09 PM on November 16, 2020


Are we doing spoilers here? Can you spoiler a script that never got made?

I think if we're worried about spoilers from scripts that haven't been made from movies two years after their released ... well we're in a different territory.
posted by geoff. at 1:21 PM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]


All Star Wars scripts should be referred to as 'the alleged script'.

I say as a fan.
posted by mazola at 1:39 PM on November 16, 2020 [2 favorites]


I'm just here to say Fuck JJ and Fuck everyone who stood in the way of this being the final of the trilogy. SPACE RESISTANCE! The force isn't tied to a damn bloodline! I did not care for the romance bits, because one day there'll be a movie where people don't fall in love with random strangers they just meet but honestly, this was tons better than the steaming fest that was Rise of Skywalker.
posted by teleri025 at 1:40 PM on November 16, 2020 [3 favorites]


Going forward, I'd like to see more stories from Star Wars, as opposed to keeping a foot in this timeline.

I've thought for a bit now that the first step in rescuing whatever the next major series is would be to have the splash screen read "A long time from now in a galaxy far, far away..."
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:12 PM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]


Solo was... fine

Del Toro's character, given our expectations in this universe around rogues with hearts of gold, ultimately turned out to just be out for himself

This may be unnecessary beanplating, but Solo kind of ties nicely into TLJ's subversion of him. Han's apparent change of heart in A New Hope never happened because his heart has always been in the right place. He was never a rouge to begin with--he's always been likable doof who does the right thing in the end. And I bet that's the reason they ended up traveling with Han in the first place. Chewie and Obi Wan were most definitely acquaintances from the before times and Chewie would have been able to vouch for Han.

In comparison, Del Toro's character is literally just some shady guy they met when their initial contact fell through. Were they really expecting him not to turn on them?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:17 PM on November 16, 2020 [4 favorites]


macrael: I love The Last Jedi. ... I wish that Rian Johnson had just been given control of IX as was originally announced, but that probably would have delayed the movie a year which was not gonna fly with Disney's money plans.

1000% this. While TLJ isn't perfect, it's very good -- and it's both brilliantly subversive AND true to the best parts of SW at the same time. But Disney is a giant money machine, and SW is first and foremost one of its most lucrative products. It's kind of amazing Johnson was able to get TLJ thru the studio meat grinder in the first place.

When I heard they'd given the third movie to J.J., I expected it would be bad... but the depths of its shittiness surpassed even my cynical expectations.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:31 PM on November 16, 2020 [10 favorites]


There's a deliberate corniness at the centre of the original trilogy which Lucas tried to recapture in the prequels but kept tripping over the CGI. But it's part of what made the OT loved.

This corniness is mostly missing from the sequels. I get the impression that Abrams and Johnson - who I feel are over-praised to start with - believe that it's beneath them to make a corny movie. But corny movies can be great!

I've never seen RoS, but TFA struck me as having precisely zero emotional content - basically it was precision engineered to re-ignite the franchise in a way that took no risks, virtually a carbon-copy of every tentpole spectacle movie from the previous 10 years. In ESB I vividly recall being terrified for Luke when he faced Vader. There was nothing like this is in TFA (or TLJ for that matter).

TLJ was just as disappointing. Rian Johnson's movies always feel small to me, even against a galactic backdrop. But Stars Wars isn't small, it's space opera. I don't think Johnson is interested in making that kind of movie though. All he could offer was a deconstruction of Star Wars, not the thing itself.
posted by um at 4:09 PM on November 16, 2020 [1 favorite]


The story we have is that Johnson was offered Episode IX and turned it down. This is after Treverow was dumped. The production timeline for these movies is that they’re two years apart, but they overlap by a year. TLJ began production a year before TFA was in theaters. At t-minus two years and with Carrie Fisher newly unavailable, Johnson didn’t want to put himself in front of that time crunch. Abrams accepted, and here we are.
posted by chrchr at 7:58 PM on November 16, 2020 [2 favorites]


BTW, about the death of Carrie Fisher: I would have actually been OK if IX opened with a flashback-retcon of Holdo and Leia's last conversation.

HOLDO: For the transports to escape, someone needs to stay behind and pilot the cruiser.
LEIA: Too many losses. I can't take any more.
HOLDO: Sure you can. You taught me how.
LEIA: Then I hope you learned well, because you're going have have to bear one more.
HOLDO: What? General, no!
LEIA: Come on, Amilyn, you know why I left government. You know my prognosis. I have little time left, so I choose now.
HOLDO: ...dammit, Leia.
LEIA: May the Force Be With You.

And then a quick montage of Leia piloting Raddus into Supremacy (the Organa Maneuver!), Holdo leading the Resistance to Crait, the moment when she tries to tell Luke and he says, "I know."

Then Holdo wakes up and it's a year later. She's been carrying the weight of leading the Rebellion, of earning Leia's death, on her shoulders. Ably supported by her staff, of course, including Rose Tico and Kaydel Connix...

That way, they wouldn't have had to cobble together a performance out of leftover footage of Carrie.
posted by The Tensor at 10:38 PM on November 16, 2020 [9 favorites]


>TLJ is about the Resistance outmatched, on the ropes, flailing around. Everybody's trying to do SOMETHING that seems to them like the right thing to do, but they're not working TOGETHER and it nearly destroys them. It's the middle part of a trilogy!
(This thread isn't about Episide VIII but) TLJ is about a man not respecting the chain of command many times when it's a woman above him and going off hero-ing despite Rose Tico catching him and trying to stop him. Eventually a number of women have to sacrifice herselves to resolve the fuckups caused by this man. I wish they told a different, better, story.
posted by k3ninho at 2:10 PM on November 18, 2020 [2 favorites]


Although I thought TLJ looked great, I also think that it did so many stupid things: killing off Snoke was one of it's cardinal sins: the guy had mystery about him. And that is one of the things which made the OT work so well: all these unspoken inferred things going on in the back- and foreground, things which DIDN'T get explained but were just dropped as 'existing information'. Ofttimes allusion is better than exposition and propels the viewer's imagination, making for a greater world beyond what is shown. Killing off Snoke was ... dumb and lazy and a waste of a mystery.

But beyond that RoS was a shitshow of a script and here's why (a small recap of frustration):

The Emperor is dead! No, he's alive!
Chewy is dead! No, he's alive!
Lea is dead!
Ben is dead! No, he's alive again!
Ben is dead.
Rey is dead.
Ben's alive again!
Rey's alive again!
Ben's dead.

I mean, COME ON!!!!

And ressurecting the emperor?!?!? Completely wiping out Anakin/Darth's progression ... and with no explanation whatsoever, too. Deus Ex Imperator :(

You know who should have been the big bad (excepting Snoke ... maybe if TLJ was different, they could have killed him in the first half of RoS to reveal the real big bad [this kinda works too as a callback with Vader/Emperor])?

Darth Maul.

Not only was he very little used in the prequels AND was he a lovely mysterious figure with cool moves, but he was used to good effect in the Clone Wars and Solo. Even though he suffered the same fate as the emperor, he did have a good backstory for being alive ... and his progression would have made sense going from apprentice to crime boss to the power behind the throne (as learned from Palpatine).

And then there's this whole thousands of Star Destroyers all of the sudden (a capital investment/expenditure which just makes no sense) ...
posted by MacD at 9:01 PM on November 21, 2020


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