Rise of Skywalker

I'd like someone to chop Mando into one movie. Cut out all the shit. I enjoyed it, but can't help feeling it would be better without the padding.

If you’re going to watch Star Wars I would find a recap of the prequels and then the original trilogy. After that just watch The Mandalorian and force Awakens. If you like the Force Awakens watch a recap of the last Jedi (because you shouldn’t suffer) and then rise of Skywalker. If you like the OG trilogy than watch Rogue one.

If you’re going to watch Star Wars I would find a recap of the prequels and then the original trilogy. After that just watch The Mandalorian and force Awakens. If you like the Force Awakens watch a recap of the last Jedi (because you shouldn’t suffer) and then rise of Skywalker. If you like the OG trilogy than watch Rogue one.

No that's not how it works :D Might as well watch a 5 minute recap of the entire saga. He needs to find his own way and the most pure way is to do the original trilogy first and take it from there. I'd ditch the TV shows and cartoons. That's like an additional 30 hours of nerdgasm which a casual fan would probably die from.

Haven't seen it. I was hoping for more public backlash.. but apparently there hasn't been enough. (Damn you, geeks!! you called for a boycott but still went!.. TWICE! THRICE!!...etc)

I find it amazing that the sequels have been so bad. TFA was good for 15 minutes ...and then people started speaking. The film is trash...a pointless coincidental meandering that rehashed the first film damn near scene for scene. TLJ was entertaining and different, I was LAUGHING throughout the one time I saw it (opening weekend?)... I was the only one laughing at places where laughter was unintended (the prank call was stupid). I laughed so much realizing it was a complete fuck up of a film and because it was giving the finger to basically every SW fan. It was a shipwreck and broke with laws of the SW universe. Dead Mary Poppins Leia didn't get a laugh from me, but Admiral Holdo (the Holdo femme, art school teacher hipster granny who is gay chic but HOLDs her Own! - AKA POOCHIE from the SIMPSONS) ... she got me laughing... and that whole bit of a kamikaze thing was interesting, but it truly negates everything about SW laws... if that was the case they'd simply hyperdrive into the Death Star etc..


God that shit got old so fast. I'm sure I'll watch the new one at some point, I'm a big fan of Ian McDiarmid.. he was one of the only good things about the Prequels.... Wanted to see Lando too... but eh.. I watched SPIES IN DISGUISE (I'm a pigeon fan) on xmas instead. That was fun, and full of laughs...and had the most painful transformation scene since An American Werewolf in London. (at least to me, it did)

I've heard good things about the Mandolorian.. but that's cause its a competent director and fan in Jon Favreau. I'd seen that Phantom Menace was a FIRST DRAFT... same with the sequel trilogy... and its no wonder nothing seemed to go together, why the characters are lousy, and everything simply aligns for no fucking reason. Thank God, that bullshit is over.

Did I miss anything compelling by Holding out on this?

There's one funny bit at the end. There's some nice bits throughout but it just moves too fast to establish stuff. Like in the old days you'd understand Hoth and the Forest Moon and 'get' what they're about. You'd have time to be absorbed into them. This trilogy it's just been more like 'here we are... it's night time' BLAM!!! 'lets leave!!'

Give it a watch when it's on telly.

Please use the correct terminology when you talk about the characters - it's not "Poochie", it's "Vice Admiral Gender Studies".

Did you miss something? Well in the same week I almost cried when a pig alien died in The Mandalorian and had no emotional reaction during Episode 9, even when "a main character" dies. If you like flashy images, and pew pews, you will love this movie. And there are many flashy images, so many that theatres all over the world have to put out epilepsy warnings and there are at least 2 cases of epileptic attacks reported from this movie.If you like deeper meanings of things, if you like philosophies, story arcs with meanings, things you will remember decades later, you can skip this movie.

And no, I don't blame JJ. If the current leaks are true, he had nothing to do with the final cut, he didn't even SEE the movie before it was released.

From reddit:

[QUOTE]
- The leakers for TROS had an agenda and are tied to Disney directly. My source confessed that they have an agenda as well in that they struggle with ignoring what’s been happening to someone who they think doesn’t deserve it.
- JJ always treated everyone on and offset with respect so my source’s agenda is that what Disney has done to JJ and how much they screwed him over should be something people are at least aware of, whether you like him as a filmmaker or not.
- Disney was one of the studios who were in that Bad Robot bidding war last year. Disney never had much interest in BR as a company but they did in JJ because they saw WB (who JJ went with in the end) as a major threat.
- JJ is very successful at bringing franchises back like Mission Impossible, Star Trek and Star Wars. WB is struggling with DC and aside from Wonder Woman, DC is still seen as a bit of a joke in its current state by the GA.
- WB wants Abrams for some DC projects. My source said that this generation’s Star Wars is the MCU, and Marvel’s biggest threat is a well operational DC. They want to keep DC in the limbo that they’re in right now. Abrams jumpstarting that franchise with something like a successful, audience-pleasing Superman movie makes them nervous. Their goal is to make JJ look bad to potential investors/shareholders.
- My source mentioned this shortly after the premiere: “The TROS we saw last night was not the TROS we thought we worked on”.
- JJ was devastated and blindsided by this. He’s been feeling down over the last 6 months because of some of the ridiculous demands Disney had that changed his movie’s story. While the scenes were shot, a lot of the changes were made in post-production and the audio was rerecorded and altered. My source said they’ve never seen anything like this happen before. He’s the director and he wasn’t in the know about what they were doing behind his back.
- Apparently, JJ felt threatened over the month leading up to the premiere.
- Rian was never meant to do IX despite some rumors that he was.
- JJ was brought back by Iger, not KK. Disney insisted on more fan service, less controversy.
- JJs original agreement when he signed on was indicating he would have way more creative control than he did on TFA. It became evident this wasn’t the case only a couple of weeks into shooting when the trouble with meddling started.
- JJ wanted to do some scenes he thought were important but Disney shut it down citing budgetary reasons.
- May 2019: JJ argued that those scenes were crucial. He had to let go of one of the scenes. The other scene he insisted on was approved at first. He did reshoots and additional photography in July. The new scene was shot at BR in October.
- The “ending that will blow your mind” was a part of this. Older actors were included like Hayden, Ewan and Samuel and anyone who wasn’t animated. The force ghosts weren’t meant to be voices because they shot that footage on camera. The actors were in costumes. Rey was supposed to be surrounded by the force ghosts to serve as sort of a barrier between her and the Sith surrounding them.
- My source thinks but can’t 100% confirm that this is because of China. It’s an office talk of sorts. Some VFX people claimed they got a list of approved shades of blue they could use on the Luke force ghosts. Cutting this out was when the bad blood turned into a nightmare for JJ because the movie he was making was suddenly unrecognizable to him in almost every way.
- My source knows JJ well enough to know that he’s just not the yelling type but apparently in a meeting he yelled something along the lines of “Why don’t you just put ‘directed and written by Lucasfilm’ then?” My source wasn’t present for that exchange but knows some who were.
- Disney demanded they shoot some scenes that would have things in it for merchandise. “They fly now” is one of them. It’s also JJ’s least favorite scene. At a November screening of a 2:37 cut, he cringed, groaned and laughed when the scene was on.
- My source says that JJ was most likely not joking when he said “you’re right” in the interview where they asked him about TROS criticism.
- JJ’s original early November cut was 3 hours 2 minutes long.
- In January, JJ suggested that they turn this into two films. My source told me this well before Terrio mentioned it in an interview a couple of days ago. When Disney said no, JJ was content with making this 3 hours long.
- Over a period of 9 months JJ started realizing that one by one his ideas and whole scenes were being thrown out the window or entirely altered by people who have “no business meddling with the creatives”.
- They were not on the same page when it came to creative decisions and it became obvious that Disney had an agenda in addition to wanting to please shareholders. Disney could “afford messing up IX for the sake of the bigger picture” when it came to protecting things unrelated to IX.
- The cut JJ eventually and hesitantly agreed to in early December was 2:37 minutes long. It wasn’t the cut we saw which he wouldn’t have approved of (and which is 2:22 long). Apart from the force ghosts, there were other crucial and emotional scenes missing. The cut they released looked “chopped and taped back together with weak scotch tape” (JJ's words).
- The movie opened with Rey’s training. Her first scene with Rose was shortly after Rey damaged BB-8 during the training. Rose made a silly joke about how Poe is going to kill her for damaging BB-8. There was a moment where Rey took a minute to process what just happened when she saw that vision during training. She looked distressed and worried. The next scene was noise as the Falcon was landing and Rey runs over there. Those two women who kissed at the end were visible in this shot and they were holding hands. One of them ran towards the Falcon as it landed.
- Kylo on Mustafar scene was 2 mins longer. There was a moment where Kylo seemed a bit dizzy and his vision was shown as blurry for a second. Almost as if time half-stopped while everyone in the background was slow-mo fighting. Kylo hears Vader's breathing, then shakes his head and time goes back to moving at a normal pace and he jumps right back into the battle (the scene from the trailer where he knocks that guy down which did end up in the movie later).
- They cut some of the scenes from the lightspeed skipping segment. Some of the planets that were cut were Kashyyyk, Naboo, and Kamino.
- The scene where the tie fighters are chasing them through the iceberg - those corridors were inspired by a video game JJ used to play in the 90s called Rebel Assault 2 (the third level in the game with the tunnels on Endor specifically).
- Jannah was confirmed to be Lando’s daughter.
- Rey not only healed Kylo's face scar but she killed Kylo when she healed Ben. Kylo ceased to exist when Rey healed him. My source mentioned that some people assume it was Han Solo who healed him but that isn’t true and that wasn't Han Solo. That was Leia using her own memories as well as Ben's to create

[QUOTE]
...as well as Ben's to create a physical manifestation of his own thoughts to nudge him towards what he needed to do. That was her own way of communicating that with him. And it wasn't possible without her dying in the process. She made the ultimate sacrifice for her son and this flew over people's heads with the Disney cut.
- The late November cut (the last cut JJ approved of) had scenes with Rose and Rey still. JJ wanted to give her a more meaningful arc. Disney felt that that was too risky too. My source mentioned that Chris Terrio said that it was because of the Leia scenes but this is only partially true because she had four other scenes including two with Rey/Daisy that Leia was not in.
- Finn wanting to tell Rey something was always meant to be force sensitivity. In the 3 hour cut, it’s explicitly stated. There was a moment when Jannah and he were running on top of that star destroyer and Finn needed to unlock or move something and he force-moved it and acted surprised when it happened. This was replaced with a CGI’d BB-8 fixing whatever he needed to fix on there.
- Babu Frik was nearly cut because some execs at Disney thought he would be the new Jar Jar. They are really surprised that people love him this much. He was JJ's idea and was created in collaboration with some artists and puppeteers. The personality was all JJ.
- There were a bunch of scenes where Rey and Kylo (separately) went through quiet moments of reflection to deal with what they were going through. On her part, her going through the realization that there's something sinister about her past. Him going through regret and remorse but trying to shut it out. My source said that the Kylo scenes were especially amazing because of Adam's performance and how he managed to portray that inner turmoil. It provided much more context and added deeper meaning to both his battle with Rey and the final redemption arc at the end. It didn't happen so suddenly and it was more structured than what we got.
- The Kylo/Rey scene where he dies was at least 4 minutes longer with more dialogue. Ben was always supposed to die. Source also added that if he wasn’t, then that might’ve been in an earlier draft which they haven’t read. The first draft they read included Lando (the first few didn’t). The Reylo kiss and Ben’s death was not part of the reshoots. It was a part of the re-editing. Even the cut that JJ thought was coming out earlier this month had a longer version of that scene than what was shown in the theatrical cut.
- JJ was against the Reylo kiss (or Reylo in general). This was Disney's attempt to please both sides of the fandom.
- JJ was not happy with where TLJ took the story. The final result is a mix of that story and the story told by Disney and whoever they tried to impress (“certainly not the fans”). JJ is gutted over the final result. Star Wars means a lot to him. He had to sacrifice large chunks of the story in TFA but he was promised more creative control on TROS and instead the leash they had him on was only tightened as time went by. A source said that this is the one franchise and the one piece of his work that he didn't want to mess up and instead it turned into his worst nightmare. When he found out that he was blindsided with the cut they presented, he said "what the fuck??" when Kylo was fighting the Knights of Ren at the end and the Williams music that was used for it was not what he wanted at all. He seemed to think it was out of place.
- JJ's cut still exists and “will always exist”. We most likely will never see it unless “someone accidentally leaks it.”
[/QUOTE]

Oh and apparently the "Reylos", the "new" fans Lucasfilm wanted to cater to as soon as they realized they lost a huge amount of the old fans, are now going insane on twitter and are sending death threats to JJ and Lucasfilm employees. Classy. But we, the people who didn't like TLJ are the ones called "toxic".

At least The Mandalorian is great, both John Favreu and Dave Filoni definitely KNOW how to tell good stories, hopefully they will be in charge of all future SW projects

I don't think the Mandalorian is great per se. It's better than the childrens cartoons I've seen sure. I think it has great parts but the padding way overloads the series. Like Rogue One and Solo (yep, Solo) I believe it's the direction the films need to go in. Some are for digging way into the distant corners of the unseen universe - I'm strictly 'show me classic stormtroopers and background characters I had the figures of in 1983!'. But, if it's good, I'm happy.

I haven't picked apart that leak yet - but I'm not sure I believe that he didn't see the final cut. It's a BIG release (I dare say the most important of his career) and if he was that hands off he is bad at his job. It's been largely panned and it's his was of saying 'well I didn't actually have much to do with it..'

Good thread BTW. Well done everyone.

There's been stories like this with most of the new films. I guess at some point we'll see the alternate / original cuts. I'm very keen to do this.

Saw it yesterday. A few hours of fairly mindless entertainment. The plot was laughable and repetitive. Apart from Adam Driver the acting wooden and the dialogue plodding. Nevertheless it had some good moments, the effects were entertaining, and best of all it's finally over.

I dislike Adam Driver because I like him so much.

I'm also one of about 6 people on the planet who was like 'oh the guy from Girls I like him' when he was announced in TFA.