Say what you will about The Last Jedi, but I will never buy the excuse that Rise of Skywalker ended up the way it is because it was the best that could be done. Literally almost anything else would have been better regardless of the Last Jedi.
"somehow palpatine returned" with zero explanation, zero buildup, and zero context is probably the dumbest line and plot element of any movie I've ever seen
There actually is, a character in the movie says "dark science, cloning, secrets only the Sith knew". Also, in Ep. 3, "the dark side is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural". It makes sense to me, as Palpie was obsessed with immortality.
To be clear, I never liked the idea of resurrecting him. I already disliked this idea in Legends, hated Dark Empire.
I don't think a single additional (also vague) line about cloning and Sith secrets changes my assertions at all. To me, that's still very much zero buildup, zero context, and zero explanation.
Especially considering how influential and important Palpatine is to the overall story of Star Wars, his return should be worthy of a significant chunk of a movie, not just two lines.
And yes, reviving him was also just a completely terrible story choice in the first place. With no buildup for the fight between Rey and Palpatine whatsoever, why should the audience care about it?
Reviving Palpatine invalidates the story of redemption for Vader back into Anakin, massively diminishes the struggles of Luke, Han, Leia, etc, and the rebel alliance to defeat Palpatine in the first place, completely ruins the potential that Snoke and Kylo Ren had for being the villains in their own trilogy, and makes Rey's story so much less interesting with her being a Palpatine instead of a nobody.
It also just simply makes no sense that Palpatine was suddenly alive in movie 9 when he was so obviously, clearly killed in the death star in movie 6. Maybe if they showed the cloning efforts of Palpatine or something first, it could have maybe worked, but the Disney movies didn't do anything like that, and just inserted Palpatine into the story for no reason, and with no effort into its execution.
My perspective is that they should care because Palpatine represents evil, all the Sith, as he himself said, whereas Rey represents all the Jedi. Moreover, they made her into the granddaughter to make it more personal, to make the connection there.
"No one ever really gone" says Luke, which is so true for the franchise. You have characters left and right who don't stay dead, from a certain point of view. In EP. V, we learn that Anakin is still alive, Ben, Yoda, in TCW you've got Maul, in Bad Batch there's Ventress. It's something that's to be expected in this universe.
At the end of TLJ, there are only two named villains left alive, one of whom is now a laughing stock that neither Rey nor Finn have even met on-screen, and the other of whom is Han and Leia's only child and also Rey's love interest.
Basically TLJ doomed any sequel to be written in a state of panic.
What was left to do after Last Jedi? Kylo Ren was set up for a redemption arc, but he's the only real antagonist left. There was no one for him to redeem himself against. Do we just go with him being flat out irredeemably evil? Han and Leia's son just can't be saved after 3 movies of trying? Luke's gone now too so the entire Skywalker lineage basically just ends in tragedy.
I think I'm not the only one who would say that that's too bleak for Star Wars. Don't get me wrong, "somehow Palpatine returned" was godawful. They absolutely could have done it better. But they had no choice but to bring him back because Rian Johnson painted them into a corner.
Read the script for Duel of the Fates if you want a tangible example of how things could have been better. It's by no means perfect, it's a first draft but it is what a logical and good continuation of TLJ would have looked like.
Now of course, a huge part of the TROS debacle was the death of Carrie Fisher, I would absolutely argue that had a bigger impact on ep9 than the ending of TLJ.
At least TLJ tried to make its own path, TFA is a fun but tired rehash of the OT. TLJ tried to make the trilogy its own story, which was a tough task given TFA is so similar to ANH, and RoS jerked it right back to the OT once again. TLJ gets strong points for trying something new in my book, even though some scenes were definitely terrible.
Subverting expectations that were so heavily setup to be a rehash of the OT is a good thing in my opinion. The expectations should’ve never existed in the first place. I think if you replace TLJ with something JJ wrote instead, we’d still end up with a terrible ending without any fun storytelling. TFA<any OT movie since it’s so unoriginal.
Funny that you think Rian understood things when Mark, himself, says he didn't. Rian is a good filmmaker who needed to stay far, far away from this universe.
Rian having a vision different from Marks expectations isn’t something I see as an issue at all, especially considering the parallels between what Yoda did after 66 and what Luke did.
Do you think TLJ really changed the end result of RoS? I have a hard time believing JJ’s plan in TFA wasn’t exactly what happened in RoS. Rey being a Palpatine, Sidious coming back, Kylo pulling a Vader and redeeming himself last second, etc etc. RoS basically undermined any changes TLJ made, except for obviously he couldn’t have Luke be alive.
I guess this also depends on whether you enjoyed RoS or not, but the consensus is usually that it was near the bottom of any Star Wars media.
Seems like an easy excuse to say Disney’s fault instead of putting any blame on JJ. Either way, don’t think it really matters since JJ set up the plot points for Rise anyways. TLJ barely affected the end result besides for some whiplash of Rise undoing anything TLJ did.
Everyone has their own opinions, but if you thoroughly enjoyed Rise, we can just agree to disagree, cause imo Rise was an absolute dumpster fire worse than any other Star Wars movie or most movies in general.
It was a total dumpster fire. And not just cos Palpatine returns… whoever decided that what Star Wars needed was an avengers style CGI battle and “more emperor lightning would be cool” was a fucking idiot. It was like the writers room was full of 12 year olds.
15
u/IndyMLVC 15d ago
That's how I feel about TLJ. Rise did the best it could with the absolute shit it was left with.