Official TROS Spoilers discussion

Regarding Ben's return....
I honestly don't want anyone but Adam to play him.
He put a lot of himself into that character, no one else would be able to bring to the role what Adam did.

Give Adam a couple of years off, and I suspect he'd be open to returning.....but not as a prequel. And it would have to have a writer and director who knew what they were doing.

I was telling my husband about how TROS is so different from the other products LF is putting out that I suspect the creative teams and higher ups at LF were cut out of having any say over the story. I guess one day we will find out.
I also showed him a clip of the Rey and Kylo scene where she stabs him, heals him and declares her love for him. I told him she showed more emotion in that scene than she did when he died after having her first kiss. That is the fault of crappy storytelling, directing and editing.

@Birdwoman wrote:I was telling my husband about how TROS is so different from the other products LF is putting out that I suspect the creative teams and higher ups at LF were cut out of having any say over the story. I guess one day we will find out.
I also showed him a clip of the Rey and Kylo scene where she stabs him, heals him and declares her love for him. I told him she showed more emotion in that scene than she did when he died after having her first kiss. That is the fault of crappy storytelling, directing and editing.

Yes, and remember how upset she was when Han died?

It practically screams altered ending to me.

Yesterday I watched it for the second time and it felt like a terrible bore. At least TLJ was more interesting because of the cinematography and the scenes are much more suspenseful- I would take Kylo vs Snoke over Rey vs Palpatine anytime. Also there is something bugging me and that is how many similar scenes there are to TLJ - like the red beads on the white floor vs wounds on Crait, the way Palpatine holds Rey and Kylo up in the air, the mirror scene vs the cave scene in TLJ. Like a poor copy without substance.

Also knowing that Chewie doesn’t die makes his “death” aftermath hilarious. Rey mirrors Anakin in “The power came from me” and Finn just does not care for it. She just shot a lighting and killed your friend. And Finn is like - nawh its ok Rey. And that stupid circle they make - for Chewie. And he is alive and its like wtf did I just watch.

@motherofpearl1 wrote:Regarding Ben's return....
I honestly don't want anyone but Adam to play him.
He put a lot of himself into that character, no one else would be able to bring to the role what Adam did.

Give Adam a couple of years off, and I suspect he'd be open to returning.....but not as a prequel. And it would have to have a writer and director who knew what they were doing.

@motherofpearl1

And if he has an Oscar and they want him back, his choice of director might matter to them. I’d also imagine that he wouldn’t sign up for a trilogy because he could wind up with a bad director on the second or third movie. It seems to be all about the director for him— which make sense.

@Nyx wrote:I always felt that the satisfying part DR always talked about was about Rey and not reylo or the movie in general and always from an actor- career wise- POV. She probably felt that if Rey ended up alone her character would go in the pantheon of strong female heroes. Not to mention that she may have been on the same page as JJ-CT in regard to that killing off Ben would ensure that Rey's character would not be overshadowed in the end and the sole focus would be Rey. All this is assumptions on my part but that's the feeling I got.

@Nyx

You know, I've always felt thankful for the Redditors' outrage and Jedipaxis's leaks since the day I watched TROS at the theater. If the Redditors didn't go on a rampage that made JJ and KK chicken out and change the ending, then my eyes would bleed when I had to watch Rey and the resistance gang/the faux trio also had a random, lame celebration and a group selfie on Tatooine. It was pure cannibalism, JJ was going to let princess Palpatina and her gang celebrate on the home planet of the dead Skywalker family.  
The almighty God did have mercy on the poor souls like me and the other Skywalkers fans out there.

@OrionStars wrote:

@Nyx wrote:I always felt that the satisfying part DR always talked about was about Rey and not reylo or the movie in general and always from an actor- career wise- POV. She probably felt that if Rey ended up alone her character would go in the pantheon of strong female heroes. Not to mention that she may have been on the same page as JJ-CT in regard to that killing off Ben would ensure that Rey's character would not be overshadowed in the end and the sole focus would be Rey. All this is assumptions on my part but that's the feeling I got.

@Nyx

You know, I've always felt thankful for the Redditors' outrage and Jedipaxis's leaks since the day I watched TROS at the theater. If the Redditors didn't go on a rampage that made JJ and KK chicken out and change the ending, then my eyes would bleed when I had to watch Rey and the resistance gang/the faux trio also had a random, lame celebration and a group selfie on Tatooine. It was pure cannibalism, JJ was going to let princess Palpatina and her gang celebrate on the home planet of the dead Skywalker family.  
The almighty God did have mercy on the poor souls like me and the other Skywalkers fans out there.

@OrionStars

I am thankful there was a small effect (the ending we received versus a huge trio celebration), yet if only the leakers and JP were not hostile to Reylos/Bendemptionists. If they were not, and the Reylo/Bendemption scenes were in the leaks, more would have believed the leaks/there would have been more outrage and MAYBE the pressure would have been enough that the movie would have been delayed (for a better movie). Such is life!

@Birdwoman wrote:I was telling my husband about how TROS is so different from the other products LF is putting out that I suspect the creative teams and higher ups at LF were cut out of having any say over the story. I guess one day we will find out.
I also showed him a clip of the Rey and Kylo scene where she stabs him, heals him and declares her love for him. I told him she showed more emotion in that scene than she did when he died after having her first kiss. That is the fault of crappy storytelling, directing and editing.

@Birdwoman

That scene is 100% due to the actors, they finally had a chance to just slow down and have the type of quiet and vulnerable one-on-one exchanges that TLJ used for them.

Man just when I think I'm finished being annoyed, I remember something else. That Twitter thread with all the screenshots of the VD with Chris Terrio's "all about me and what 8 year old me wanted" introduction reminds me of when Sam Raimi did his bullshit Oz movie where he made Oscar Diggs the hero and turned it into a sad love triangle where the Wicked Witch goes to the Darkside because he's dating her and Glenda the Good. The original Oz novels are about Dorothy as the heroine and L Frank Baum based her and the other characters (Glenda the Good, Ozma...) on the women in his life, especially his wife and mother-in-law Matilda and Jocelyn Gage, who were well known suffragettes. I remember running across a movie tie-in where they'd republished the original novel with an introduction by James "I'm enrolled in multiple PhD programs" Franco. This novel which is one of the first and best to feature a non-traditional, assertive, and feminine heroine that generations of girls and young women love, gets one whole sentence about Dorothy in the introduction and then he runs on for 9 more pages about himself.  That's what this feels like between the movie, the interviews, and that book. It was about what they enjoyed as young boys about Star Wars and indulging themselves in it, without about zero clue/sensitivity to the fact that the ST has been about a young woman coming-of-age and that at least the other writers involved in the project tried to do justice to that theme. Hell, all the current accolades for Little Women telling the same type of story and same thing - that's what makes the "Rey's weakness is her lack of identity" [and don't worry ladies, we fixed it by figuring out which famous Force user she's related to] is so insulting.

@Lily Snape wrote:

@motherofpearl1 wrote:Regarding Ben's return....
I honestly don't want anyone but Adam to play him.
He put a lot of himself into that character, no one else would be able to bring to the role what Adam did.

Give Adam a couple of years off, and I suspect he'd be open to returning.....but not as a prequel. And it would have to have a writer and director who knew what they were doing.

@motherofpearl1

And if he has an Oscar and they want him back, his choice of director might matter to them. I’d also imagine that he wouldn’t sign up for a trilogy because he could wind up with a bad director on the second or third movie. It seems to be all about the director for him— which make sense.

I'd be happy with just one good film.
Then Kylo's story could continue in comic or book form.
Maybe they could bring Rian back as well!

@Dar-ren19 wrote:

@unicorn wrote:

@snufkin wrote:The insistence that the plot is about Rey having a "found family" and choosing her own family is such patriarchal nonsense by literally grafting her (Adam's Rib?) to a powerful male legacy character as the answer to why she's so powerful and what her history/backstory is. The ending also insults the character whose primary trait/motivation through two films and the Before the Awakening short story was her loneliness, which helped spark the initial connection between her and Ben. But thanks to the Terrio penned Visual Dictionary* (source), it's now changed that her primary trait is her "lack of identity" (source)



* this why holding out hope that the yet-to-be-released content such as the tie-in novels, the Art of book, or home video release will have a better version of the story isn't worth the time/anxiety. Unfortunately it looks like between the signs of studio meddling and JJ putting hiring his friends (nearly all men save the lady who gets to wear a hot catsuit while her face is covered up) for them to act out their own personal fantasy of Star Wars over being consistent of what was in the previous two movies, the story and characters are the biggest casualties.

@snufkin

Exactly, lack of identity.
That´s the reason why Maz tells Rey in TFA "The identitiy you are searching for is not behind you, it´s ahead"

Tacking a new surname to a character doesn´t give this character an identity all in a sudden.
Everything in this movie is so wrong and twisted.

@unicorn -- I think the actual word Maz used was "belonging," not "identity." Which, again, circles right back to her loneliness. Just wanted to point that bit out

@Dar-ren19

Dear, this was pure irony. Of course it was "belonging"

Tbh I find it funny how Palpatine specifically emphasizes that Resistance is Reys new found family. Because otherwise the viewer won’t figure it out haha.

I found THIS
https://chekhovs-red-herring.tumblr.com/post/190066478563/ben-solo-mental-health-in-star-wars-sequel
Courtesy of reyloeyesofmist

I wish someone from Disney could read this.

The more I think of it the more I think that J.J. and Terrio missed a great opportunity to do something interesting, unique and difficult with what RJ left them. At the end of TLJ, the First Order is on the brink of wiping out the resistance. Then Kylo Ren, with Rey's help, kills the big bad (in the second movie!), tries and fails to get Rey to join him, lets his own lingering hatred for Luke get the better of him, and lets the Resistance survive. I didn't love everything about TLJ but I loved that they subverted the "Snoke as the Emperor II" idea by getting rid of him early.

I did a lot of mental spitballing thinking "Now what do you do with this third part of the trilogy?" They were almost forced to come up with something fundamentally different than Return of the Jedi, because they had no big bad all powerful guy, and the Vaderesque figure of Kylo Ren was entirely more sympathetic and ambiguous than Vader ever was.

And J.J. and Terrio's response? Bring back Palpatine, and have Kylo do exactly what Vader did. They did what they had to do in order to be able to tell basically the same story as ROTJ. I'll admit, that like ROTJ, the movie was a lot of fun. But damn, that was pretty uninteresting as a story.

We never really got to see, after ROTJ, how our heroes faired once they were on their own, and no longer had this big enemy to fight. Eventually we know that things went sour again. Why? Why did history repeat itself? J.J.'s answer is that Palpatine was still alive and pulling the strings.

That cements the idea that this was not, in fact, the Skywalker saga but was the Palpatine saga, absolutely 100%. Add in that our main protagonist is his granddaughter and that cements it. I guess it's about how the Skywalkers eventually beat Palpatine by turning his granddaughter against him. Yawn.

When the ST first came out, I thought, "How do they create drama with a dead Emperor?" Well, they created a new emperor type character in Snoke. But then, Kylo killed him near the end of the second movie of the trilogy! So we see now, the answer is not just to kill the big baddie at the top. There is some other fundamental change that needs to happen in order for this whole tortured saga to be resolved.

I thought Luke was hinting at this when he talked about how the Jedi must end, that the force is not a power you have. I feel like the machinery of war had really used the Skywalkers, and all Jedi, as tools for political ends. I thought there was an opportunity there for Ben and Rey to come together by quitting their respective sides and working together to stop war rather than assist it with their powerful connections to the force. The Canto Bight sequence also played into this by suggesting that war was profitable enterprise. Snoke dressed in gold robes kind of cemented that too.

When we last see Ben/Kylo in TLJ, he's haunted by the fact that he killed Han Solo, he has killed his master and taken over the First Order but Rey has rejected him. He's confronted and bested by Luke. Over a time jump it's fascinating to think about what his mental state would be and where that's taken him.

But no, Kylo seems perfectly well at ease in the beginning of TROS, showing no ill consequences at all of Rey rejecting him, Luke schooling him, and him letting the Resistance survive.

How about this: In the years that have gone by, the Resistance has gained strength, Kylo faces dissension in his own ranks, he's isolated, miserable and torn up. And Rey begins to be troubled by the growing power of the Resistance, and Poe's expectation that her force abilities (and those of her students) be available for use in whatever way the Resistance sees fit. And how does this affect Rey's friendship with Finn? And Finn's friendship with Poe?

And how exactly would Rey and Ben put an end to this cycle? Some sort of penultimate battle could occur between the two sides, and somehow Rey and Ben would be working to stop it. To use their great connection to the force for peace, and not for war. That could end up being the overarching theme of the saga. And a real reason to have episode IX be the end of it - the ushering in of 1000 years of peace with a deeper understanding of the true nature of the force.

But no, nope, nah, just bring back the biggest of the bad baddies and make this 9 film saga all about Palps. And then retcon Snoke to be some tool / clone Palpatine created. How boring! And difficult to explain. So they didn't even really bother.

Despite the irritating title, even this article thinks the ending was ridiculous
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-redemption-toxic-men-1264904

By the way am I the only one sick and tired of Kylo being referred to as 'abusive' when Rey is the one essentially beating him up?

When it came to Rey, Kylo was the softest villain, lol.

I've just read the Villains comic trade paperback. Frankly, Hux, Phasma and of course Kylo were a lot more interesting than the heroes!

Interesting tweets from Matt. Safe to say, he didnt want Ben to die.

Matt's answer confirms that Ben is in the Disney Vault for the foreseeable future.

Also likely an unpopular opinion but as with not putting any energy into reading/engaging with interviews like the ones from Terrio & Braeden or the yet to be released tie in novel, it's also not really going to get any concrete answers by asking people from the SG who weren't involved with the production. Which is obvious from the final product, this was all Disney w/no input from LF). I understand why people keep wanting to chase after answers because it was such a shocking/disappointing response to what had been built up over the past 4 years. But something obviously not good went down BTS which the studio managed to keep out of the public eye until the film's release, and there's not going to be a definitive answer from anybody about the decisions made in regards to the character/relationship and what may/may not happen ever in the future. Other than too many executives meddling in the final product with none of the care/thought we all noticed and were drawn to in the first place. It's a disappointing answer, but it's closer to the truth than hoping it was a fake out or that they're going to come out with a definitive answer after the past few weeks of press post mortems.

@fuhry i hate many things about TLJ, but that was the one departure that i thought should be explored.

i think TLJ stands in its own way not cutting off after she disappears but instead doing more stuff. i may be able to reconcile with the thing if it ended earlier and truly left us on this cliffhanger. but anyway.

The horrible thing is....
I'm actually disliking Rey now.
That they actually shot an ending where she and the others were cheering on Tattooine......

I loved Rey in the first two films, although I didn't like how she went for that sabre at the end of TLJ. But for her character to waltz cheerfully off into the sunset after Ben died for her without a backward glance.

Strong? No. Hard. I honestly wonder if JJ and Terrio realised how repellent their heroine has become.

@motherofpearl1

I feel you, I loved her too. But I don't like the way they have led the character, and the lack of reaction towards Ben's sacrifice....it hurts!

One bit of good news....The Rise of Kylo Ren comic is apparently selling so well it's going to a second print!

The more I look at TROS, the more I semi-see potentially good bones for a film, which only serves to highlight the execution as the worst possible versions of those ideas, like checking off a box without understanding why one is doing it at all. This sounds like very dumb hyperbole, but TROS honest to goodness feels like an evil, surreal alternate universe version of Episode IX. It's so ineffective, but more than that, stands in such stark contrast to TFA and TLJ, it truly feels like it came from another galaxy (not the GFFA though).

There's so many things: Ben and Rey as a dyad one in the force (but it's some dark side prophecy and doesn't really deepen their relationship or understanding of the force very much), the two reconciling (but so late in the film), redemption (really late in the film, and then he dies, no further action, appearance, or exploration necessary), Reylo (one kiss and still no dialogue, then he still dies), other stormtroopers rebelling (Jannah and pals, but it's offscreen and long ago and has nothing to do with the main cast or story), Hux trying to undermine Kylo (extremely brief and doesn't totally make sense, no use of him being Kylo's foil), Rey rejecting her lineage and forming her own identity (it really didn't need to be as a Palpatine or Skywalker or whatever), ghost Luke (didn't really like his scene, and Mark's performance wasn't great, also his "see ya around kid" to Kylo never happened), the other Jedi of the past appearing (only for Rey though, not sure what the point of it was, and no return of Anakin), the voices in Kylo's head being acknowledged (only in passing and is immediately abandoned, along with the Vader helmet), Palpatine being the chess master since he was in the PT and OT (not explained or is entirely nonsensical), Palpatine manipulating or being behind Snoke (Snokes in a test tube barrel, y'all) and on and on. It's like every single idea that might have been good or fitting got warped into it's most twisted, uninspired, and tonally and thematically off-kilter rendition. It's really kind of staggering.

The thing I like the least about Rey Palpatine isn't it's inherent problems, or even how it clashes with the rest of the ST or the bigger saga, it's how halfhearted, lazy, and ultimately pointless it was. Like it was just not good, and destroyed other various good things, which would be bad enough, but in the end it was kind of for no reason. Rey not directly acknowledging her Palpatine-ness is either the most bizarre creative oversight of the film right up there with no ghost Ben, or it was something cobbled together in reshoots that only required other characters spouting exposition.

There are the successful Kylo comics now, but those were announced back in summer, and started going to preorder before the movie came out, when TROS hype was high. They finish seemingly before TROS goes to video too. They're really limiting their Kylo/Ben moneymaking opportunities, I don't know why Disney or whomever thought offing him was the more profitable or less controversial choice. But as others have said, characters have been brought back from the dead, or turned out to not really have been dead. Maybe it's Adam, since SW is pretty good at getting original actors back even when they say they won't, or maybe it's another actor. Maybe it's animation, or a book or comic. I wouldn't rule anything out at this point.

The bigger question remains what the larger approach LF will take to dealing with TROS will be: sweep it under the rug and not deal with it very much, double down and own it, or try to fix it? Any of those options seems likely. If IX was the product of JJ and Terrio, and they aren't there anymore, and the audience and even major parts of LF don't like what was done in TROS, and it didn't make as much money as they wanted, they might not carry on in that vein. Also, bless Matt Martin, who has dealt with all the Twitter nonsense for so long, and is gushing over the Ben Solo challenge.

There's been much discussion and even articles about TROS walking back on TLJ, but I think that's too tunnel-vision. This isn't about one film versus one other film, it's versus the ST, the OT, the PT, most of the EU, GL himself, even many of the things Disney does in their other properties. It's so wildly offbase, it's hard to reconcile or even process. Like, where did this come from, also how, also why. In a sea of massive blockbusters and franchises and megacorporations, I was hoping that SW could hold out until at least the end of the ST, that it could be the special one. I wanted it to be glorious for everyone, but it ended up being fascinating in all the wrong ways. Like, I need a fully-documented autopsy of this thing.

The film is a mess.
But I could tolerate it if Ben survived.
Even reylo isn't as important as his survival.
I have a lot of anger that the makers of this film think killing him off is fine as long asxwe get a Reylo kiss.
Sorry guys.....not good enough.

@californiagirl maybe lindsay ellis will do one?