Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, December 20, 2019) Movie • Page 428

Maeve and Fleabag are two of the most compelling and well-acted female characters in television in recent memory, and yet somehow Solo managed to entirely underutilize the talents of Thandie Newton and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. As if killing off Val and then the male characters hardly acknowledging it wasn't bad enough, what the movie did to L3 literally made me feel sick. That's Black Mirror level fucked up, in a SW film. Oh, the Falcon is being perky again? That's just the AI we trapped in there.

 

Never really thought about this so thanks for bringing it up

 

iirc one of the worst parts about the L3 thing is that it’s presented to the audience in one 30 second scene and then it’s forgotten in all of the break neck hub bub of the final act

 

Yeah, you don't get enough time to process just how fucked up it is

 

I'm a Solo defender, but yea every time I stop to think about what happens to L3 it makes me cringe. It's emblematic of the biggest flaw with the Disney era Star Wars. Scriptwriting to reference things from the OT without regard to story or character. L3 dies basically to pay off C3PO's line about how the falcon "has the most peculiar dialect". Which is a line that didn't need a payoff.

 

I think this is why I hate the concept of prequels in general. When the payoff is just you saying to yourself, “ohhh that’s why it is the way it is”, you’ve completely lost me.

 

I’m also annoyed that lando then gambles away the falcon. Makes me kind of hate him.

 

the only time I’ve ever felt empathy for a droid in Star Wars was the beginning of New Hope when the Jawas are torturing them inside their big tank thing by burning their feet

 

I don't hate the concept of prequels, but unfortunately, most of them are conceived in the way you described. Instead of exploring an interesting theme or story, the creator looks at a small detail and builds a story to provide an explanation. The recent Planet of the Apes trilogy and Better Call Saul (from the seasons I've watched) are a few examples that do prequels well by exploring themes and character instead of details (though even those are undoubtedly self-referential at times too). In theory, Solo could be more interesting if it spent more time exploring what makes people become jaded. While it touches on that, the scale tips too heavily towards giving back story to events that aren't all that interesting in reality (how he met chewy, Lando, got the falcon, etc).

 

I've said it many times before but the clone wars series makes the prequels existing worth it

 

Chewie should’ve died. The falcon should’ve been destroyed. Make it a true end. Break your heart and then lift you up at the end. They tried to break your heart and then three minutes later they were just like “just kidding!” I still can find enjoyment from the movie though. I might be one of the few. What I wanted didn’t happen and that’s on me. Honestly I blame toxic fans that couldn’t accept TLJ for how this movie turned out. Just way too much fan service.

 

Kelly finally getting some respect!

 

John Boyega: 'I’m the only cast member whose experience of Star Wars was based on their race'

 

Man, it really sucks the way he's been treated because of this silly franchise. I Love Star Wars but sometimes I want nothing to do with it because of how shitty the fandom is.

It's a shame he dislikes the arc Finn had in TLJ, but I'm not going to say he's wrong for feeling that way either. I'm glad he's speaking his mind and calling out Disney as well.

 

“It’s so difficult to manoeuvre,” he says, exhaling deeply, visibly calibrating the level of professional diplomacy to display. “You get yourself involved in projects and you’re not necessarily going to like everything. [But] what I would say to Disney is do not bring out a black character, market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are and then have them pushed to the side. It’s not good. I’ll say it straight up.” He is talking about himself here – about the character of Finn, the former Stormtrooper who wielded a lightsaber in the first film before being somewhat nudged to the periphery. But he is also talking about other people of colour in the cast – Naomi Ackie and Kelly Marie Tran and even Oscar Isaac (“a brother from Guatemala”) – who he feels suffered the same treatment; he is acknowledging that some people will say he’s “crazy” or “making it up”, but the reordered character hierarchy of The Last Jedi was particularly hard to take.


“Like, you guys knew what to do with Daisy Ridley, you knew what to do with Adam Driver,” he says. “You knew what to do with these other people, but when it came to Kelly Marie Tran, when it came to John Boyega, you know fuck all. So what do you want me to say? What they want you to say is, ‘I enjoyed being a part of it. It was a great experience...’ Nah, nah, nah. I’ll take that deal when it’s a great experience. They gave all the nuance to Adam Driver, all the nuance to Daisy Ridley. Let’s be honest. Daisy knows this. Adam knows this. Everybody knows. I’m not exposing anything.”


go off John

 

I've been seeing the stories that no one will hire Daisy after Star Wars. Anyone look into them?

 

I mean shes done two other films as an actor. Everything else has been voice work.

 

I feel bad for John. And I agree that his character in particular was put to the side after TFA. I wish they would’ve done something different with his story in TLJ and TROS.

 

Time to cast her as an animated Batman villain.

 

I feel bad for both John and Kelly. It’s all because Disney gets nervous so they bring the characters down to play it safe.

 

I obviously have no right to tell him how to feel but I disagree that Finn got pushed to the side in TLJ, at least purely from a story perspective. To me TRoS is where all the POCs got shafted but JJ is the one person Boyega defends in all this. Idk, tough for sure, I know there's a lot of forces at play. Sucks he's had that experience

 

I think one of the issues is that Finn was a red herring jedi in the TFA marketing. I recall there being a ton of promo art with him wielding a lightsaber and even a few TV spots showing the same all to make us more surprised when Rey was the force user. But then him using the force was never a thread in any of the movies. In hindsight, that marketing strategy feels essentially like a bait and switch, a cynical attempt to appeal to black America and sell tickets.

 

it’s been said a thousand times but there’s an obvious and much larger great story in Finn being a runaway indoctrinated storm trooper that just writes itself brilliantly but they didn’t want to explore

 

The more time passes, and the more I think about it, the more I really despise this movie.