The Big Picture - 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Emergency Deep Dive (SPOILERS) | The Big Picture

Episode Date: December 20, 2019

'Episode IX' is here and, well, it's not all we'd hoped and dreamed it would be. To break down J.J. Abrams's film, the ninth and final installment in the Skywalker saga, Sean is joined by Binge Mode's... Mallory Rubin to explore what worked (Rey and Kylo), what didn't (um, a lot), and where the 'Star Wars' machine will go from here (Disney+?). Hosts: Sean Fennessey Guests: Mallory Rubin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, it's Liz Kelley, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Over the holidays and into the new year, we'll still be publishing new shows to keep you up to speed with the NFL playoff race, the NBA, and awards season. We've published some great episodes in the month of December, including two rewatchables on Happy Gilmore and The Godfather Part II, Chris interviewed Watchmen showrunner Damon Lindelof on The Watch, and the Ringer NBA show ranked the top 25 players of the 2019-2020 season so far. Lastly, happy holidays is The Big Picture, a conversation show about a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Starting point is 00:00:53 That's right, Episode 9 is here, the conclusion of the Skywalker saga. Joining me to discuss Star Wars, the rise of Skywalker, is The Ringer's editor-in-chief and the co-host of BingeBone, Mallory Rubin. Hello, Mal. Sean, I have a bad feeling about this. Under normal circumstances, such a reference to Star Wars would make me feel great.
Starting point is 00:01:13 Unfortunately, I'm not feeling so great this morning. Mallory, we're talking about the end of something that is very important to both of us. Perhaps the most significant pop cultural artifact of the last 42 years, Star Wars. I still think back to George Lucas opining in the 80s about how there should be nine films in this series. We finally got the ninth, even though he is not the author of that movie. And Outlook is not strong. People are not feeling great about it. Why don't you just give me very quickly your feeling walking out of the movie theater? Sure. Boy, I'll say this first as a caveat kind of for the entire conversation. We just saw the movie. We've seen it once. And it's definitely a movie I think everyone's going
Starting point is 00:01:57 to need to see more than once to fully process and frankly even remember because it is incredibly complex uh if you are so inclined you could say convoluted the pace is completely overwhelming and obviously you're also dealing with the conclusion not only of character arcs from the sequel trilogy but of certain storylines for as you just noted four plus decades of moviemaking. That's a lot to digest and to know how to feel about it and also just to understand. So I didn't feel great about it. Now, to your point about this being the end, I will also issue that as a caveat. I don't really think about it that way because one of the things that's important for me as a fan and somebody who gets very, very, very immersed in the worlds that I love is like,
Starting point is 00:02:50 you never really leave that world. We're always going to have more Star Wars. We're always going to be able to go back to this. And so in that sense, I don't necessarily feel like I'm saying goodbye forever. However, as the final note in this particular version of this particular thing uh it it was as the kids say it's not what you want yeah it wasn't what i wanted let let's let's go back to a simpler time 24 hours ago before i'd never seen the rise of skywalker and and set the stage a little bit for where star wars was in the consciousness where this series was in the consciousness, where this series was in particular. You know, there was some not strong buzz, I think, for the film over the last couple of years. It starts sort of a long time ago, actually, because the original writer and director for the film,
Starting point is 00:03:39 Colin Trevorrow, was removed from the proceeding, much like a series of other filmmakers who have been removed from various Star Wars projects. Obviously, the series is coming off of The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson's, I guess, controversial but also amazing movie. I love The Last Jedi. I do too. We'll talk a little bit about the shading of Rian Johnson and perhaps his ultimate victory in the aftermath of this movie. I do think that concluding a saga is very challenging.
Starting point is 00:04:03 And there are not a ton of great examples of the end of these things. There's two reasons for that. One is that sometimes studios, creative people, what have you, just can't end something because there's too much money on the line. So invariably you have to get Alien Resurrection, even though Alien 3 was supposed to be the end of the story because it's just like, well, there's some profit margins to consider. Right.
Starting point is 00:04:25 But in the rare cases where stories do end, it's hard to tie the bow. I noted a few series that I thought tied the bow elegantly. Okay. I think the original Lord of the Rings trilogy is probably as satisfying a conclusion as we've ever gotten. Would you agree with that? I would. conclusion as we've ever gotten would you agree with that uh i would i i will note here and i wonder if this is gonna gonna become a theme that there's a source text to work against there and
Starting point is 00:04:51 now obviously there is a vast star wars universe much of which has been decanonized by disney and and i think you you've boy did you feel that a lot with some of the palpatine stuff in this movie what is canon what isn't what should we be upon? What should fans be expected to know? But Lord of the Rings, you're working off classic literature, this trilogy that is revered and has been for basically all of time. I love those movies. I was very satisfied. Sad, but satisfied. Yeah, they went back to the well with The Hobbit, which I thought was less successful, obviously. But the original, the final film in the Lord of the Rings series, which won Best Picture at the Oscars, The Return of the King,
Starting point is 00:05:27 which is something we forget about. Great movie. All 20 endings are great. Had way too many endings. I love them all. But at least they all ended, which was nice. I thought the Ocean series was actually quite satisfying. I wouldn't be stunned if we went back to The Well with Oceans 14.
Starting point is 00:05:40 We did get Oceans 8. But the 13 aspect of the movie, I thought, worked really well. Harry Potter, which is something that you have talked about at great length in your life on mic in front of cameras. Sean, I love Harry Potter.
Starting point is 00:05:53 I like the Harry Potter movies quite a bit, actually. And I think they effectively, even though I probably would not have split up the last two movies into two parts. Oh, I don't agree with that.
Starting point is 00:06:00 Okay. But I will just make a quick note there, which is one of the most annoying things in Deathly Hallows 2, really maddening if you cherish the books, is when Harry splits the Elder Wand in half, which we won't get into now because that's a separate three-hour podcast, which you're also welcome to listen to on the Ringer Podcast Network. But that did feel like
Starting point is 00:06:20 a deliberate effort to say, this is over. This part of the story is over. And then, of course, it isn't. We get Harry Potter and the Cursed cursed child and we get it in a different form it's a broadway show you can spend 30 on the hardback of the script there are always ways back into these stories i i they anyone kathleen kennedy and everybody else alive can tell me this is the end of the skywalker saga we'll get into the specific plot points later. When Rey buries who can lay his lightsabers in the sand of Tatooine, that is not to me saying goodbye. That is saying hello to something, to a return in the future. I agree.
Starting point is 00:06:56 We're definitely not done with Star Wars. I don't think anyone thinks that we're going to be done with Star Wars. I just want to note that I think that the big winner of this movie is Avengers Endgame, which is a movie that is obviously a huge financial and global success and also mostly a creative success. It was fairly well reviewed. It has more than enough defenders. It does not need me defending it. But I do have an admiration for the way that they concluded that part of the story in the aftermath of this one, because you realize that we're talking about thousands of people working thousands of hours driven mostly by a kind of cohort of producers who are making decisions to escalate
Starting point is 00:07:31 and execute these titanic pop culture storytelling devices you know they're really their product colliding with mythology and Endgame just kind of works well it just is satisfying even if there are things that you nitpicked about that you didn't like and I think the last time we spoke on this podcast it was about that movie um I I feel a deeper admiration for what they pulled off given how uh I don't know forlorn I am about the end of the Skywalker saga yeah well I really more than anything the the key like fundamental difference now between endgame and where we are with star wars is that you you you step back and have an even greater appreciation for the the cohesive vision and the unified thought and thinking that goes
Starting point is 00:08:14 into that kind of a masterwork part of what makes star wars cool and interesting is that a lot of different people get their hands in it even though it started off as one person's idea and And that's something that Jason and I have been talking about a lot on Binge Mode because George Lucas has always been so open about his angst and anxiety about how other people are perceiving his work and how other people are handling his work. He famously, as we learned in the Bob Iger memoir recently, hated The Force Awakens because it wasn't different enough. He actually doesn't want people just doing the same thing that he's been doing because part of his identity as a creator is to innovate and push and change always forward, always. And it's not now with Star Wars, it's not just about saying, oh, does episode nine line up with episode one? Episode eight and episode nine exists not only in different universes,
Starting point is 00:09:02 different galaxies, if you will. Episode nine is a direct response to Episode 8 in a way that is confounding and really disappointing, I think. And, like, I don't want to be a bummer in this entire episode. There are things about the movie that I liked a lot. And there are things about it that I think I will come to appreciate in time. And there are things about it that I'm prepared to try to talk myself into or rationalize a new appreciation for. Whether or not you like Last Jedi and you wanted this to be what it was or you wanted this to be a continuation of that, you feel kind of unmoored by how disconnected the universe suddenly feels. Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned Lucas's criticism of The Force Awakens.
Starting point is 00:09:43 Of course, the thing that this movie has in common with The Force Awakens is they have the same director, J.J. Abrams. I like The Force Awakens, by the way. I like it too, and I returned to it before this movie just to make sure that I liked it. I think it was understood at the time, and it's understood now, that it is in many ways just a regurgitation of A New Hope. What if Death Star, but bigger? But bigger. Everything is sort of, but bigger. And otherwise it's the same. It's an effective re-entry into the series,
Starting point is 00:10:10 which is what I thought its job was meant to be. I think returning to some of those same beats again in this movie, I think sort of revealed that maybe JJ's only got one pitch when it comes to this stuff. Yeah, I think with The Force Awakens, you know, you can read plenty of quotes and insights from JJ Abrams, Kathleen Kennedy, anybody think with the force awakens you know you can read plenty of of quotes and insights from jj abrams kathleen kennedy anybody involved with the project that that was that's
Starting point is 00:10:30 not something that they would push back against or deny that was the point right was to create a sensation for star wars fans that hopefully was going to be uh new and exciting and energizing exhilarating but also was going to feel familiar, that they wanted to ease you back in. To now, in the third movie of this sequel trilogy, to be spending more time with C-3PO than BB-8 for just one example is insane to me. Yeah, well, it speaks to the crisis of fan service that I think is laced throughout the movie,
Starting point is 00:11:03 which is something we'll explore in a little bit more depth in the conversation. I think the other thing that is notable before we get too far into it is that the production of the movie, which was covered in the New York way that they made this movie, which is by JJ having Chris Terrio, the co-writer of the screenplay, at his side at all times constantly rewriting the movie. And we can sense that when we're watching the movie because it feels like the kind of movie where you can almost see the light bulb going over someone's head that says, what if we did this? What if we added this? What if we added this?
Starting point is 00:11:41 And the adding of things is a major issue. But before we get too far into this movie, the legacy of The Last Jedi is fascinating. I think it's a bit like the quicksand we encounter in this movie because you can get really stuck in the rabbit hole of why some people hate it and why some people don't hate it, why it's really meaningful to some people, and why it is a pox on the existence of a lot of other people. Right. I'm not really terribly interested in the politicized nature of the movie. I think that a lot of that is really
Starting point is 00:12:14 bad faith, arguing a lot of like Internet trollery that, as as Rian Johnson said on this show, is sort of like gamifying hate and gamifying anger. I do think it's very strange that it feels like a corporation actively participated in that. Yes. And I can't for the life of me, there must be people inside of Disney who are, certainly agree that The Last Jedi was hugely problematic for Star Wars and that they needed to course correct. Well, that seems apparent. And I just, I don't understand it in a couple of different respects. One, when all of that was happening initially, you know, sign this petition, let's remake The Last Jedi. Lucasfilm and Disney, whether this reflected people's personal opinions is ultimately irrelevant or felt irrelevant in the moment. Maybe it wasn't. Actively defended the film, actively defended the fact that creators have to put their stamp on each project or it can never really feel alive. And also, you know, I don't want to misquote anything, but to like basically
Starting point is 00:13:15 paraphrase, there was an essence of we don't make this just for the angry fanboys. We make this because it's something that means a lot to a lot of different people. So that's one thing, because that just feels like it's gone now, and I don't understand that. In terms of what Last Jedi represented to people who like it, and what that could have represented to Lucasfilm and Disney as a new portal for creative possibility, that part is ultimately, I can't move beyond that mentally. I can't really understand how they don't, how this happened after that. Because it's not like my job to convince other people who didn't like Last Jedi that they have to like it. If you don't like Last Jedi, that's fine, right? I think it's healthy and good and normal for people in hopefully non-toxic fashion to disagree and debate. That's actually part of the point,
Starting point is 00:14:06 is that it was exciting to have an installment of Star Wars that challenged our notions, longstanding ones, about what this had to be. And for me, and again, I'm repeating for me because I'm conscious of the fact that that might not be the case for someone else, and that's fine. Part of what is so exciting about fantasy stories in general, not just Star Wars,
Starting point is 00:14:30 but certainly it applies to Star Wars, is it's like it's Frodo, right? It's Frodo and the Ring. Why is Frodo the one who walks through the gates of Mordor? It's to reinforce that core quintessential fantasy tenet and idea that anybody can make a difference. And so if everybody wants to just, or a certain contingent of people want to just reduce Star Wars to one bloodline and, you know, a couple family names, that actually feels really contrary to the thing that I love about stories like this. So Rey coming from no one in The Last Jedi was exhilarating to me. The idea that Snoke, this person who you think is propped up as the big bad, doesn't fucking matter or is just a meat puppet, which we find out is literally true in this movie, I thought was awesome. What an interesting subversion of expectations about not always needing to follow an exact trope. And then the idea that Luke would challenge
Starting point is 00:15:26 the nobility and lore and myth of the Jedi Order felt not only cool, but imperative. Like that is so human and relatable. And I'll try to cap myself at Harry Potter references somewhere around like 30 in this podcast, but- Appreciate that. You're welcome. It felt very, very reminiscent of the moment where you realize that Dumbledore is just
Starting point is 00:15:50 a human being. You know, that his life, just like your own, is defined by failure and regret. Of course Luke is full of regret. Look at all these things that have happened in his life. That doesn't mean the Jedi aren't people we should root for, but making them more complex is interesting. Yeah, I think there's other things about The Last Jedi that I also really came to admire even more than the sort of theological and emotional and creative context, which is if you just watch the movie. Looks great.
Starting point is 00:16:16 The staging, the set design, the writing, the photography, the scope, the invention of the movie is all incredible. It is of an, and you can see if you go see Knives Out, you can see Rian Johnson, again, photography, the scope, the invention of the movie is all incredible. It is of an, and you can see if you go see Knives Out, you can see Rian Johnson, again, applying a kind of high-level thinking to genre storytelling, which is something that is very important to me, and I think he excels at it. And The Rise of Skywalker is like, it looks like a Star Wars movie,
Starting point is 00:17:06 but there are vanishingly few moments where you're like, wow, a Star Wars movie, which is one of the most unique sensations you can have if you are a person who is between the ages of 60 and three. like the visually auditory stunning quality of it with the throne room duel from Last Jedi or the Holdo maneuver, which we have to mention because it is specifically name-checked in The Rise of Skywalker when the characters make fun of it, which I actually can't believe is a thing that happened. It's sort of dismissed out of hand. The whole movie is kind of a neg,
Starting point is 00:17:22 and that's part of the problem. There is a bit of negging going on. I thought in particular the reconstruction of Kylo's mask in this movie was sort of emblematic of what they were trying to do. They were trying to like piece back together something that needed to be broken to push the story forward. There are a lot of instances of that where symbological items are forced into this story. Oh, yeah. And that's part of what makes it so confusing. Obviously, this has kind of toxified our relationship to this new movie,
Starting point is 00:17:50 the fact that there's so much rejection going on here. The other thing that I think is notable, there's been some speculation about this, is just Carrie Fisher plays simultaneously a huge part in this new film, but also not as much of a part as she probably would have played had she lived. And when she passed away, you get the sense that if The Force Awakens is about the end of Han Solo and if The Last Jedi is about the end of Luke Skywalker, that this movie
Starting point is 00:18:14 would be about the end of Leia Organa. Yes, which is a lovely, lovely idea for each of them to have a movie. It's a great construction, but without enough footage of her. Most of the footage that is in this movie is shot for The Force Awakens, which JJ shot in 2015, 2014. I think they actually did a nice job of kind of maneuvering and puzzle piecing different aspects to get the story across the line. But I can't help but think just what kind of a different movie this would be if she were alive to participate in it. Because something feels unfinished. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:46 So there are two, there are a lot of emotionally resonant moments in the film, but there are two real, real gut punch. This is when you cry moments. I guess you could throw in a third, depending on how you feel about the fact that Han is in this movie. It has a conversation with Kylo, which we can maybe get to later.
Starting point is 00:19:06 That's something that worked for me. But that sequence is, that Kylo Rey, Kylo Leia, and then Kylo Han sequence is impactful. But ultimately... It's pretty great until that moment, I thought. Yeah, well, it's just so jarring when you think, anyway. Leia's death and Kylo's death. With Leia's death, while it was beautiful and while it felt like this very fitting tribute and closing of a long open chapter, when you're watching the moments leading up to that, you do just feel that the script is reverse engineered against the snippet of footage that
Starting point is 00:19:45 they had you know some of it is just in the specific nature of the lines and what's what leia is saying but also you know something like the fact that the character has to really be in one place there's only so much that they can do really tethered to the resistance base the idea of how other characters like poe and Finn are reacting, it all just feels limited. And it is. And I think the fact that they were so committed to trying to get her in the movie in a meaningful way is admirable and good and important. But I agree with you that you did feel like you were just back mapping against what was possible. And that's a challenging starting point.
Starting point is 00:21:05 Before we go any further, let's take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor, And that's a challenging starting point. We'll see you next time. devices, fans can journey through an immersive 360-degree audio augmented reality timeline of Ray's lightsaber with spatialized sound for unique gesture-driven interaction where the user can freeze the scene, move toward elements, hear new content, and experience the story from new angles. I have to say, this is an amazing experience to have if you're a Star Wars freak like me. I think often of the work that Ben Burtt and Walter Murch did early on in the series to develop this incredible world of sound. This is a new way to experience that. So to celebrate this partnership, Bose will also be releasing a limited edition Star Wars QC35 headphones too.
Starting point is 00:21:33 So visit Bose.com backslash big picture to learn more. Let's try to situate ourselves from the end of Last Jedi into the beginning of this film. So at the end of The Last Jedi, Rey and Kylo are separated, but it's evident that they have a profound connection. In fact, a sort of like psychological force-bound connection to each other, which becomes a significant part of this story. Sure does, yeah. The First Order is weakened, but essentially still very powerful in this battle against the Resistance. The Resistance is diminishing, it seems like, and fleeing, but there is a sense of hope. Luke is gone,
Starting point is 00:22:08 I guess. One with the cosmic force. Our heroes are all separated again. And a lot of those questions that you referred to earlier that Rian Johnson sought to sort of dispel were almost like destroyed. Yeah. You know, who are Rey's parents?
Starting point is 00:22:23 Who is Snoke? You know, even the nature of parents? Who is Snoke? You know, even the nature of the Force, all of these things kind of seemed up in the air. Right. And there was something kind of exhilarating about that. I will admit at the end of that movie, I felt like it may have done a better job of setting us up for the Rian Johnson trilogy
Starting point is 00:22:40 than setting us up for the third film. In what sense? Well, I found the story very satisfying. And even though I know that Kylo and Rey are the centerpiece of these movies, or at least I thought they should have been the centerpiece of these movies, there was more of a sort of like, what else is out there in terms of the force? And when you see that young kid with the broom and that sense of like, where can we go from here? How much bigger can this get? Was it exciting to me? And I didn't actually feel like, well, what we need to do
Starting point is 00:23:10 is get back to the first order. I don't really like, I don't really care, but I never thought the first order was terribly well conceived. I didn't even really think it was well explained terribly well. Lucky for you, you got the final order instead. Yeah. So let's just now move into a conversation about what exactly is happening in The Rise of Skywalker. I don't think we need to walk through every plot point. That would be a seven and a half hour podcast. So I'm not sure we could do it even if we tried. This movie moves at an extraordinary pace. And the first hour is one of the fastest cutting blockbusters I've ever seen, which is not what I think about when I think about Star Wars. I think Star Wars is actually
Starting point is 00:23:42 sort of meticulous and almost methodical. It's a movie about the hero's myth and religion in a lot of ways. These are things that don't move quickly. Sure, yeah. The only person alive who loves to think about the monomyth more than us is George Lucas, you know? That's right. So at the beginning of the movie, we're told after the scroll that Palpatine is back. So did that surprise you? Because I guess the fact that he, you know, is in the poster, he's in the trailers, it was obviously, it was not a surprise that Palpatine was in the film. However, I did perhaps foolishly think that that would be in some way the reveal or the knowledge that the characters and the audience worked toward. It is the premise of the movie. I was not prepared for that to be the crawl.
Starting point is 00:24:29 Well, I think one of the things that the crawl does now is it kind of like jet streams you into a story. It's like an in-media res kind of approach to storytelling where like stuff happened since the last movie and we don't know what it was. And in this case, they just, I think because of the amount of story that they're trying to tell, they had to start us at Palpatine's back and Kylo wants to kill him, but also he's got to be loyal to him
Starting point is 00:24:52 and this is going to be confusing. But let's go now into a weird dungeon monolith in which he lives, sort of, and- Exegol. Exegol, thank you.
Starting point is 00:25:01 In the unknown regions. What is that? Is there anything like what is that? is there anything canonical about that? so yes and no okay which is going to be a theme you don't have to unpack
Starting point is 00:25:16 all of the canon lore I was like where are we? what is this? I will keep it very snappy as far as I know I intend to spend the next few days Where are we? What is this? I will keep it very snappy, which is that the specific, as far as I know, and I intend to spend the next few days diving deep, deep, deep into not only the canon, but as much of Legends as I can about Palpatine and Sidious,
Starting point is 00:25:34 but Exegol is, I think, new. Palpatine's obsession with the unknown regions and positioning some sort of something like the the the seed of a new a new regime out there uh is established canon okay so we'll we can i'm sure we'll talk about how he is around or the fact that the fact the movie doesn't explain how he's around which is i think one of the core problems with it. But basically, there's something called a contingency plan. I'll try to keep this very quick. Which was how he was going to account for the fact that, you know, what do you hear in the prequels all the time?
Starting point is 00:26:12 Rule of two with the Sith. But for Palpatine, his doctrine was the rule of one. He didn't want anyone else around, really. Everyone was just a tool for him, a puppet for him. And he was obsessed with the idea of immortality. If he was going to die which obviously was not the thing he wanted but if he was going to die and he put a lot of a lot of plans in motion to try to avoid that there was something called the contingency plan that in essence very very
Starting point is 00:26:36 reductive version of it here boils down to if i can't live no one can let's blow it all up that is actually how jakku gets to be in the state that it's in. The Battle of Jakku, which takes place a year after the Battle of Endor, and is what really concludes the war. Check out the Jedi Temple on Binge Mode's Force Awakens episode for more on the Battle of Jakku. And then the Imperial Remnants left over from the fall of the Empire. The Imperial Remnants, of course, are A, what we're seeing some of in the Mandalorian, and B, what ultimately gave rise to the First Order. They were supposed to go be the apparatus in place to rise again should one of his methods for immortality work, which I guess it did. Yeah, it reminds me a lot of the Kevin Smith notes and clerks about the perilous nature of labor in the Star Wars universe.
Starting point is 00:27:38 Like, who built these things? Where did these people come from? Are they druids? Are they Sith loyalists? Like, where is the unknown regions? The things you just described are very specific and
Starting point is 00:27:52 deep, and I really love Star Wars. I'm a 37-year-old man. I'm way too invested in Star Wars, and I don't know any of that stuff. So imagine if I don't know any of that, how most moviegoers who sit down in a seat and see Palpatine in the first 90 seconds of the film are going to
Starting point is 00:28:08 feel when we've just been told for the last two films, he's not a thing anymore, like he fell down. Yeah. You know, Vader threw him down a shaft and he's gone forever. Then he exploded. It's very confusing. Ultimately, Kylo is enlisted by Palpatine to kill Rey, though that isn't actually what he wants,
Starting point is 00:28:24 he says, though I still don't really know. That's not ultimately what either of them wants. I don't know what anybody's intention is. That's also a part of the problem in the movie. And we also learned very quickly that Palpatine has raised a Sith-powered army of Star Destroyers. That's correct.
Starting point is 00:28:36 And maybe a Sith race of ghost human druids. That part I was much less clear on. It's very confusing. There are like 200,000 bodies in his arena, but it is not explained what's going on there. Ultimately what we get is this sense
Starting point is 00:28:54 of like evil ultimate power. And that is what kind of comes back to the story. Well, Sheev Palpatine famously shouted, Unlimited power! As he was receiving his own Force lightning back off of Mace Windu's purple lightsaber. In that sense, that tracks.
Starting point is 00:29:09 So early in the morning for our editor-in-chief to be yelling that. Also, Rey is training to be a Jedi with Leia's supervision in this movie that opens a pretty evident callback to a lot of Luke Skywalker's story and mythology. I mean, she's using the same remote that Luke is training with on the Millennium Falcon. Whether it is literally the same remote that Luke is training with, you know, on the
Starting point is 00:29:25 Millennium Falcon, whether it is literally the same one. I'm not sure, though. That one is on the Millennium Falcon in Force Awakens. I'm being stymied
Starting point is 00:29:31 in similar fashion by the remote. Well, yeah. And of course, Kylo's Force connection, you know, disrupting her. I found the fact that Leia was training Rey
Starting point is 00:29:42 to be one of the more effective parts of the movie. That worked for me I found the tell me if I'm going too deep here and we should save any of this for later but I found the Leia lightsaber reveal and the flashback to Leia's training to learning that Leia had had been training with Luke to be a Jedi, simultaneously incredibly cool and important and also weird and confusing. It's something I wanted a lot more of. It's almost like I would watch that spinoff movie instead of the Solo spinoff movie. That would
Starting point is 00:30:16 have been much more exciting. Just little things. They use the way we got Tarkin in Rogue One. And so you have young Mark Hamill young Carrie Fisher but it looked and again I've seen this once I gotta watch it more but on first viewing it looked like basically new hope Mark Hamill which just doesn't make sense like that training would have been happening later in the canon things like that but also the very brief explanation for why she ultimately decides to lay down her lightsaber and discontinue her training, which is, and I apologize if I'm getting any of this wrong. It was really hard to ingest and process it all. And maybe there are some encoding failures along the way.
Starting point is 00:30:58 But basically, was some version of she had a vision of what would happen to Kylo? You know, that her son would break bad, basically. And so she discontinued her training. I thought that was what was said. But that's not what was said in The Last Jedi, which is that Han did not feel strongly about Luke tutoring Kylo, but Leia was more into it. You know, that's something that Luke specifically says to Rey.
Starting point is 00:31:22 So whether that's a correction on that storytelling or it's the sort of thing that like literally requires 10 minutes of a movie and we get 90 seconds. That is specifically why I mention it. It's because the idea of how characters respond to visions, prophecies, really anything that is prophetic in nature is endlessly fascinating to me. Like, we don't need to go into Game of Thrones spoilers here,
Starting point is 00:31:47 but the fact that every bad thing that happens to Cersei is a product of her attempting to avoid fulfilling the prophecy that ultimately, in the effort to avoid it, she fulfills, is just classic storytelling. And I love that stuff. And if the idea that Leia, in an effort to avoid this outcome, sort of receded into a different kind of life, and then this unfolded anyway, that would be like riveting to explore. Especially given that one of three things call Kylo back to the light, ultimately Rey, Leia and Han. And Leia calling out to him, you know, her last word is Ben.
Starting point is 00:32:26 Using the force and it's cool is Ben, using the Force. And it's cool to see her use the Force. That was another thing, of course, that people complained about in The Last Jedi was the way that she uses the Force. So I think this was one of the areas where this movie actually did a good job of helping to further, like, bolster something that we had seen in Last Jedi. But their bond was like the pull to the light for him and so understanding that better and seeing more of that would have been great but we just didn't have time because we had to have like seven planet jumping missions for reasons i guess we're getting to that though i don't know how much we'll be able to explain it um in addition uh poe and finn are essentially working as military leaders in the resistance running missions missions, acquiring MacGuffins to discover maps to explain things.
Starting point is 00:33:10 I knew we were in tough shape right when Poe and Finn acquire something that indicates information from a spy in the First Order. And very quickly with a fast cut, Poe says, well, guys, we've got bad news. Palpatine is back. Yeah. Like, very quickly and abruptly,
Starting point is 00:33:32 and everybody's like, oh, man. It's like they just found out that, like, the cowboy's lost. Like, it's just super weird, the tone of it. And I was very, very worried. This is in the first five minutes of the movie.
Starting point is 00:33:42 It's very early in the movie. When do you want to talk about the Palpatine stuff? Later? Yeah, well, let's wait. Okay. The movie essentially then becomes a series of Poe and Finn go on missions to aid Rey in her ultimate religious quest to solve her crisis.
Starting point is 00:33:58 You know, obviously, 3PO and BB-8, your beloved BB-8, and Chewbacca, and new droids, and new friends coming along the way. You know, they all sort of get their fan service-y moment to succeed at something to make us feel a little better about them. But again, we don't really get any understanding of who they are.
Starting point is 00:34:19 This movie kind of made me appreciate even something like Solo, where we got a lot of interesting Chewbacca backstory, and I enjoyed learning more about that character and how he came to be with Han. Like there's just no, there's no time for anything sort of small and gracious like that. This is just running headlong into plot, plot, plot, plot, plot. So. Yes. Normally I would want to talk about what really worked in a movie like this first, but we have to talk about what doesn't work. So let's talk
Starting point is 00:34:44 about what doesn't work about The Rise of Skywalker. Okay. Emperor Palpatine's rushed return. We've unpacked it a bit here, but the explanation for how he is alive and then what part he plays in his quest to start a new Sith regime is just confusing. Well, it's absent. Right. I literally thought they said he was cloned,
Starting point is 00:35:06 or maybe there's a joke made about how he was cloned in the movie. First of all, that was, I would say, the dominant theory heading into the film. I mean, there were a couple different ways that he could have been in the movie. Ultimately, just didn't die. And there's a long, proud history of Star Wars characters falling into reactor shafts
Starting point is 00:35:25 and being alive. Right? Truly. Is Phasma still alive? I was just thinking that the other day. Also went down a shaft. Who knows?
Starting point is 00:35:33 Maybe. But when that happens with, let's say, Darth Maul, just as one example. When you watch The End of Phantom Menace, Darth Maul is literally cut in half.
Starting point is 00:35:41 Okay? Cut in half. Then falls down. He separates. His body separates into two pieces. Okay? Cut in half. Then falls down. He separates. His body separates into two pieces. You think he's done? One would imagine.
Starting point is 00:35:51 Turns out he's not. Okay? My dude, Darth Maul, latches onto a literal trash truck and goes to a literal trash planet and rebuilds his body. And the key difference there is that any question you have when you whether it's when you see when you see darth maul in clone wars maybe you you skipped
Starting point is 00:36:12 clone wars you watch rebels you're like holy shit i was here maybe you see him at the end of solo wherever he reenters your life any question you have you can find an answer to in canon the way he rebuilt his legs finding his brother savagio press challenging palpatine again could even saying i am a sith even when palpatine was like my bro you're not a sith anymore like there's all of that story is there explanation my bro yeah she is like a real like yeah real dude oh he's like super yeah come hang out at my my lake house and we'll bro out also i had girlfriends here who I apparently fucked because I have a kid. Probably in Auburn.
Starting point is 00:36:47 We haven't, I mean, I guess, by the way, we're like 45 minutes into the podcast and we haven't said that yet. That Rey is a Palpatine. And that's what this movie is about. Yeah. Well, that's one of the things that doesn't work. Sorry, everybody. Sorry, everyone who's in here that has to hear that from us. But Rey is Emperor Palpatine's granddaughter.
Starting point is 00:37:03 That's what the movie is about. Yeah. And in theory, it justifies the reason for Palpatine's return. And it makes the arc of the movie more sensible. But the way that they even execute that aspect of the story, I don't think works very well. I found that all very troubling. Immensely disappointing. It's one of the things that I'm willing to try to talk myself into from the Rey perspective
Starting point is 00:37:25 and why that had to be the choice, but just to stick with Palpatine for a minute. So, obsessed with cloning. Now, of course, the prequels, you know,
Starting point is 00:37:33 Attack of the Clones, going to Kamino, seeing the construction of the Clone Army. If you watch Clone Wars, if you don't, you should. It's great. And if you're looking for fun Star Wars,
Starting point is 00:37:41 check that out now. But, the Clone Army was obviously Palpatine's long con, one of his many, to ultimately execute Order 66 and annihilate the Jedi. Cloning is an established part of his history in the wider canon, legends, etc. He tried many times to clone himself, cloned himself, was obsessed with cloning himself, was obsessed with this idea of essence transfer because cloning someone with force powers is a different game entirely. Obviously, a huge part of his pitch to Anakin when he is luring him to
Starting point is 00:38:21 the dark side is, you ever heard about Darth Plagueis the Wise? You know, and the idea of being able to save Padme because Anakin is having the visions of her dying in childbirth. Pursuing immortality was a huge part of his storyline and always has been. So that part's fine. But which one of those things that he tried worked?
Starting point is 00:38:41 I watched this movie and I don't know the answer to that. You know know it definitely seemed to me it seemed to be his original organic body it's like this rotting carcass where his like gnarled fingers and when he takes the the life force the life essence from kylo and rey very reminiscent of a dementor sucking out harry's soul for the way it was looked visually his fingers regenerate he's attached to like a crane just his like I couldn't I couldn't understand this at all mangled decrepit body and he looks really it's a weird thing where he looks like a zombie literally like a zombie you know the whites of his eyes this milky skin but also until the part where he kind of becomes himself again,
Starting point is 00:39:26 visually with the, you know, scrotum face and eyes that we recognize. He's like, this just kind of almost has smoother skin. And so things like that make you think, was this a fresh body? But he's so old, he's barely hanging on. And that is, of course, part of the ultimate ploy when Rey gets there at the end is, oh, I don't want to kill you. I want to use you because you're my bloodline and I'm going to transfer my essence into you. And then he end is, oh, I don't want to kill you. I want to use you because you're my bloodline and I'm going to transfer my essence into you. And then he's like, actually, just kidding.
Starting point is 00:39:47 I'll take your essence from you and Kylo because you're a dyad and the Force is like... I'll quote Darth Vader here. What? It's, um... I tend to think that
Starting point is 00:39:59 the Star Wars franchise in general is working at its worst when it's reliant on magic and science. And when it's reliant on magic and science and when it's reliant on religion and philosophy i enjoy it the most so i'm glad you said that the other quick cloning thing we should know very quickly ultimately irrelevant but he is cloning snoke we learn that that there's like well we don't learn it but we infer it there's a he says you know everything everything that happened in your life i was behind right and we see this yeah this tank of snokes kind of being made i guess growing yeah growing so what you just said this is something
Starting point is 00:40:33 that we talked about a lot in our phantom menace episode of binge mode around the idea of midichlorians being introduced hard hard sci-fi soft sci-fi and when Star Wars is at its best and when it isn't. Now, this is like a real area of dissonance for me as a Star Wars fan, because I would say that my one of my biggest complaints about the movie, I have complaints about story arcs and where we ended and how we got there and the shift
Starting point is 00:40:58 why make a sequel trilogy if it's all going to be about old things instead of new things, ultimately, and I liked, we haven't said many positive things, I liked a lot of the Kylo and Rey stuff, like quite a bit. It continues to be about old things instead of new things ultimately and you know i i liked we haven't said many positive things i liked a lot of the kylo and ray stuff like quite a bit it continues to be by far the great innovation of this series that stuff was great their connection is incredible when they kissed i like lost my mind and seeing ray you know activate her yellow lightsaber that you realized she had built at the end was thrilling that was great but in a fantasy story the rules of the universe have to make sense you have to understand them and star wars is kind of a unique
Starting point is 00:41:32 proposition in the sense because there's been so much story so much canon then decanonization that it's almost like a baseball argument like you can kind of find the stat you need to make your case there's probably something out there for you but it just was absent entirely like i don't think in a star wars film you should leave with that many questions about what happened and how it worked something like the force healing and the resurrection and the transferring of the life essence and all of that is a good example of where i think probably if you've watched star Wars, you kind of, you get what's happening. And maybe actually an attempt to explain that more would shift us into mid-chlorian zone where you say, this just isn't working for me. I'm good on feeling. Like, it's my version of the force. I'm just going to
Starting point is 00:42:18 go with what I sense and how I feel. But then something like, how is Palpatine here? You just actually need answers. There's some stuff that you just need core answers to I think if there had been more ground laid and this is a this is a complaint I have about a great many J.J. Abrams projects um there's just no ground laid and the endings don't work and so because you don't have the faith in the sense of story building that the fact that J.J. Abrams was not a part did not intend to be a part of the second or the third, and of course he was not a part of the second film and then was asked to rejoin for the third film, indicates that this is something that is stitched together rather than elegantly sewn. And it's troubling, and I think it explains a lot of the other issues in the movie, including the fact that we travel to upwards of seven or eight planets. We do. We're frequently on missions to acquire,
Starting point is 00:43:07 I guess they're MacGuffins. There's a warrior's blade. That's right. With the Sith language that Threepio can't speak. Since when can Threepio not say languages? There were a lot of Lord of the Rings illusions, despite the, as we said earlier, this not working as well.
Starting point is 00:43:24 Not speaking the tongue of Mordor, like felt very ringsy to me. Yeah. That's a good point. Though, of course the three PO thing was tough for me because on the one hand, I actually did find a lot of the comedic relief with that plot line effective.
Starting point is 00:43:40 I also, again, it felt, it felt very emblematic to me of how this movie was about memory in the past. And again, as you noted earlier, like on the heels of kill the past in the prior movie, it's return to the past, resurrect the past. This is a movie about ghosts, right? Palpatine is the chief example of that. But in every respect, it's about what came before, not what comes after.
Starting point is 00:44:03 Think about a line. And now you're talking about planets. I'm moving to something completely different. My mind is all over the place, not what comes after. Think about a line, and now you're talking about planets, I'm moving to something completely different. My mind is all over the place, just like this movie. The movie is, yeah. Think about a line like the moment when the lightsaber, when Anakin and Luke's lightsaber calls to Rey in The Force Awakens,
Starting point is 00:44:15 and that exchange she has with Maz after, about the belonging that you seek is not behind you, it is ahead. That's not what this is. And there's a part of that that is, is not behind you. It is ahead. That's not what this is. And there's a part of that that is, of course, compelling. Like, one of the central propositions of the new movies is that the sheer thrill you get from seeing new characters like Rey and Finn and BB-8
Starting point is 00:44:37 with Chewie and Han and the Millennium Falcon is just not something that a lot of other things in life can give you. But the idea of 3PO and what are we going to lose there and something that is in the trailer kind of set up as this like emotional fulcrum of the film and ends up just being a joke and something with no consequence, which is another problem in the movie.
Starting point is 00:45:00 A lot of the things that you think matter just don't. Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit more. I would say that that is actually probably the key significant flaw of the film for me, which is, you know, we've got all these MacGuffins, we've got all these missions, the movie's moving way too fast. Did you have a setting or a planet you liked best? Gosh, I can hardly even remember. I did like the sort of like Burning Man with the lizard people. Yeah. That was entertaining. Pasaana. Yeah, Pasaana. That was cool. people yeah that was that was entertaining persona yeah persona that was cool yeah that's where they find the blade and the ship and ultimately dio the sweet new
Starting point is 00:45:29 little droid and those the connections to the fact that ray is a palpatine right yeah that and of course the creature that ray force heals which ends up being the key bit of foreshadowing for how that power will come into play with her then healing kylo and then him healing her to transfer his life essence to her and then dying after they kiss which is how the movie concludes basically but yes you just moved through a lot of plot
Starting point is 00:45:50 in the span of 100 words I liked the the ocean moon Kef Burr where the Death Star is I thought that that was one of the more visually arresting
Starting point is 00:45:57 sequences in the film that is probably the single best part of the movie but we can get to it that's where we get Darth Ray also for everyone wondering oh yes that's right another thing i just completely forgot happened um i think you
Starting point is 00:46:11 know that the introduction of new characters is interesting and then completely short shrifted across the board but in particular the just complete lack of stakes and the lack of sense of consequence to any of the choices which is something that last night i did so well i mean i'll just run through a couple of things that happen in this movie and that are rejected. Chewie dies. He blows up in a transport that is destroyed by Rey, who has the lightning power of the Emperor.
Starting point is 00:46:39 And we see in really one of the more visually thrilling- Incredible moment. Maybe the single most exciting moment of the movie.lo and ray are having a showdown chewy has been arrested and is taken up in a transport ship the ship is in the sky and they're they're facing one another both using the force to try to either send the ship off or pull the ship back somehow yeah ray channels that lightning power and she explodes the ship accidentally. And Chewie is dead. Everyone on board is dead. And I was like,
Starting point is 00:47:07 oh my God. Like six-year-old me died. It just died. I'm crushing moment. I was destroyed. Yeah. And then like four and a half minutes later,
Starting point is 00:47:14 it's like Chewie was in another transport. It was a different ship. Just kidding, guys. He was in another ship. How about sticking to the plan? Just let us feel something for once and let it be real.
Starting point is 00:47:22 That's a huge problem with this movie is we just don't feel the thing that they want us to feel at first. I strongly agree. I think that, look, I'm glad Chewie's alive, of course. One of the- Who cares? He's just Chewbacca.
Starting point is 00:47:39 Like, make me care about these movies a little bit more by creating stakes. Listen, Sean- Chewbacca doesn't have to be alive. They had to keep him alive so that they could finally give him his medal at the end. That was good. An iconic bit of fan service. That was good.
Starting point is 00:47:51 But I love Chewie. I want him to be alive, but I was almost like disturbingly delighted when he died because I felt, and that's earlier in the film. Yeah, you're like, they're going for it. They're going for it. Like, I am going to lose people I love.
Starting point is 00:48:05 I'm going to have to say goodbye to people I care about. And the other thing when you realize that he's alive, which ultimately, one of the things I like about it is that it sets up the, I thought, genuinely funny Hux is the spy reveal. Sure. I'm the spy. It's me. That was great.
Starting point is 00:48:21 That felt closer to The Last Jedi, actually. Just the tone and Dom O'Gleeson. Right. But because you're like, oh my God, Chewie wasn't dead, you almost forget. You just move on too quickly from what Rey did. Take Chewie out of it completely for a second. She blew up a ship.
Starting point is 00:48:40 And before that, she showed a power that we have never seen. And that is one of the cool things ultimately about the entire trilogy but really about this movie is like ray is i mean anakin might be the chosen one and luke might be you know chosen one 2.0 who helped bring balance but ray is like a it's her power is uncommon this is not just regular jedi shit and then when you have that connection with kylo jason and i were talking about this a bit in the force awakens pod where like one of the real tricks of that movie actually and impressive feats is that kylo is the one they have to convince you to believe in yes like you go into it programmed ready to root for a and to be excited by what you see.
Starting point is 00:49:25 You have to be convinced that he is equal to her. And so the moment like that just perfectly, you know, so many moments in Star Wars are about balance
Starting point is 00:49:32 and, you know, how many times have we seen a blue and a red lightsaber clash? This was such an interesting and different version of that. I am pulling. I am pushing.
Starting point is 00:49:41 We are united in this thing but coming at it with competing and conflicting purposes and intentions even though we are united in this thing but coming at it with competing and conflicting purposes and intentions even though we are basically one and we get a lot of a lot of like mirror dialogue in this movie in general i mean the han kylo exchange has mirror images with han touching his face and the exact lines like i know what i have to do but i'm not sure if i can find strength etc etc palpatine's you know unnatural line of course good good you know a lot of stuff like
Starting point is 00:50:10 that but the idea of pushing someone to the point of anger rage and that being the path to the dark side is obviously a central tenant of star wars and so a moment like that where you're like are they gonna do it are they going to do it? Are they going to do it with Rey? It also was one of the- It was interesting to me. It's one of the few things that justifies
Starting point is 00:50:30 one of the early criticisms of the films, which is, how is Rey winning a lightsaber battle with Kylo having never touched a lightsaber before?
Starting point is 00:50:38 You know, there was this, there was a little bit of doubt cast upon that. And then when you learn that she's a Palpatine, you're kind of like, okay, well,
Starting point is 00:50:44 that explains why she's able to become a Jedi very quickly. But, so, you're right. That's why I hate it. Oh. That specifically is why I hate it. Because you think it's addressing that concern. No, not even that, though it probably is. And I hope that one day we get to find out if this was the plan from the beginning.
Starting point is 00:51:03 And if it is, then I'm like, why not plant any of these seeds earlier though weirdly i doubt it because they gave ryan johnson a blank sheet of paper you can't give somebody a blank sheet of paper and then say but we you know but make sure you don't say anything about palpatine like i there was no there's no you can't convince me that this was the plan all along i i'm with you and i think also that is a proud star wars tradition you know look at the original trilogy that's darth vader was not luke's father at the beginning and luke and leia who were constantly trying to fuck each other were not siblings from the beginning like that was all discovered as the story unfolded okay but there was so much debate about who her parents were
Starting point is 00:51:39 and was she going to be a skywalker was she going to be a you know a kenobi was she going to be a Skywalker? Was she going to be a Kenobi? Was she going to be a Palpatine? Again, we talked about this earlier. I just kind of reject out of hand the idea that you have to be connected to one of those names to be that powerful, because that gets back to Broom Boy. Why is Broom Boy at the end of Last Jedi actually exciting? Because you as a person watching Star Wars want to believe that you could be a Jedi, and if it's only Palpatines and Skywalkers and a handful of other people and obviously of
Starting point is 00:52:08 course the Jedi order used to be huge it's not only that but like that these are the chosen ones then that is limiting in a way that feels completely anathema to the thing that I'm looking for out of stories like this the way I can remember I said earlier there's a thing I'm trying to talk myself into it's this it is the Palpatine thing and I said earlier there's a thing I'm trying to talk myself into? Tell me. It's this. It is the Palpatine thing. And I'm not there yet. I'm not sure I'll ever get there, but I think that... Just this story choice to make her
Starting point is 00:52:31 the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine. Yes. I mean, just hearing you say that, like, the moment when he looks at the throne, oh, Empress Palpatine. I was like, can we not do this? This is just...
Starting point is 00:52:42 Drac. But... Wait, but I just... I just need you to tell me who fucked palpatine back in the day well i mean here's here's who gave birth to palpatine babies who didn't she palpatine was crushing it you watch the prequels you saw ian mcdermott out there and his lush velvet robes his robust chambers and office space, kept a lake home on Naboo as he was out establishing his galactic empire. Yeah, very Biden-esque. Jesus.
Starting point is 00:53:13 I think that's interesting, actually, because, again, it's a perfect example of something where I just wish they had actually explored it and told us more about that. You know, we find out that Ray's parents, can we talk very quickly? We're tangent within tangent here, but the Jodi Comer as Ray's mom. That was tight. I enjoyed that. That was incredible. She got to do nothing, but I did enjoy that. That was genuinely great. Sean Yu will love that. That's like a movie moment made just for Sean Yu. But we find out
Starting point is 00:53:41 so that, you know, Palpatine's kid,'s parents, rejected that life, tried to keep her safe away from Palpatine's clutches I entered the movie saying, I really hope they stick with this and that her parents are no one, because that's an exciting idea to me that anyone could end up being like Rey. The way I can talk myself into it is basically a Danny Game of Thrones comp, which is so much of Rey's arc and so much of her character is centered on the idea of loneliness and longing and yearning. And the idea that a person whose existence is defined by searching for this thing and waiting for it, who is your family? What is your name? Where do you come from? Where do you belong? That the answer to that could be the very thing you were fighting and trying to avoid is a Shakespearean tragedy that I think is kind of brilliant. But that's not how it's presented. It's presented as what you said, which is, well,
Starting point is 00:54:52 here's kind of an explanation if you're looking for it for like how she's so good at all this shit. It's the bloodline. And again, another example of that would be this whole thing about Kylo and Rey being a dyad. Kylo and Rey being connected is enough for me, actually. Even though I hunger for explanations in that sense. I'm like, because where is that going? Kylo has that line about, well, I'm Vader's grandkid and you're Palpatine's grandkid. So is the takeaway from that supposed to be,
Starting point is 00:55:24 and this requires getting a little deeper into canon and theorizing, but a very, very, very, very, very popular longstanding fan theory is that Palpatine created Anakin. You know, what is one of the key plot points in Phantom Menace is Shmi saying, there is no father, right?
Starting point is 00:55:42 One of the Marvel comics, Darth Vader 25, goes deep into this. It's not confirmation, but it's as close as we can get. I think you can say with confidence that this is something to believe in. Again, this is where the magic and science versus religion and philosophy comes into play. Anakin is Jesus Christ.
Starting point is 00:55:58 That is the whole, that's the whole conception of the story, literally the conception of the story. Of course. But the idea that and the quest to answer that i find problematic and it's part of what's problematic about this and it would also be literally saying they're all basically the same bloodline you know if palpatine made anakin and anakin is luke and leia's father and leia is ben solo's mom and then Palpatine is Rey's grandfather, then they
Starting point is 00:56:29 are literally all part of the same family tree. And that just makes it even narrower in scope in a way that is... So much force incest going on here. It's really unfortunate. It's very tough. I mean, so many other things happen aside from just this one thing that they take back. It's not just the Chewie thing and it's not just the idea of ray not having that parentage it's kylo dies ray kills kylo and then does she immediately heals him did you think he died i mean she he put a she put a
Starting point is 00:56:59 lightsaber through his chest so there's a hole in his body there is though we've seen him take a lot of damage before. That's true. Adam Driver's stout. He took, yes, he took the blaster shot from Chewie of Force Awakens and was, you know,
Starting point is 00:57:10 pounding on it, channeling that pain. Very dark side acolyte there. I love Kylo. Just an incredible creation. Kylo's great. He's not as great in this movie as he is in the first two films,
Starting point is 00:57:19 but he is, not just because of Driver either, the creation of that kind of not yet good enough, the sort of like the sniveling, bratty, powerful, but constantly undermined son of great people is such a genius idea. I wish they could have followed through.
Starting point is 00:57:39 Well, and it's also, of course, it's the perfect compliment to Rey. You know, you think you came from nowhere. Who are you? I know exactly who I am. And it is, on the one hand, he's obviously drawn to the Vader aspect of it. But in terms of, you know, Han in particular, he's rejecting part of that identity. Kylo, in case we don't get to this later, I will just note here, there's an incredible moment after he tosses his tosses his lightsaber into the ocean, comes back to light this is after ray saves him after leia
Starting point is 00:58:07 leia dies while reaching out to him through the force and then after han comes as a memory to basically forgive him to absolve him interesting question is always about redemption in star wars when you are a war criminal i was personally rooting for kylo's redemption and i'm comfortable admitting that yeah but when he goes to find Rey and save her and help her, he's basically just in athleisure. He's wearing Isaac Lee's outfit. He's in a black sweatshirt, black joggers, running into Hexgal.
Starting point is 00:58:38 It's kind of hysterical. Yeah, he does battle with the Knights of Ren, another group of characters who are established and then quickly dispatched with. Yeah. And yeah, he is kind of just just bodying them
Starting point is 00:58:48 in between, I don't know, CrossFit sessions. He's just in his Lululemon. It's amazing. Very strange stuff. Great moment in that sequence when Rey drops him
Starting point is 00:58:57 the lightsaber through their force connection, though. Yes. That was dope. One might argue that that is a bit of magic that is confounding to me as well.
Starting point is 00:59:03 Well, but that is one where obviously the extent of that was drastically expanded in this movie. It is a continuation of The Last Jedi. It is a continuation, yes. As opposed to the reputation. Remember when the water transfers through that connection. Those were some of my favorite scenes in this movie, yet again, is when they're on basically Google Hangout with each other.
Starting point is 00:59:22 You know, force timing, as the kids say. I love that. It reminds me a little bit more of like in the last Jedi, it's more like, um, uh, like a porny chat roulette situation. And this is,
Starting point is 00:59:33 this is way more, um, spiritual and, or way more physical. I would say, you know, like there's more like connection bound the necklace. I thought it was a nice touch.
Starting point is 00:59:42 They're dueling through the force. Yeah. One of the sequences which is some of that stuff is really great pretty cool let's hold
Starting point is 00:59:49 any more Kylo and Rey until the end okay I just we started on all this because I was going to say though I don't think he dies there and the only reason I think that's key
Starting point is 00:59:56 to point out is because she does die and he brings her back to life I just saw that as a kind of like a returning of the favor it doesn't matter it ultimately doesn't matter because it's just like super retconny like i now
Starting point is 01:00:12 have a power that can make you come back to life which is something that is also i don't think previously established i would say it matters greatly because we need to understand exactly what's happening there so when ray heals the creature yeah after they sink through the the sandstone like the going into the dungeons through the devil's snare and she heals this creature and then there's this really cute little moment when bb8 kind of chirps at her and is asking what's happening you know and she says like i i gave a little bit of my life you would have done the same and of course it's like okay well that's gonna come into play and then it does when ray this is the when she stabs him i gotta say i thought that was a great moment in a lot of different respects because again one of the interesting things about the movie and the
Starting point is 01:00:52 entire trilogy is you're not only on the knife's edge about whether kylo can come back to the light you're always wondering if ray will fall to the dark side. And that scene was perfect for that because how does she stab him? She stabs him with his lightsaber, okay? So she's wielding a dark crystal there. And two, she has his lightsaber because he dropped it after his mother died, called out to him and died. That's when he drops it.
Starting point is 01:01:23 And she picks it up and stabs him. And then she feels Leia's death too. And that is when she is brought back into herself, reaches down, heals him. And there's that lovely moment where she looks at him because he had said to her earlier, you know, I know you wanted to take my hand. And she says to him there, like, I did want to take your hand. I wanted to take Ben's hand. And that's like really great. I loved that part because the turmoil within them and that they share together is the best thing in these movies by a mile other than BB-8, who is obviously dope and did not get enough screen time. And when he did, he was literally crushed under a tree at one point. Why?
Starting point is 01:01:58 You've been driven completely mad. Protect him. It's also getting really hot in here, which I think is part of it. I'm having like, I think that that sensation that I'm having, even with the Kylo Rey sequence, which is probably, probably the best thing in the movie and their relationship, I think is the best thing in the movie, is when he like cradles her at the end.
Starting point is 01:02:17 But just the absence of what feels like stakes again, Han coming back. Similarly, Luke returning in this movie. Similarly, I felt like, I thought we closed the loop I felt like I thought we closed the loop on Luke. I thought we were clear that like he really did everything he needed to do in The Last Jedi. So I'm of a couple minds here. We were always going to have Luke Force Ghost in this movie. We just were. Like it's Star Wars. It would have been fine for him to just be
Starting point is 01:02:43 standing and observing though. He catches a white saber. In the same way that Obi-Wan stands and observes, you know? Like, that would have been useful to me. But he's a part of the action, in a way. And I just, I didn't think we needed that. We talked at length about Palpatine. When do you want to talk about Rey taking the Skywalker name? Let's hold that.
Starting point is 01:03:01 Okay. The absence of chills is something that i mentioned earlier i think there are a couple of moments that are that have that kind of transcendent like oh is that is that is that a bit of water in my eyes appearing where did that come from but nothing that really pays off when did you get the most a the most emotional like when did you feel that you were on the brink of tears and b when were you the most thrilled by what you were saying simultaneously that went the chewy exploding the the ship and the lightning. And that was the one time.
Starting point is 01:03:29 And it was exactly because of what we just said, which is I was like, they're going for it. A lot of characters are going to die. This is the end of this story. There's no punch pulling going on here. And it is literally the opposite of that as the story goes on. I think we've talked a lot about the illogical storytelling here. I cried when I saw
Starting point is 01:03:46 the helmet that Keri Russell was wearing finally flash open for a second and I got to look at her face. But we never saw her mouth, right? We just saw her eyes?
Starting point is 01:03:54 Just her eyes, yeah. What the hell is that? The Poe was like, can I kiss you? A couple times, which is funny. One of the most beautiful people on Earth
Starting point is 01:03:59 cast her in the movie. Very strange. JJ obviously has a long running relationship with Keri Russell. By the way, not to put you on blast here. Uh oh. No, no, no. This is fine a long-running relationship with Keri Russell. By the way, not to put you on blast here.
Starting point is 01:04:08 No, no, no. This is fine. It's, I think, emblematic. You missed Poe's entire backstory when you went to the bathroom. Oh, no. Explain to me what happened. It was like 30 seconds. Let me give you a piece of advice, listeners of this podcast. Do not drink two giant glasses of water before the movie starts. I was in pain,
Starting point is 01:04:24 personally, but I just refused to get up. Similar to how I feel right now, actually. Basically, he ran Spice. He ran Spice. Oh, and later when she calls him Spice Runner. Yeah, that makes sense.
Starting point is 01:04:37 Great stuff for Poe. Wow. Yeah. What a monster. Yeah. No, he's a person just like all of us. You know the risks of driving drunk.
Starting point is 01:04:49 There could be a crash. People could get hurt or killed. You get arrested, incur huge legal expenses, and possibly even lose your job. According to NHTSA's fatality analysis reporting system, 839 people lost their lives in traffic crashes involving a drunk driver during the month of December 2018. During the Christmas and New Year's Day holidays in 2018 alone, there were more drunk driving related fatalities than during any other period during that year. It is illegal to drive with a BAC at or above 0.08 in 49 states and the District of Columbia, no exceptions. In Utah, the limit is
Starting point is 01:05:19 0.05 BAC. On average, a DUI could set you back $10,000 in attorney's fees, fines, court costs, lost time at work, higher insurance rates, car towing, and more. Always remember to plan ahead I think that the too muchness of everything in an effort to squeeze in so many things is a big part of what doesn't work for me about the
Starting point is 01:05:50 movie. And some stuff is benched basically. I mean Rose is basically benched. That's what I'm getting to. I think that there
Starting point is 01:05:56 are a couple of aspects of The Last Jedi that I guess were sort of controversial. The sort of subtle implication that maybe Finn and Poe have something deeper than a friendship. They're like this long-standing desire for them to sort of subtle implication that maybe Finn and Poe
Starting point is 01:06:05 have something deeper than a friendship they're like this long-standing desire for them to sort of be romantically involved obviously the movie does not explore that at all
Starting point is 01:06:13 and in fact confirms that both men are straight in a very direct way yeah Finn's basically there's a lot of Finn in the movie a lot of it's really fun
Starting point is 01:06:23 he's good Boyega is good. He's good. I can understand why he was disappointed with The Last Jedi because his story is just not as good. He's the cancer by a plot. But when they think they're going to die early on, he's like, Rey, I got to tell you something.
Starting point is 01:06:36 So he's going to confess his love. And then he doesn't. And then it's brought up multiple times by other characters. Nothing comes of it. And I thought that was like, even though it's brought up multiple times by other characters nothing comes of it and i thought that was like even though it's a small thing kind of an interesting thing to delve into for a second because there's a part of me that's like i like that i like that he never got to say it that it never felt right because like that feels very true to life to me that you might feel this way about someone and just never find a way to say it out loud. There's also a part of me that's like, what was all this for?
Starting point is 01:07:08 He's in love with her for three movies, you know? And she obviously has her love story with Kylo ultimately, you know, when she dies or comes very close to dying. She clearly looks dead and he's cradling her in his arms and she looks like a like a jelly bean in his giant hands you know and he brings her back and they kiss and they cry and then he smiles for the first time ever and then he dies he vanishes great moment that was the smile is fucking great that was when I was most emotional, I think. So, of course, I think she would not be looking for that from someone else. But, again, to go back to Anakin for a second, which I think is worth doing for a couple reasons.
Starting point is 01:07:53 He's a formative part of Kylo's identity, and we hear his voice. He's one of the voices when Rey is calling all of the Jedi to her. Another sequence that, if you walk in and just want things to look cool and be exciting was probably like absolutely like
Starting point is 01:08:11 mesmerizing when Palpatine is using the Force lightning on the entire fleet and then Rey is this is after he sucked out their essence cast Kylo down
Starting point is 01:08:19 another person who falls down into a shaft or a hole and doesn't die. The last Skywalker gone. And then Rey calls, you know, all of the Jedi to her and Luke has said, you know, you have,
Starting point is 01:08:29 all of the history is in you. A thousand generations live inside of you now. One of the voices that she hears throughout all of these sequences is Anakin, you know, bring balance like I did. And it's Hayden Christensen reading that line. Of course, part of Darth Vader's arc is hubris and greed and a lust for power and
Starting point is 01:08:48 the desire for knowledge and abilities that are unnatural but a huge part of it too is that he was in love with his girlfriend and the jedi wouldn't let him fuck her right and i don't say that to be crass i say that because like i think it's interesting that ray is in love with somebody and that's a part of her story. And of course, she's not on Coruscant at the Jedi Temple trying to have a session with Master Yoda, you know, about basically her lack of patience and her conflicting emotions the way that Anakin was. But that's so central to the story of Star Wars is who are you allowed to be? Who do you want to be? And what do the institutions and their strictures make you think you have to be? Who do you want to be? And what do the institutions and their strictures
Starting point is 01:09:25 make you think you have to be? And of course, part of it is fundamentally different for Rey because she has to be building that all up herself, you know? And that, of course, is part of what's interesting about her taking the Skywalker name.
Starting point is 01:09:36 But I wish we had gotten a little bit more of that, whether it was self-reflection and exploration. Like, I guess one of the things is I leave this movie incredibly invested in Rey, feeling very grateful that we got to see Rey's story
Starting point is 01:09:48 and Rey and Kylo's story, but also like unclear in a lot of, I think, essential ways about like what Rey thinks about things, how she feels about things. How is she processing Kylo's death? She's kind of a Luke-like cypher in that respect, though. We don't sense a kind of interiority to their life. And in fact, both characters very quickly transition across the span of one movie
Starting point is 01:10:10 into these sort of like spiritually elevated beings. Part of what's good about The Last Jedi is it shows you some more crisis inside of Luke. Because at the end of The Return of the Jedi, you're like, well, this guy is basically like Jesus walking Earth. And The Last Jedi shows us that there is like pain that comes in life after that despite having all that power. I think, I just want to say quickly,
Starting point is 01:10:33 like I thought that the lesbian kiss, I thought that the urge to put all of the black characters together all the time and Rose being completely sidelined were all three very strange, like seemed like anti-woke really notes in the
Starting point is 01:10:48 movie and i don't want to make too much of a thing of it but it just seemed so purposeful and the lesbian kiss was so quick and so like hey we did it let's move on and the idea of putting uh naomi aki's character and finn and lando all together was a little like, I just couldn't grasp that. And the sort of intermingling of species is a clinical and classical part of Star Wars storytelling. And one of the most fun parts of it, when you walk into the cantina and you see an alien talking to a human being and you're like, everybody is just together in this. This is like, it is a diaspora, literally. I just, I hated that. I don't know why they did that.
Starting point is 01:11:27 I agree with you completely. And I think that making an effort to in some way say there's queer representation in this film and then having it be a kiss in the background is like not in good faith.
Starting point is 01:11:40 It's like insulting. It was weird. And in general, I think the absence of Rose who plays such an essential role in The Last Jedi. Barely has any screen time. Separated from Finn, who of course was the person that she was in love with. And then you think about that to get back to like your kind of opening note about the almost what seems like a concerted effort to. Relitigate or account for the relitigation of Last Jedi and then direct the conversation in a certain way,
Starting point is 01:12:06 which is obviously not going the way that they want it to already with the initial response to the film. But then you think about the John Boyega comments about how fans responded to Rose's character and the weakness and strength. And it's just like that all starts to feel really gross really fast. It's not ideal. We've talked a lot about some of the things that we like about it.
Starting point is 01:12:26 Have we? We have. It's been bundled inside of frustration. Yeah. I think that the fan service stuff pretty much like all works. I think, unfortunately, it is also the thing that is kind of creatively holding the movie back is the desire to give people what they want.
Starting point is 01:12:41 When I say fan service, I mean more like the small strokes. I don't mean the big strokes of storytelling. I mean more like, oh, wow, Wedge Antilles. Shit. I love that guy. We saw this movie together. Tell me if this is how you remember it. Far and away the loudest cheer in the entire film was for Wedge Antilles.
Starting point is 01:12:59 I think that's probably true. Far and away. I think that's probably true. That's weird. A lot of old ass people just wanting their childhoods verified for them. It was dope to see Wedge but like wow.
Starting point is 01:13:09 Yeah. Ultimately a meaningless character. You mentioned Chewie getting the medal. Chewie getting the medal. That was pretty sweet. I wish he was dead but that was pretty sweet.
Starting point is 01:13:17 Lando coming back I thought was mostly effective. Billy Dee Williams still got that charm. We've talked at length about Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley and what they bring to this series. Even if their story isn't told exactly as I want it to,
Starting point is 01:13:34 they got really lucky with these two. I think that the movies don't work if they don't have Driver. And even though this is probably the least effective and committed performance he's ever given in the series, he still just carries so much weight on his back throughout most of the movie. He is the person who is torn throughout the series, not Rey. Rey is, it turns out, Emperor Palpatine's granddaughter and very powerful. Well, you know, I think they're both tormented and torn and fractured. You know, you noted the way that the restructuring of his mask represents the desire to kind of return to their original vision here. But it also represents, of course, you know, the state of his soul. And like a really important theme in Star Wars and Harry Potter and any of these stories, you know, how there's a moment in Deathly Hallows when Harry and Ron and Hermione are setting out for the hunt to defeat the Horcruxes.
Starting point is 01:14:29 And it's like, is there any way to put your soul back together after you've done that? And the only answer is remorse. You have to really have remorse. And that gets again to the question of like, can someone like Kylo be redeemed? Could Anakin really be redeemed? You know, Kylo killed Han Solo, killed his father.
Starting point is 01:14:48 And he's obviously part of, again, war crimes, you know, Starkiller base under Hux's direction. But Kylo's a part of that. And Force Awakens blows up the entire Hosnian system. He keeps the ashes of his dead enemies in his office. Like he's done some shit. That's dope. I do that too. All my failed enemies sitting in ash.
Starting point is 01:15:14 When you spike a blog, you print it and then you burn it and then you keep the embers. Yeah. They're all sitting in old star cups, Starbucks coffee cups. Unfortunately for me, I don't have any sick urns or Vader masks. That is a core part of who Kylo is.
Starting point is 01:15:27 And even though Rey didn't do those things deliberately and go there, that also is a part of her story, is what are you trying to actually do? And so much of it is about choice and intentionality. And I think that also gets to kind of a moment in the film that ties a lot of this together, actually. A thing we don't really understand. A thing that shows the primacy of the choices Rey is making
Starting point is 01:15:52 above everything else. And a thing that I think really represents that this movie above all was about symbols instead of coherent story was when Rey uses Luke and Leia's lightsabers to push the force lightning back on Palpatine and ultimately destroy him. So the fact that she has Leia's
Starting point is 01:16:13 lightsaber, the fact that she and Kylo together wield the two of them, you know, the moment when the blue light reflects on his face is like genuinely really, really thrilling. That's all great. It's fun. That's a different kind of fan service. And in general, like fan service is to me something where I like reject the term. I don't think making a thing that people love and care about is a bad thing. I think when you don't have room in the movie
Starting point is 01:16:34 to explain stuff because there's so much of this other stuff, even if those moments are delightful, it's a little bit inherently more problematic. But Palpatine's whole pitch to Rey or whole thread is you kill me and then I am in you. I am a part of you, like this essence transfer. And it goes both ways. You know, there's this idea that he's going to basically put him, he's got to deposit this rotting carcass, right? Oh, I'll live in you and all of the Sith will live in you.
Starting point is 01:17:04 The mirror to what Luke had been saying about all the Jedi living in you. Then it's like, actually, I'm just going to suck the life energy out of both of you, right? He just realized he could do that? He's kind of like, oh, shit.
Starting point is 01:17:18 Skipped a level. Again, it's like the magic versus religion thing is really weak with all of Palpatine. There's like precedent for a lot of this, whether it's the force healing, the essence transfer, stuff like that. There are kernels you can find, but not necessarily like full clear comps. But Rey ultimately does kill him. She uses those lightsabers to turn his force output against him, and he, like, disintegrates. So I have, like, 50 questions after seeing that. What changed? She did kill him. So did the thing that he said was
Starting point is 01:17:55 going to happen happen or not? Is it just because she has the Jedi inside of her now, and they're, like, a shield, almost like her Patronus, because of the force of Luke and Leia's lightsabers and what they represent, that her desire to protect instead of wound, you know, using these protective instincts, and we can get to that when we talk about her yellow lightsaber, in terms of, instead of like looking to wound and harm is a fundamental difference.
Starting point is 01:18:19 And so much of the force is about how you relate to it. Okay, maybe, but like, let's explore that a little bit also sheev palpatine has died in these movies before and then he came back so i need you to explain to me fully that he's really dead here because otherwise i just think his essence is just out there still is he gonna go inhabit somebody else they're not going to in 25 years from now there might be another palpatine movie that's the thing is a lot of it, a lot of the actual story mechanics feel unexamined and it feels like they were written quickly. And that is challenging when you've got a fan base and a mythology that has been more picked over than probably anything in the last 50 years, I would
Starting point is 01:19:01 say. I mean, it is really the most significant tentpole experience that people around the world have been having together. And so, you know, the burden is high and it's deep and they didn't really fulfill it in a lot of ways. I mean, there's a lot of other stuff that we could talk about here and you'll be diving in as deep as possible on Binge Mode. I would encourage people to check that out. Just to wrap up, I want to talk to you a little bit about the kind of now what of this because we're recording this
Starting point is 01:19:29 on a Wednesday. Yes. The reception to the movie thus far has been not good. And people like you and I, I think are mostly pretty posy about this stuff.
Starting point is 01:19:40 Like I really wanted to love this movie. Me too. And I care about this stuff in an unhealthy way. Maybe not as unhealthily as you. Fam, I just did season 8 of Game of Thrones. Like I don't to love this movie. Me too. And I care about this stuff in an unhealthy way. Maybe not as unhealthily as you. Fam, I just did season eight of Game of Thrones. Like I don't need this again.
Starting point is 01:19:50 I really wanted to love this. Right. And it just kind of throws everything into doubt. And I think the idea of people hating Star Wars has happened before. Of course. This happened with George Lucas. Like we lived through it once before. But even something like Solo seemed like kind of a banal disappointment.
Starting point is 01:20:06 It didn't really seem meaningful. Ultimately it was just like, oh, they screwed it up. They made some creative choices that didn't make sense. There was some chaos behind the scenes. Rogue One, similarly, was a completely fraught production that they actually saved. And that's a great movie. Another movie that I admire more now
Starting point is 01:20:21 having seen the way that this turned out. The closest comps were Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. But even then, I think the difference is Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, which I love. Which I love only applies to Revenge of the Sith, to be clear. Their beginnings, but not really. Like, the beginning of Star Wars is a new hope for people. And this will always be the end now. Always.
Starting point is 01:20:52 And so it is actually a greater sin than Phantom Menace not working. Yeah, that actually sucks. Yes, I guess. It's a real shame. I guess do you think this is actually the end of the Skywalker saga is something that it seemed like it obviously was not going to be.
Starting point is 01:21:06 You mentioned Rey at the end of the film claiming the title as her last name. Right. So this is another one where there's a way that you can not only sell me on this, but make me love it. The idea of the family you choose, like you getting to decide who your friends are, who your family is, not letting the name that you were born into be your complete identity is absolutely elemental to the experience of fantasy storytelling. I love the idea of rejecting the Palpatine name and saying, this is who I am and this is who I'm going to be. I'm a Skywalker. And she says that at Luke's old home on Tatooine where she's there to bury the lightsaber, she looks out, sees Luke and Leia's
Starting point is 01:21:49 force ghost as this old woman who's wandering by. I asked her who she is. It's like, did anyone clean up the burned bodies? They seem to be gone. That's great. I'm glad someone's tidied up. But then it kind of also gets back to that larger problem of just everything having to be this one thing. And I think the fact that Rey feels so connected to Luke and Leia is lovely. Like, I'm not complaining about that. I think that's really one of the heartbeats of this trilogy. So the answer to the question is that no, we're not done with the Skywalkers. Because she takes the name.
Starting point is 01:22:21 That's the rise of Skywalker. She buries their lightsaber. She then pulls. There's a moment where you think, oh, my God, is she leaving this all behind? The answer is no. She pulls out her lightsaber and ignites it. It is a yellow blade. I thought this was great.
Starting point is 01:22:38 Lightsaber colors and the nature of kyber crystals and how that all works is like a bit of an obsession of mine. Yellow lightsabers are extremely rare extremely rare and i really like the idea of ray having something that's rare and they're associated with jedi sentinels which is basically like a balance between the the green and and the and the blue you know the guardians and the consulars a person who is is is blending basically a combat scholarship a protector you know the the jedi guards at the jedi temple carry yellow lightsabers so that felt really cool to me there are a couple other characters outside of the guards and in the wider universe that have yellow lightsabers one thing that i wanted to mention very quickly is
Starting point is 01:23:21 that there is one instance in the story of a character, Jaden Kaur, who creates a yellow lightsaber by purifying a fractured, unstable red lightsaber, red kyber crystal, who has the most famous fractured red lightsaber in Star Wars, Kylo. And so there was a moment where I thought to myself, did she go get his lightsaber? Did she purify his kyber crystal? Again, of two minds, which is a theme here. On the one hand, I thought, wow, that would be so lovely. The idea of her purifying his kyber crystal and helping to return him to the light and then carrying that with her, this thing that connected them so deeply, would be really, really poetic. Then there's a, I think, probably ultimately bigger, but certainly equal part of me that thought i hope she built that herself i hope that this is hers you know the process of the jedi finding the
Starting point is 01:24:14 kyber crystal it's like the wand chooses the wizard you know that crystal calling to you and you forging your own path her carrying anakin and luke's lightsaber for so long and there are a lot of moments in this movie where she's saying like like, I'll basically prove that I'm worthy of it, was a nice way of uniting to the past, but so much of this is about forging your own path. And so Rey firing that up was like, yes, this is hers. But it's Star Wars,
Starting point is 01:24:36 and so your own path always is going to connect back to the wider universe. And if in 20 years we get a movie where Rey has set up her Jedi school and the younglings are back. I will not be surprised. I won't be either. You know, Kathleen Kennedy and the many people working on Star Wars have noted that they're going to be taking a break from the films for a little while, which I think is reasonable given that they need to recharge the creativity.
Starting point is 01:24:59 Just let Baby Yoda do the work right now. Well, and that's. Let him crush. There's an interesting series of chess pieces on the work right now. Well, and that's... Let him crush. There's an interesting series of chess pieces on the board right now. Obviously, Rian Johnson at one point was going to make another standalone trilogy. I would love to see that. I would too. I have my doubts.
Starting point is 01:25:16 I have no information. I just don't understand. This movie feels like a fuck you to Rian Johnson at times. And I'm curious to know how he feels about that, though. I highly doubt he will ever address it publicly. The idea that, you know, obviously Benioff and Weiss were just ejected from their post on working on one of these movies
Starting point is 01:25:35 feels notable to me in a way, especially given some of what you would perceive as sins that they impacted upon the Game of Thrones legacy. There are a series of television shows. The Mandalorian is on TV and great. Great. And that's wonderful for all of us. And even though we have not seen the latest episode,
Starting point is 01:25:52 apparently that is also great. So we can go home and salve with that. There's also a Cassian Andor show in the works. There's an Obi-Wan Kenobi show in the works. I can't wait for the Obi-Wan show. The Deborah Chow Obi-Wan show is going to be incredible. There's a lot to look forward to. I am fascinated by the reception of this movie.
Starting point is 01:26:11 It's an obsession of mine on the show all the time for any movie. But in particular, this movie turning out to be maybe the worst reviewed Star Wars movie of all time, especially with the great inflation that comes with 2019 criticism in the world, is very notable to me. It's having a hard time on Rotten Tomatoes at the moment. If I had to predict, I would guess that there will be a hard and vocal group of people coming forward and saying, this story gave me everything I wanted, and we will be back in the culture wars instantaneously. That seems right.
Starting point is 01:26:39 That's usually how this stuff goes with things that have huge audiences. I am kind of fascinated by the idea of this movie just like bombing. Like not working. Do you see a path where it bombs financially though or just in terms of its place in the public consciousness? It's economies of scale. Like a Star Wars movie is never going to fail. Even Solo
Starting point is 01:26:58 made $500 million so it's never going to fail. But I don't think a Star Wars movie... Yeah but they're expecting this one to make $2 billion right?, and one of the quote-unquote disappointments of The Last Jedi is I think it made $1.6 billion instead of $2.1 billion like The Force Awakens did. In all likelihood, it's going to be a massive
Starting point is 01:27:14 success. I am not predicting its failure. But Bad Buzz in 2019 is unique. Star Wars is probably bigger than Bad Buzz in all ways, but its legacy already starts to, it feels like it's concretizing already. I think that it's interesting in a couple ways. One, we're just in a moment in the internet era where you can't escape that as it's happening. It feels
Starting point is 01:27:38 like the only thing there is. But two, then you remember that Star Wars has been through this before. Again, maybe not to this extreme, given what the conclusion of the Skywalker saga has to represent for people. But when Return of the Jedi concluded the original trilogy, there were a lot of people who loved it. And then there were a lot of people who were like, Ewoks are a cheap merchandising ploy, and I wish that the tree trunks had crushed them instead of the AT-STs. That's a great point. I'm pro-ewok. Just let the record stay. Okay.
Starting point is 01:28:08 The prequels were obviously derided, at least the first two were. And you just went through the Disney era so far and Solo and how that went and a lot of the subsequent or preceding changes with who's making this. It's not like it's been smooth sailing the whole way. And so in that sense, Star Wars is better built than maybe anything in the world to withstand this. It will be fine. But when you then step back and think about, again, that active, almost coordinated response heading into this movie to The Last Jedi, the comments about, oh, we have oversaturated the market, we need to recalibrate. There's a level of self-awareness and engagement with that feedback
Starting point is 01:28:50 now that feels, I'm not maybe as aware of some of the ways that it happened in the past as you are, but that feels a little bit new. And so even if it's just an inherent truth of pop culture that this will all be okay in Star Wars, there will always, as Qui-Gon said, there's always a bigger fish and there's always a bigger Star Wars movie, right? Always. I miss those days with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan
Starting point is 01:29:11 and Jar Jar right now. I never thought I'd say that out loud or think it. Jeez. I think this movie is still better than The Phantom Menace. It definitely is.
Starting point is 01:29:20 That's a whole other conversation. It's better than The Phantom Menace and it's better than Attack of the Clones, but that might be as high as we can place it. So last thought, there is another Sith Lord lingering here
Starting point is 01:29:31 in the Star Wars saga and his name is Kevin Feige. And I wonder how Kevin Feige is feeling, if he feels like perhaps his leverage is growing by the moment and his arena full of Sith Lords is growing by the day. Because End full of Sith Lords is growing by the day because Endgame, as I said,
Starting point is 01:29:46 looking great. Him getting involved in this series feels inevitable. I feel like there is a hero's journey of his own to pursue here, moving not just from 25 consecutive successful Marvel films, but also now potentially
Starting point is 01:30:01 moving into Star Wars. We'll see. If it was announced that his film will be the next film in the series, I wouldn't be shocked because that certainly feels like where this thing is going. That seems right.
Starting point is 01:30:11 Any lingering thoughts? We've covered quite a lot. I think we got most of it out there. You know, something like, we've mentioned Endgame a lot. So like the moment when the entire fleet appears, I'll say to maybe end on a positive note i quite enjoyed that you know and it's such a it's on the heels of such as even though you know they're coming you
Starting point is 01:30:30 know that lando's gonna bring them when poe is just so deflated and defeated like we've run out of time we've run out of hope and then they all appear that was very end game ask with the you know all the heroes charging through the sky and i liked that you I liked when you got the sequence with the Richard E. Grant character Pride who is that? Is it the army? Is it the navy? and then the other guy says it's just people like that is
Starting point is 01:30:58 great and I wish there had been more of that like the reminder that the galaxy is just full of people who are trying to band together to achieve something great, find something meaningful, and also, you know, prevent more planets from being blown up. We are just people trying to find something great on a podcast. If you want to hear more about Mallory on Star Wars, please subscribe to Binge Mode immediately. Mal, thanks for opening your heart here on The Big Picture.
Starting point is 01:31:22 Thanks for having me, Sean. Please stay tuned to this show because tomorrow we're going to have a very special episode about an even bigger crisis in my soul. It's called the movie Cats. See you then. We'll see you next time. and possibly even lose your job. You know the consequences of driving drunk, and you're wrong if you think it's no big deal. Drive sober or get pulled over.

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