Nitpicking, but I don’t think Snoke was a Sith. He’s “just” a Force adept on the Dark Side. 
This is pretty much canon already.
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Strictly speaking, only two of the three movies that have come out under Disney are actually Proper Episode films. Rogue One and the other “A Star Wars Story” films to come purposefully aren’t supposed to provide a sense of cohesion with the main story. They’re designed to be stand-alone one-offs that fill out the non-Everything-Is-Always-About-The-Skywalkers parts of the universe (and, cynically, to keep box office revenues high in between 2-year waits for Episode releases).
Looking only at Episodes 7 and 8, I think the new trilogy is setting up to follow the same broad-strokes structure as the original trilogy did. So far we’ve gotten a New Hope-style “Introduce everyone and score a decisive victory against the big bad”, followed by an Empire Strikes Back-style “big bad returns to curb-stomp the good guys”. If they follow this arc to the same conclusion, Episode IX will have the Resistance rebounding from their losses and putting a more decisive end to the bad guys. I can’t even begin to guess at the contours of how that rebound will happen, but that’s what has me most looking forward to the next Episode film.
Star Wars is in an interesting place right now, because while it’s always been a pretty open playground for storytelling in books and video games, we’ve never really gotten a similar diversity of “takes” on the material in cinematic form before. While the first trilogy could arguably be described as collaborative works with Lucas at the helm, 1 through 3 are pretty much 100% Lucas. Now, though, we have more writers and directors coming in to make their mark and show us what Star Wars means to them. The Force Awakens is basically JJ Abrams’ love letter to the original trilogy. Rogue One is a heist film full of misfit characters who each get their moment in the jerkwad sun. The Last Jedi is a more character-driven piece that seems to go out of its way sometimes to reflect on the franchise and examine the things that we’ve taken for granted for so long. Star Wars cinema is now a collaborative, diverse project, and I honestly think that’s really exciting. I’m sure they won’t all be gems, but I’ve been thoroughly pleased with the material that’s been produced so far.
I think subverting the “you’re actually an important person” trope is a much more interesting plot twist than re-hashing the surprise reveal for a third time in the same franchise (first Luke was related to the Big Bad, then Anakin was a magical Force-baby spoken of in prophecy). The fact that she doesn’t have any sort of powerful, important heritage makes her skill and strength with the Force all the more interesting to me, and it plays into the point the film is trying to make about not waiting around for pre-destined Heroes and Legends to do the big important things. The Force is, well, awakening, and everyone has a role to play.
If anything, I think The Force Awakens stumbled by setting up so many superfluous salacious hints at bigger mysteries while unceremoniously wrapping up arguably its most important mystery—where’s Luke?—in the last 5 minutes of the movie. Before R2 just woke up with the rest of the map, I was expecting JJ to be setting up Episode VIII to be about the actual journey to find Luke now that the mapguffin was secured. Instead, the movie wrapped up with an “oh, there he is” and knocked off to the pub end credits.
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So much this.
The only problem the trilogy has from continuity in my opinion is that the third movie has to have significant time between them while the first two are basically back to back.
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I swear the things I disliked in TLJ were not even close to what people have latched onto.
Poe wasn’t just demoted and cut off when Leia was nearly killed, Poe was demoted maybe an hour before Holdo assumes command for losing more than half the Rebellion’s fleet in his obsession to win at any cost. From a movie perspective the suspension of reality should skew that Poe should be in the brig and not that Poe should have been told what was going on. Especially since no one knew of hyperspace tracking and it makes it seem like there is a mole on board the ship (my take was the movie was trying to make Holdo look like a First Order mole).
I dunno. I was not sure what I thought about the movie, but I find myself defending it a lot and the plot is tighter than people want to think it is.
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I am annoyed by some of the obvious “video game ideas”, but then, this is how storytelling for a bonkers space saga can work, too. Seen this so many times, and this time, it actually works quite well. It is still bonkers, of course. But the heated dislike the film triggers set isn’t at all based on form, or quality of any kind.
Just hating the character development.
And since I actually like the characters (yes, also Bennyboy), well, I have to defend them, I feel…
But I still would rather
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I feel for you, I really do. I liked the movie, but I readily admit there are flaws to it. It’s just that the loudest complainers seem to mostly ignore that, and instead whine endlessly about how their headcanon wasn’t respected or how there’s not enough infodumps, or (the most frustrating kind) how terrible it is that Rey continues to be a woman, and the whitest guys in the movie (Kylo Ren and Hux) are the villains.
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Someone said to me that it had “too many plot holes.” And I’m like … bruh. If we’re gonna talk about plot holes in Star Wars we’re gonna be here all YEAR.
I think that’s been said of every movie in the series ever.
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Actually, that would have made it for me!
This wouldn’t be the first multi-boobed alien singer in a Star Wars movie though, would it?
Did you ever see the Spielberg-produced miniseries Taken, about the several generations of families associated with the Roswell crash? There is a similar event in it. Great series, worth watching.
Aren’t most/all animals conscious?
A few days ago I was in a discussion about potential plots for part 3, and we came up with Kylo Ren going Kreia from KOTOR II and leaping from killing his past and his attachments for power to killing the force itself while Rey et al see the force as the equalizer that gives the repressed hope and power to fight back against their oppressors. That’s the best we could come up with, saying it has a big gap between the two in time. I know it’s pretty unlikely, but the Force scenes have been the peak of the new trilogy and a hugely Force heavy movie practically abandoning the Empire/Rebellion conflict would be amazing to me.
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And I think those both could fall on the “From a certain point of view” truth/lie wackiness.
(Rey being there pushed the whole killing Snoke issue into a reality. As a Darth Vader wannabe blood relative of Anakin, he’s got the second best claim to it after Luke in some respects.)
Maybe it’s just me, but you know, I kind of thought a major point of TLJ was that lineage DOES NOT matter, the Jedi (as an organized religion) DOES NOT matter – that The Force is something that is everywhere, accessible to everyone. The fact that they made her a nobody struck me as a very intentional decision to reinforce this point.
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I think @LutherBlisset and I both meant it as a measure of intelligence, not awake-ness. Perhaps semi-sentient would have been a better descriptor.
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