The Rise Of Skywalker Is The Most Frustrating JJ Abrams Film

[Knife]

I'm with Civil War Man, while having her parents being nobody isn't a bad idea per say, the reveal means more to the audience than to the character. Any number of scenarios could have been constructed that were plausible for that to work well. Parents could have been Imperialist's/First Order devotee's but also loved their daughter and worried what Snoke would either think of them with the Force sensitive kid, or reverse it and go Gailen Erso route and have the parents still go black hat to save kid after they drop her off somewhere they think is relatively safe.

Either route gives you a 'nobody' with a plausible reason with a solid reason for the character to have an emotional response. Rage, guilt, abandonment issues, loss, grief, and sadness.

But they didn't do any of that. So do you blame JJ for setting it up with all his mystery boxes in TFA? Or Johnston for flushing all that down the toilet and trying something new and letting drop like a rock so he can be edgy? To be fair, JJ tried to pick it up again and totally failed with very poor and transparent fan service. If they had to make her someone's kid, they could have tried to be some what creative about it... Ezra's and Sabine's love child or some such. Daughter of Cel Castus, since that SW game came out at the same time as TROS. Bring back someone just to kill off at Luke's academy, Kyle Katarn had a kid and when the Knight's of Ren slaughtered everyone at the Jedi Temple, mom fled with Rey to Jaku and dropped her off but feared she was being followed and kept going to keep the sent off Rey, eventually she was caught and killed but they did not know about Rey.

[ray245]

JJ Abrams never really made good use of his mystery boxes in the long run. If the only appeal of the mystery box is you never opened it, then that itself makes it meaningless as a story-telling device, because you can never meet the expectations your audience will have.

Mystery box is a marketing tool, not a story-telling tool.

[Knife]

JJ Abrams never really made good use of his mystery boxes in the long run. If the only appeal of the mystery box is you never opened it, then that itself makes it meaningless as a story-telling device, because you can never meet the expectations your audience will have.

Mystery box is a marketing tool, not a story-telling tool.

True, but I'll stick up for him in this respect, when he did it in TFA, he was not the director for VIII or IX. He was setting stuff up. Johnson and the original guy could have taken those mystery boxes anywhere. He was left with a pile of shit and he decided to add sprinkles of fan service on top. But the original mystery boxes/questions about Rey's origin, parents, who, what, where, and why, where not bad.

[Vendetta]

JJ Abrams never really made good use of his mystery boxes in the long run. If the only appeal of the mystery box is you never opened it, then that itself makes it meaningless as a story-telling device, because you can never meet the expectations your audience will have.

Mystery box is a marketing tool, not a story-telling tool.

True, but I'll stick up for him in this respect, when he did it in TFA, he was not the director for VIII or IX. He was setting stuff up. Johnson and the original guy could have taken those mystery boxes anywhere. He was left with a pile of shit and he decided to add sprinkles of fan service on top. But the original mystery boxes/questions about Rey's origin, parents, who, what, where, and why, where not bad.

Of course they were, because he left literally no characters that it would be interesting for Rey's parents to be. If it were one of the Big Three it would absolutely have to be addressed in TFA itself, and nobody else could possibly impact Rey as a character. It would only ever be narratively inert fanservice for the audience, just like his Khan.

The problem with the mystery boxes is they were empty all along, there was never a chance for interesting contents.

And that's because you can't just set up a mystery without already knowing the answer, because if you try what you end up with is no compelling path from setup to payoff and all you can do is wave some kind of fanservice nostalgia at the audience and hope they're distracted by the shiny thing long enough for you to run away.

The Emperor Only Has Groove
I’m so tired of writing about J.J. Abrams.

It feels like from minute one of the LOSTaissance, we’ve been on our heels reacting to his unique brand of storytelling, one best embodied by his now infamous Ted Talk on the mystery box. Even then, many understood that the mystery box is 1) just a cheap, but effective method of marketing and 2) something making people curious about what will happen next (I even referenced this when I saw the talk ), but once you get past the initial allure, it ultimately leads to complete dissatisfaction. His career has been full of this kind of ultimate let down. That’s because the vagaries of the mystery box have nothing to with tried and true notions of set ups and payoffs, nor the construction of mysteries with their purposeful evolution of information, but instead simply “hide and tease” the story until it’s practically ripped out by sheer demand. And when ripped, the sad, disappointing truth of what was really in the box is laid bare. But maybe we should expect this of someone who literally told us, “the answer doesn’t matter.”

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[ray245]

True, but I'll stick up for him in this respect, when he did it in TFA, he was not the director for VIII or IX. He was setting stuff up. Johnson and the original guy could have taken those mystery boxes anywhere. He was left with a pile of shit and he decided to add sprinkles of fan service on top. But the original mystery boxes/questions about Rey's origin, parents, who, what, where, and why, where not bad.

No one could have made the mystery box meaningful, because it depends on the mystery box being never opened by any director. If TFA is a one-off movie, that can work. But if you are making a movie with sequels, that method cannot work.

It's trading short term benefit for long term harm. That's the problem with JJ Abrams as a director, and it's a problem I've been saying since 2013/4. I think some fans are far too forgiving of short-sightedness, and the SW franchise is paying for it with an aimless conclusion in Ep 9.

[Civil War Man]

Yeah, but I think there's a fairly strong link between them being nobodies and them not loving her, because that's the underlying reason why they're the sort of people who aren't going to come back for her, they're space trash.

I guess, but only in the sense that assigning that role to any known character in the franchise would have been character assassination on a level that would make anyone's grievances about Luke's depiction in TLJ laughable in comparison, unless it was given to a character who was already established to be evil. JJ really didn't think through the implications of making Rey both a desert orphan to mirror Luke while also making her a plucky self-sufficient survivor living out on her own. At least Luke was handed off to step-relatives who actually cared enough about him to raise him like a son, plus he had an undercover Jedi Master keeping an eye on him from afar. Rey's parents just dumped her on Jakku and were like, "Yeah, I'm sure she'll be okay." The time factor of being hunted in TROS at least adds some mitigating circumstances, but it still raises the question of, "Really? You couldn't think of any place better for her?"

JJ Abrams never really made good use of his mystery boxes in the long run. If the only appeal of the mystery box is you never opened it, then that itself makes it meaningless as a story-telling device, because you can never meet the expectations your audience will have.

Mystery box is a marketing tool, not a story-telling tool.

Of course they were, because he left literally no characters that it would be interesting for Rey's parents to be. If it were one of the Big Three it would absolutely have to be addressed in TFA itself, and nobody else could possibly impact Rey as a character. It would only ever be narratively inert fanservice for the audience, just like his Khan.

The problem with the mystery boxes is they were empty all along, there was never a chance for interesting contents.

You know, the whole mystery box thing, particularly with JJ's assertion that the actual contents of the box didn't matter, does bring up some rather unsavory comparisons. Mystery boxes themselves are fine. Stuff like Kinder Surprises or Magic Card packs are Mystery Boxes in the sense that you don't know exactly what is inside them until you open them, but you have a reasonable idea of what could be in there. But we have terms for people who sell these Mystery Boxes by giving the buyer a false expectation that there is something inside the box, when it's actually empty. And those terms are usually not very flattering, like snake oil salesman, or con artist.

[Galvatron]

Rey's parents just dumped her on Jakku and were like, "Yeah, I'm sure she'll be okay." The time factor of being hunted in TROS at least adds some mitigating circumstances, but it still raises the question of, "Really? You couldn't think of any place better for her?"

Like I said in the locked review thread: maybe Rey's parents were on Jakku because they intended to leave her in the care of Lor San Tekka. Then Ochi caught up to them and they had to flee quickly so they either begged or bribed Unkar Plutt to take her to him...and he reneged.

[Vendetta]

Rey's parents just dumped her on Jakku and were like, "Yeah, I'm sure she'll be okay." The time factor of being hunted in TROS at least adds some mitigating circumstances, but it still raises the question of, "Really? You couldn't think of any place better for her?"

Like I said in the locked review thread: maybe Rey's parents were on Jakku because they intended to leave her in the care of Lor San Tekka. Then Ochi caught up to them and they had to flee quickly so they either begged or bribed Unkar Plutt to take her to him...and he reneged.

That doesn't in itself produce an answer for why they wouldn't come back though. Them just being living trashbags who'd sell their kid for booze money does that.

Ochi catching up to them doesn't really work anyway, because when we see her flashback of them leaving in TFA she's literally yards away from that ship and still struggling, implying that she was handed to Plutt almost immediately beforehand, standing in the open in broad daylight. RoS just hoped you'd forgotten that scene because in its version of events Ochi captures them, takes them to his ship, interrogates and murders them, all no more than a hundred or so yards from the person he's actually looking for who is not hidden in any way who is making a racket and a scene.

And that all has to happen on Jakku because the last thing her mother says is "she's not on Jakku", which if you're anywhere else is such a specific denial that the opposite must be true.

[Galvatron]

I don't know. Maybe Plutt hid Rey in his shop as Ochi was capturing her parents, then she got loose and ran after the ship when she saw it blasting off without her.

Also, if Ochi had been chasing them from planet to planet all over the galaxy, maybe "she's not on Jakku" was more believable. They could have left her elsewhere before he caught up to them.

[Vympel]

I don't know. Maybe Plutt hid Rey in his shop as Ochi was capturing her parents, then she got loose and ran after the ship when she saw it blasting off without her.

Also, if Ochi had been chasing them from planet to planet all over the galaxy, maybe "she's not on Jakku" was more believable. They could have left her elsewhere before he caught up to them.

I really don't see how that's more believable. It's the most transparent self-serving lie imaginable, and that Ochi didn't think that maybe it was worth like ... double-checking* just goes to demonstrate how right TLJ was to dispose of this nonsense, only for Abrams to try and bring it back regardless with one of the most contrived and badly executed plot twists in major motion picture history.

Luckily, Ochi got killed by a snake or some shit doing some random unspecified thing on Pasana in his Sith speeder (with literal Sith logo!) before he went back and told Palpatine about his failure?

*Seriously, its Unkar Plutt. Rey's literal abuser. He sent his thugs to beat the shit out of her. And he's not going to offer up Rey for sale to Ochi if he had just checked to see whether any children had recently been sold on Jakku? Lol.

[Galvatron]

Maybe Pasana was one of the planets that Rey's parents had been to and he was looking for her there? I don't know. Frankly, I don't think we see enough to determine what happened.

It's another one of those things that's hard to reconcile without ancillary material, like how the clone army was just accepted by the Jedi regardless of its highly suspicious origins.

[MKSheppard]

It's a shitpile. There's only so much you can do with a shitpile. That's the long term damage that the Sequel Trilogy has done to Star Wars.

People aren't interested in seeing "fixits" anymore.

Basically, it's no longer "fun" to fixit.

It's not like trying to figure out how Khan could have known Chekov if he wasn't on the show yet.

Or or how Han got from nowhere to Bespin without dying in interstellar space.

It's just....blegh.

[The Romulan Republic]

This is one of the most well-argued critique of The Rise of Skywalker in my opinion, and it breaks down nicely why the film didn't resonate as well with that many people.

That's a fairly good summation. There are points that I'd quibble about, some things that I felt were over or under emphasized. It tries harder to be fair to JJ than I'd be inclined to be, though I'm glad that the author pulled no punches on just how awful what they did to Rose/Kelly Marie Tran was. But overall, I think its about as reasonable a summary as I've seen of what is right about TLJ, what went wrong with ROS, and what's wrong with Abrams' filmmaking (and a lot of Hollywood film making in general).

A couple points that I really liked: first, that having Leia be the motive behind Kylo's redemption, rather than Rey, is much stronger (it also avoids the uncomfortable romanticizing abuse implications of ReyLo). That's a nice point, and the fact that that was in there makes me feel just a little bit better about the Ren redemption and the ReyLo crap.

Secondly, that TLJ actually works as a conclusion to the saga, if you want to just ignore TFA. I hadn't really thought about it before in those terms, but it kind of does. So if all else fails I can just forget about ROS and treat TLJ as the end. Much like I sometimes like to imagine that Game of Thrones ended with 8.3, and the last thing we ever saw of Daenerys was her fighting to save the world alongside Jorah, or how I sometimes like to imagine that Avengers: Endgame ended with Tony saying no to the time travel plan, and that was the conclusion to the MCU.

Ugg, this has really been a year for disappointing conclusions for me.

Edit: That said, because it is part of canon, and I generally dislike exclusionist fandom on principle, I'd probably suck it up and accept ROS as part of the saga despite its myriad flaws- if Disney released an extended cut with a bunch of added Rose footage.