Loftwings and Demons

Some thoughts about Rey's backstory and TROS:

( Spoilers ahead... )

One of the things that was crucial to my enjoyment of the bits of this film that meant anything to me was basically not being invested with what the movie decided to do with Kylo Ren.  I want to distill my thoughts on his arc now, though, as he's one of the few characters to actually have any sort of arc in this film (which has so many loose threads at its end).

( Spoilers after the cut... )

I for one was entirely on board when it turned out the giant Force-sensitive Porg was the Skywalker referred to by the title.  It makes perfect sense to me that the shared surname was mere coincidence.  Of course Skywalker would be a common surname among Porgs.

I feel like I need to take this very special time between the first trailer release and the film's theatre release to to come up with increasingly implausible theories for what Palpatine will be up to in Ep IX.   So here's a few:

*Takes up scuba diving
*Possesses BB-8.  Is finally defeated by that small green and white robot we see in the trailer.
*permanently retired
*Just there to be the laugh track

So since the sequel trilogy darksiders aren't Sith, I got to thinking about their aesthetic, and what kind of holocrons they would have.  And I thought, well, maybe they'd want a different shape from the Sith, so not pyramidal.  And the Jedi took cubes already.  And so I thought--what about spheres?  That would be fun, right?  Holocron doubles as a sports ball when the Knights of Ren are on break.

After Episode IX of Star Wars comes out I do wonder if we'll get more prequel/sequel novels devoted to that era.  While I could understand not having anything at this point that talks about what comes after that period, I don't know why they don't have more material that gives us background into what comes before.  I understand some of it could contain spoilers for IX but I'm sure there's more that could be said that wouldn't spoil anything important but could hint at more of the events that bridge VI and VII.  I mean, I haven't read all the books, but from what I know, most of the major events leading up to the sequels remain largely unexplained or detailed. 

I also don't know why the argument that the OT didn't have background when it came out is supposed to be a reason why the sequel trilogy wouldn't.  The OT were the first movies.  The sequels come after six movies.  When a piece of a story is released after another piece of a story, it makes sense to connect it to the other piece. 

I have lots of criticisms of the prequels for example, but they are very much connected to the original trilogy.  The plot reintroduces major characters from the OT and answers questions like 'what were the Clone Wars and who was being cloned', 'how did Anakin become Darth Vader', 'how did Palpatine become Emperor', and 'how did the Republic and Jedi Order fall'.  And none of those answers even requires diving into ancillary material to discover.  It's all laid out by the movies themselves. 

I mean, maybe we'll get all the answers in IX, but that seems unlikely.  I feel like we'll get one or two at most. And I think part of the difficulty is that the OT was designed to be really self contained, but that doesn't mean that more elements of the political situation from that time couldn't have been referenced to explain the situation in the sequels.  I just feel like something more could have been done, even without considerably changing the overall plot.  I guess I'll see how I feel after IX, but this just seems like a weird way to go about a sequel trilogy, is all.

I'm preparing my low expectations to avoid being disappointed with episode IX.  I need to come up with something suitably ridiculous to imagine. Eg:

The entirety of IX is just a close-up of the thala-siren sitting on the Ahch-To beach.  All of the trailer scenes and promotional photoshoots are cut for this.

Did I set my expectations low enough yet? Time will tell...

I'm still like, not entirely certain what angle the IX movie will take with Palpatine.  While it's been heavily implied by the higher-ups in Lucasfilm that he'll return in this movie, there's a lot of ways one could potentially interpret that.  They wouldn't have to literally bring him back to life (or even as a Force Ghost) to be telling the truth about that.  Could still mean something else, like an extended flashback of some sort.  Then again, maybe he's just been taking an extended vacation somewhere this entire time.  Or maybe we'll get tacky Palpatine clones (I am ready!).