On Sunday, I watched the latest Star Wars movie for the second time. After I first watched it, I held my Star Wars movie marathon, and spent the time looking for possible connections with the earlier movies. Watching the new movie for a second time allowed me to notice a few things that I had missed before. I'm about to move into spoiler territory; if you wish to avoid knowing another more before seeing the movie, you should probably stop reading now.
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Okay, I want to preface this by saying that this would have probably been a much better movie had Carrie Fisher not died before filming started. While many critics have complained that there was not a plan to this new trilogy, I really feel like I saw one as I watched the movies together. Although the trilogy certainly focuses on the new characters of Kylo Ren (or Ben Solo), Rey, Finn, and Poe, each movie was also clearly focused on one of the three principal characters from the original trilogy. The first movie had the spotlight on Han, the second on Luke, and the third on Leia. Had Carrie Fisher been alive, I believe that the focus on her would have been considerably greater and would have filled what otherwise seem to be plot holes in this film. Just as the death of Heath Ledger likely changed the end of Nolan's Batman trilogy, Carrie Fisher's death certainly changed the route of the story, which clearly required a great deal of rewriting and patchwork plot points stitched together by archival footage and CGI.
While I wonder what might have been, the movie does bring in a number of references from the previous films, some obvious, some less so. The first is the Emperor. Although it would have been better if he had a part to play in the previous two films (or better yet, if it turned out that Snoke actually was still alive and had been behind the scenes the entire time as Darth Plagueis), bringing in Palpatine as the Big Bad at the end certainly ties the movie to the rest of the franchise. To further reinforce this connection, he continually uses his famous "Good ... good ..." catchphrase and even directly references himself from The Revenge of the Sith when he says that the dark side leads to powers others would consider unnatural. The biggest connection is that Palpatine finally explains a part of Return of the Jedi that always bothered me. I never got why he wanted Luke to kill him so bad, but it turns out that, if Luke (or Rey) were to kill him out of hatred, he could use that connection to spiritually possess him (or her).
Other connections include C-3PO's use of the phrase "This is madness" and his penchant for telling people the odds (which Rey uses to convince him to participate in the memory wipe). There was Rey's training course which seemed to include elements from Luke's trainings with both Obi-Wan and Yoda. Later, Rey's jump onto the Millennium Falcon from Kylo's Star Destroyer seemed to reference Luke's fall in Bespin, Qui-Gon's jump onto the Naboo Starship in mid-flight, and even the Rogue One scene where an engine blast cleared people from a deck. I also felt that Finn's rope trick on the treaded speeder was almost a direct callback to the Ewok rope trick on a speeder bike in Return of the Jedi. Wedge's appearance on the ventral gun of the Falcon was nice, if all too brief. I also greatly enjoyed seeing Chewie finally get the medal that was denied him in the original movie (although why he got one here at this point is unclear--likely another lapse due to Carrie Fisher's passing). And of course, the movie also had Rey looking at the twin suns set on Tatooine--a scene included somewhere in each trilogy.
However, my favorite callback was probably the Jedi voices who finally speak to Rey in her confrontation with her grandfather: Pap-Pap Palpatine (again, a reveal that should have been in one of the previous movies if they really wanted to show a connection to the Emperor throughout the entire series). On my own, I recognized the voices of Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan (both Alec Guinness and Ewan McGregor), Anakin, Yoda, Mace Windu, and Luke. I've since learned that it also included voices from the animated Clone Wars and Rebels (which I have not seen).
I am still left with a number of questions after this movie (no, one of them was not "What did Finn want to tell Rey?" as it was clear he wanted to tell her that he had become Force sensitive). I also did not think it had any truly iconic moments or lines. However, all of my sons greatly enjoyed it, and that is what Star Wars has always been about for me: it gives us a mythical story from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
...
...
Okay, I want to preface this by saying that this would have probably been a much better movie had Carrie Fisher not died before filming started. While many critics have complained that there was not a plan to this new trilogy, I really feel like I saw one as I watched the movies together. Although the trilogy certainly focuses on the new characters of Kylo Ren (or Ben Solo), Rey, Finn, and Poe, each movie was also clearly focused on one of the three principal characters from the original trilogy. The first movie had the spotlight on Han, the second on Luke, and the third on Leia. Had Carrie Fisher been alive, I believe that the focus on her would have been considerably greater and would have filled what otherwise seem to be plot holes in this film. Just as the death of Heath Ledger likely changed the end of Nolan's Batman trilogy, Carrie Fisher's death certainly changed the route of the story, which clearly required a great deal of rewriting and patchwork plot points stitched together by archival footage and CGI.
While I wonder what might have been, the movie does bring in a number of references from the previous films, some obvious, some less so. The first is the Emperor. Although it would have been better if he had a part to play in the previous two films (or better yet, if it turned out that Snoke actually was still alive and had been behind the scenes the entire time as Darth Plagueis), bringing in Palpatine as the Big Bad at the end certainly ties the movie to the rest of the franchise. To further reinforce this connection, he continually uses his famous "Good ... good ..." catchphrase and even directly references himself from The Revenge of the Sith when he says that the dark side leads to powers others would consider unnatural. The biggest connection is that Palpatine finally explains a part of Return of the Jedi that always bothered me. I never got why he wanted Luke to kill him so bad, but it turns out that, if Luke (or Rey) were to kill him out of hatred, he could use that connection to spiritually possess him (or her).
Other connections include C-3PO's use of the phrase "This is madness" and his penchant for telling people the odds (which Rey uses to convince him to participate in the memory wipe). There was Rey's training course which seemed to include elements from Luke's trainings with both Obi-Wan and Yoda. Later, Rey's jump onto the Millennium Falcon from Kylo's Star Destroyer seemed to reference Luke's fall in Bespin, Qui-Gon's jump onto the Naboo Starship in mid-flight, and even the Rogue One scene where an engine blast cleared people from a deck. I also felt that Finn's rope trick on the treaded speeder was almost a direct callback to the Ewok rope trick on a speeder bike in Return of the Jedi. Wedge's appearance on the ventral gun of the Falcon was nice, if all too brief. I also greatly enjoyed seeing Chewie finally get the medal that was denied him in the original movie (although why he got one here at this point is unclear--likely another lapse due to Carrie Fisher's passing). And of course, the movie also had Rey looking at the twin suns set on Tatooine--a scene included somewhere in each trilogy.
However, my favorite callback was probably the Jedi voices who finally speak to Rey in her confrontation with her grandfather: Pap-Pap Palpatine (again, a reveal that should have been in one of the previous movies if they really wanted to show a connection to the Emperor throughout the entire series). On my own, I recognized the voices of Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan (both Alec Guinness and Ewan McGregor), Anakin, Yoda, Mace Windu, and Luke. I've since learned that it also included voices from the animated Clone Wars and Rebels (which I have not seen).
I am still left with a number of questions after this movie (no, one of them was not "What did Finn want to tell Rey?" as it was clear he wanted to tell her that he had become Force sensitive). I also did not think it had any truly iconic moments or lines. However, all of my sons greatly enjoyed it, and that is what Star Wars has always been about for me: it gives us a mythical story from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
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