Maybe Daisy Ridley is no RDJ and maybe Rey isn't Tony Stark, but I'm pretty well convinced if all three movies in this trilogy make a billion+ -- which seems like a lock -- and the audience grows in secondary markets (e.g., streaming, cable TV airings) just as happened with the OT...then any future movie with Rey and coupled with the Disney marketing machine across its huge tentacles will probably turn out audiences.

Put Rey on mothballs for 5 years or whatever and bring her back in circa 2025 for Star Wars Avengers Assembled wherein Rey leads the next 3 films heros in some adventure against bad guys and I'm pretty well convinced the tens of millions of people (maybe not us old guys, but today's kids and teens turning out for this generation's Star Wars) are going to be all in. You sort of deduced that 'lame' super heros like Captain America and Wonder Woman have huge commercial appeal despite not hitting the sweet spot with 30 and 40 year old guys who grew up on Luke Skywalker and Richard Donner's Superman or Indiana Jones or whatever. That's how it goes, but I think the commercial wisdom of MCU-izing the Star Wars universe is obvious. And I think Rey will probably be the or at least a character in the middle of it.

Or maybe they kill her off and pass the baton to whoever in the next one. But I doubt it.

I think you're over-estimating the streaming, cable TV airings - This isn't 1980 where someone gets Star Wars on video for Xmas and watches is endlessly on repeat for the next 12 months. The market is far more saturated. For this reason, I don't think Star Wars ever gets as big as it is now.

In terms of numbers, Dawn of Justice did nearly $900m so of course Star Wars is doing a billion. A Rey standalone right now, no matter how lame, is almost certain to make $750m. This does not mean that Rey is a strong character, Daisy is a good actress or that the movie will be any good.

Maybe. I don't necessarily agree but, we both agree our qualitative perceptions of the character and acting doesn't matter.

I was predicting what Disney/Lucasfilm would do from this point and why -- from a commercial perspective. If they can do 750m+ by simply giving you a character audiences know, they are going to give you characters that audiences know. That's why I maintain my prediction is realistic. It gets expensive for studios to hire the same actor over and over, and audiences will eventually bore of Rey. That's why I think the MCU model is going to be exported here. Marvel has kept Iron Man et al fresh by moving them in and out of the universe, and they keep the production budgets 'cheap' over the long term (and build their character assets) by saving the A-list characters for once-every-few-years event films and giving you B-list and new characters for all the filler material in between.

I expect the same will happen with Star Wars, and I think all of the commercial feedback so far will have them pressing ahead with Rey for a while now even if you and I disagree on the artistic merits. I predict she's an anchor for the future beyond Episode IX where they ditch the episode numbers and strict continuity and pivot to a Marvel style universe where the timeline isn't so clear and the epic showdowns between good and evil have no finite beginning and end.

Also this isn't even some off the wall prediction and my bet here is just copy pastaing what Kathleen Kennedy has already said:

http://observer.com/2017/11/star-war...hleen-kennedy/

MCU-ing Star Wars imo

Rey stand alone may or may not happen but that's honestly on the upper tier of what they might do. I'd be more worried about utter **** like a BB-8 standalone where it has to break Poe out of galactic prison or something like that.

Fair point, but I was more thinking about how the standalone will perform post-Ep.9. There is still an awful lot of goodwill around for Star Wars that might not be around in 5 years time.

I mean, Katniss was a great character who did well at the box office, but after the conclusion of the Hunger Games arc, was there really any appetite for the further adventures of Katniss?

Poe could be great for a standalone film or series of films if written correctly. Oscar Isaac is almost certainly the best actor of the bunch and up to the task--again if the writing cooperates.

Agree with most of what's been said so far. It had its moments, but they were overwhelmed by its length and eps 1-3ish stuff. Casino planet situation was very eps 1-3. It's like they tried to mix the two styles of movie together. Kylo/Rey stuff was pretty good. Some of the humor was good but they did it way way way too much. My son (9) loved it, but honestly I don't think he knew wtf was going on half the time.

My biggest beef is that they did an incredible job sowing doubt about Rey and her anger and Kylo and his possible redemption. Legit great tension. Then they spoil their own ending when


In addition I feel they ultimately underutilized and under developed Rey, which is amazing given she was so dominant in Ep 7

Oh yeah, my girlfriend kind of enjoyed the movie (she gave it 7/10).

However, she was disappointed about one thing:

I'm not that likely to see this movie, but i am intrigued by this casino planet. What kind of games do they play? Is it the same weird 19th century stuff we have here? It would be cool if they have Star Trek slots.

I agree with a lot of this, and think this is a good post.

a couple other thoughts (I'm mostly grunching here):

- there is a big downside to the trilogy being put together piecemeal, and that is that (presumed) major plot points like "who is Snoke", "Snoke is a big bad" and "who are Rey's parents" just end up petering out. the point ends up being "it doesn't matter" but are those really satisfactory arcs? if one person was writing the story, I don't think you end up with Snoke as a character

- how does Kylo know who Rey's parents were?

- Leah ghosting through space was Phantom Menace level bad

very prescient. I like your point about them getting away from the Hero's journey so they can ensure one billion episodes. Maybe we can get 24 NFL games now, too

for all practical purposes, this is how you take a 5/10 movie and make it 7.5/10 in the editing room.

1) Eliminate all campy humor, no 'fourth wall' with a 2017 audience
2) edit Rose out, have Finn figure out they are being tracked via intuition/memory. Offer to sneak back onto the Star Destroyer. cut entire Space Monaco planet
3) let Leia die in space

those are minimal reshoot/rewrite fixes that would have made this move pretty good. treat Kylo/Luke/Rey like the interesting center of the movie it should be. for more extensive rewrites, I'd start with what dvaut implied: b-level plots for b-level characters. I think Finn grappling with his role as a purposeless and powerless piece is interesting enough. spend a little more time developing that and cut the whole casino planet and you're golden. Poe's conflict with the leadership is also workable but already stated they prematurely wrap that up, too.

there's a lot of really good here but the bad was just so horrible and offensive that I can't get past it. Then again, maybe there's nothing they could have done. maybe the Casino Level was non-negotiable and all the marvel-style jokes were a requirement from upper management. wouldn't surprise me

Gf is not a Star wars fan. Took her to tfa and r1(she hasn't seen any others). She loved those and couldn't wait to see this one. She fell asleep around halfway through and said it was one of the worst/boring movies she can remember seeing. Def not just die hards that feel this was a bad movie.

As far as I'm concerned anyone giving this movie tons of praise gets moved into never pay attention to their review territory. Really curious to see what Andy greenwald/Chris Ryan say about it as they've been my go to for some time for finding great shows/movies I wouldn't have known about. Going to be supremely disappointed if they gush over it.

though I disagree with this. Reys parentage and Snoke are just 2 examples of important plot points being handwaved away from movie to movie. others:

- Lukes lightsaber goes from being hugely important to...nothing
- Knights of Ren are created and then aren't even mentioned anymore

haha, same here. I'm especially interested because their colleagues were not exactly hesitant to share their enthusiasm: https://www.theringer.com/2017/12/17...di-exit-survey

(it's a must-skim. highlights include the entire panel leaving RoTJ out of their top 3)

Reading that now as well. Disgusted by the lack of disgust at Superman Leia.

Superman Leia is the worst scene in the history of Star Wars movies

just had a thought - why the **** did they kill Admiral Ackbar offscreen when they could have made the conflict between Ackbar and Poe and then given Ackbar a heroic onscreen death. Jesus christ these hacks can't even do fan service right.

I don't get why everyone is so up in arms about this? If she can do the force (and she can, "no...there is another") then she can force grab the remote control, her keys, her makeup compact, whatever and draw it close to her. So of course she can grab a starship and pull herself to it. That's just physics!

Purple haired lady action figures. literally

or they were embarrassed to give the plot to Ackbar because it was so stupid. Why didn't she tell anyone else of her plan? I would have mutinied too. More importantly, why did she wait until they blew up 90% of the ships before deciding to Kamikaze. I can't have been the only one in the theater who wait waiting for her to put two and two together.

That's fair. I was over simplifying things, but as you said- the movie was boring. There really was no big battle though, other than the first 5 mins. Just two ships that somehow go the exact same speed chasing each other. At the end of the film I was expecting some sort of battle, but other than the Falcon vs. a few tie fighters, there was nothing.

I just truly didn't care what happened to anyone in the film besides Rey/Kylo/Luke.

if Leia had the power to survive being out in outerspace and floating through space to bring herself to her spaceship it's a real shame she never bothered to use those powers in other ways

everyone has the power to survive in space for as long as Leia did.

Have they ever explained how Rey, an orphaned scavenger, got so good at flying the Millennium Falcon and learned/mastered her unknown Jedi skills to the point of besting Kylo Ren in battle (who was personally trained for years by Luke and a Sith Lord), and then 3-4 days later after doing some meditation and hiking, took out half a dozen of a Sith lord's elite guards using a light saber?