I read the terrible Episode IX pitch where Rey is a robot

so recently sci-fi wire posted an article titled Star Wars writers predict how the Skywalker saga will end they approached seven different writers each of whom had written in some kind of official capacity for Star Wars before be that novelizations Marvel Comics expanded universe novels and they were asked to weigh in on various key aspects of the sequel trilogy Streck turi what's with Palpatine will kylo Ren be redeemed what will Rey go on to do etc etc some played it pretty safe when I noticed had a lot of the same thoughts that I did some even just hand waved certain prompts where they were like I don't really want to speculate about that which okay it's a Power Move and then there's beloved sci-fi author Alan Dean Foster he actually didn't engage with this interview at all when they tried to reach him for comment Foster's agent said that instead of an interview sci-fi could just pull excerpts from a treatment that he had already written for episode 9 if he wanted a sense of his pedigree Foster has written loads of books two of which are official Star Wars movie novelizations and two expanded universe novels I personally have not read his work before so I don't know what his baseline is I'm just getting all of this info from his Wikipedia page which kind of a little bit sounds like he wrote it himself just going by it's less than impartial tone and the fact that it includes information about his emotional response to various story beats in the Star Wars movies citation needed anyway the bits of the treatment that we had in the sci-fi article were so tantalizing and terrible so I had to go over to his very 90s chic website and read the rest of it which you know to do that you have to scroll back through his blog chronologically and I thought what the heck let's just read this together so that's what we're doing today and by today I mean it's 2:00 a.m. let's begin first I'm just going to copy and paste all of this into a word program so I'm not reading lime green text on a black screen for an hour log entry first of May 2018 we all ride our own movies we all write our own sequels after seeing the last Jedi as an author I could not escape pondering what I would put on screen for episode 9 where I given the opportunity to do so unusually I took the time to actually compose a treatment and here it is was fun to put together I love that he admits that this is pretty unusual because it is resurgence episode 9 fitting perfectly into the Star Wars naming conventions view from overhead of towering snow-capped mountains in the distance just being touched by a Rising Sun than a vast Green Valley continuing to move in closer on to a modest group of figures gathered a topic grassy peak we see that it is the small band of survivors from tlj they are standing in a circle quiet and thoughtful closer in on ray as something causes her to turn shade her eyes and peer into the distance alien music solemn percussion and brass close-ups on the mostly humanoid al Marines who are accompanied by other aliens and humans all holding up artificial torches move to high shot of a long impressive procession winding its way outward from a vast sprawling modern city thin ray poche vaca c-3po and r2 say a few words with that presumably ten minutes of screen time of now pass a simple coffin is brought forward through the transparent upper part of the canopy we see general Organa a grave appears let me unpack a few things firstly a grave appears is a very funny way to convey that there is a grave secondly I don't understand the utter uncreate if ax T of everyone assuming that because Carrie Fisher died in real life Princess Leia must die in the movies like if Daisy Ridley tragically died you kind of assume they would have to recast her or conspicuously write her out because she's the protagonist her physical absence could not easily be written around but the nature of Leia's involvement as like a mentor someone who is often orchestrating things from off screen communicating from a distance seems to me like she would be relatively easy to write in as alive but off screen and then just punctuated it with any available footage you still have of her which i think is just exactly what they're doing thirdly if you are going to kill Leia I can't think of a worse way to do it than just saying by the way she died off-screen especially if this is the first thing that happens in your whole movie furthermore it is ludicrous to me to assume that it makes sense that she would just have a big on-screen time taking up funeral as the music rises she is buried bending c3po whispers to a mournful art - it looks like Alderaan oh god back on the Falcon now what not much of a resistance left to resist some are ready to give up not Finn he angrily points out that he didn't flee the first order to give up po joins in they can still muster recruits across the galaxy but they need some time more importantly they need a leader all eyes turned to red startled she declines c-3po murmurs to r2 that there's something familiar about her he can't put a finger on it she's not fit she tells them they need someone with military experience someone who knows what the first order might do next attention immediately shifts to Finn he's surprised but having already forcefully stated his intentions he finally accepts he's come a long way I don't hate this but I do find it extremely bizarre because to me the way the former two movies have set it up it kind of seems like Poe is explicitly being groomed to take over the resistance is am I the only one getting that vibe like Leia and hold Oh had a whole conversation about his potential that's that's just the writing on the wall for me but okay it can be Finn that's fine maybe Poe just also thought that but after they've nominated Finn and no one thought to nominate him you don't want to look petty so now he's just never going to be in charge okay they need pilots support and most of all something to fight back with weapons ships and if possible allies r2 and bb-8 beep energetically the others listen baby baby baby I'm just going to imagine that this goes on for five uninterrupted minutes then thinks their joint idea is crazy but Poe thinks better of their idea might work if it can be brought to fruition they now have a strategy of sorts next they need allies what about their hosts the Al Marion's the Al Marion combo is big developed and powerful but the UH Marion's are neutral always have been even during the fight between the Empire and the rebellion Finn and Rey with c-3po in tow will try to persuade them to change their minds Wow I can't wait to watch this play out our heroes joylessly negotiating with aliens we've never met before Chewie and Poe take r2 and bb-8 to try and recruit new fighters to the cause poe really drew the short straw and this one didn't he good luck recruiting a whole army for the losing side buddy Oh take this big hairy monster that nobody understands and the two of our three droids that don't speak English Finn and Rey are hosted in the Al Marion capital city they make the argument that the first order is relentless and won't stop until it completely controls the known galaxy the al Marion's are neutral and intend to stay that way frustration ensues so Finn eventually asks if the Al Marion's can remain neutral but give the resistance supplies and weapons and they can't afford to pay for them they'll pay them back later I think this is meant to feel like finn is cleverly exploiting some kind of clever loophole but like it's not a loophole it's just objectively a not neutral thing to do the all Marines agree for some reason so okay you know being neutral is just our only defining trait and the only value our society seems to hold like our whole thing but you know I guess it's okay now they need to try and find allies within the first order itself more disgruntled fighters like Finn but where the Republic is dead it's home system destroyed well a second wasn't that post job to find allies wasn't that established like two paragraphs ago like team a was going to find people to back them financially and where to get weapons and supplies and then team B with Poe was going to recruit like soldiers and fighters and stuff what is post job then if he's not doing that did they just want him to go away for a while Rose makes a suggestion where did Rose come from he may also got Rose they just they really just claimed everybody who speaks English except Poe it's a daring but dangerous idea yet could be the best place to look for silent sympathizers cut - chorus on the planet-wide City Finn ray Andros make contact with resistance elements that have gone to ground they sympathize and would help but not with supreme leader snoke in charge Wraith in Rhodes are shocked by the refusal raise sovereign kill Snoke cut him in half what's going on here honestly I don't understand any of the reactions to this information because like the first order is kind of known for being propagandists and Liars and Ray saw Snoke die so if I was Rey I would just kind of be like well no no Snoke is dead I mean they're lying but I was there he's dead it's not like Snoke seemed to be putting in a lot of public appearances so if anything I would be like kylo Ren is pretending that Snoke is still there the first order is covering it up he's a figurehead something instead raised like gas lit by hearing this news like she starts second-guessing herself like instead of being like no that's not true he's dead she's just like what how can he be alive again from the dead even though all this information is coming from people much less directly involved than she is then something forceful staggers Rey he's trying to say that she's having a force vision cut to Ren confident but a bit bemused entering a vast elegant reception room the old Imperial quarters the doors close behind him and from a small door near the back enters Supreme Leader Snoke Rhenish stunned Snoke approaches grinning mirthlessly Ren says impossible you're dead Snoke says killed me yes you did want to kill me again is the dialogue always like this because if so honestly I kind of do want to read his books now also wait a second why did kylo think he was entering this reception room if not to have an audience with Snoke like and how did Snoke know he was going to be here did they trick him in here did they tell him they'd set up a birthday party for him how long was Snoke waiting behind his tiny door and why did they clarify that it was tiny red capes at him Snoke slightly lunges toward him acting on instinct ren draws his lightsaber and strikes Snoke down he stares tone at the Abell corpse only looking up at the sound of clapping hands his eyes widen as smoke appears from the same door near the back of the chamber well done well done smoke says do you wish to continue killing me or would you prefer an explanation I would honestly love this as a Power Move if there were only two smokes and the second one came out like would you like to kill me again and then kylo did and then the smoke was just dead and there are no more smoke this story just kind of moves on and then we see Kyle Oh years later and he's like I always wondered how there was a second smoke and why he let me kill him but I guess it doesn't matter now clone wars when Imperial scientists got very good at producing clones yeah obviously a small brilliant segment perfected the technology absolute duplication of the original down to the last neural connection which allowed for duplication of knowledge memories everything perfect cloning did Ren really think Snoke would allow him to destroy everything he had worked for first law of military strategy always have a reserve in waiting wait so we're meant to believe that an episode 8 when kylo killed Snoke Snoke either knew it was going to happen and or wanted it to happen allowed it to what end I love that he's explaining this like he has some kind of strategic upper hand but his strategic upper hand is just having infinite copies of himself so he can fail and die a lot of times and just keep screwing up into infinity so even if cloning is perfect and like the clone is going to behave exactly like you and have all your memories up to the last second isn't there still some kind of existential dread around the idea that the current version of you will still experience death and cease to exist and with that in mind why was he so willing to just drop two of them in a power play to demonstrate to kylo Ren that he has clones in a world with a confirmed afterlife and ghosts what are the spiritual implications of this kind of cloning does each Snoke possess its own soul capable of becoming its own ghost upon death so that in the force afterlife they're just so many snow isn't it also weird that he apparently has multiple snoke's already activated and conscious waiting in the wings for when he needs them like how far in advance does he start waking them up and and how are they cool with just waiting in the little closet do you think the snoke's had some kind of argument with each other over which one would get to come out and taunt kylo cuz like that would be pretty exciting and so unless you were the first one and you would get chopped in half how many clones of him are there Ren wanders smokes grin now turns into an evil grimace wouldn't you like to know he takes a throne like seat and beckons a weary run forward the resistance is finished but the girl is still a concern however slight a smart ruler leaves no enemies live no matter how few I love the idea of saying a smart man leaves no enemies alive directly to the man who you're keeping on your payroll after he's killed you twice Ren has a connection with the girl is she's still alive and no lies this time Snoke will know don't betray me or I'll know has got to lose some of its punch after the first couple times you've successfully killed a guy Ren focuses we see Rey react again as before she knows he knows snap back to the palace on Coruscant Snoke knows the truth without Ren having to say anything find her but what Snoke doesn't know and what Ren holds back from telling him is that Rey is right here under the Supreme Leader's nose on Khorasan in a visit to the planetary security authority he describes her to the local authorities utilizing a mind paint system as a viewer of this film I probably would have just accepted that the first order would be able to produce a photo of Rey from somewhere considering that like she's been on their base multiple times and they have surveillance everywhere and also considering that they have actively processed her as a prisoner on two separate occasions and no it's better to have a scheme specifically clarifying the minutiae of kylo Ren producing a police sketch of Rey using a mind paint system after Ren has left Snoke brings in Huck's time to bring reluctant systems into the fold Huck's names several that are ripe for takeover Snoke nods names three one of which is al meriya ray Finn and Rose accompanied by c-3po are gathering those resistance sympathizers whose hatred of the first order exceeds their fear of Snoke it occurs to find' that they don't need fleets to stop the first order they just need to stop Snoke plans are laid for an uprising on Khorasan wait so is the rest of the movie really just going to be set on the least exotic-looking setting in the entire Star Wars universe and the one that the least encapsulate s' the aesthetic of all of the original films I mean I personally loved Coruscant it's very The Jetsons and it's not the most aesthetically Star Wars thing in the universe montage showing the passage of time during which the uprising is set into motion the Al Marion's produce fighters for the resistance Ren and the authorities search for Rey stars has always been famous for its montages I'm just going to assume that this is all set to either a very out of place pop song over the Scooby Doo chase theme music Poe and Chewie arrive and begin to train new pilots wait where did they get those what if these guys you've been doing this whole time now right it doesn't matter a fleet appears off al meriya it's the first order under Huck's proclaiming that the Al Marion combine is now officially and gloriously welcomed into the Second Empire the Second Empire is functionally the same as the first order it's weird that it's still under Stokes management and nothing has really changed including nothing changing in his brain but he decided to rename it and I guess it's better because it sounds like the thing from the first Star Wars trilogy so that's that's the only reason I could imagine for that the a uriens protest that they are neutral guys we know a confident Hux replies that this is all for their own good better to be part of the glorious second empire then continue with some spineless unprotected neutrals the all Marion's can comply and all will proceed peacefully or they will be absorbed through for this is bad for our heroes because their ships are being built on al meriya and Poe is now going to have no way to get them out unless they can get the first order to go away or like clear a path and anxious poe informs rey of what's happening at all Miriah and that he won't be able to support her proposed uprising oh no I'm sure she's so sad that Poe can't make they owe the all Marion's a defense she eyes thin plans for the uprising are in motion too late to stop it now she tells Ben to go ahead and fight before the order / Empire finds out about their new ships Finn wishes her luck vice versa and may the force be with them both wait so his Finn not on Khorasan maybe that was just a typo and like when he said then he meant Poe or his Finn leaving Khorasan to go help Poe fight to defend almería but then in that case he'd have to get in through the first-order blockade which is like the whole problem so on almería a grim faced Poe and Chewbacca prepare to launch their limited force then the almarri and leader arrives po is coolly polite toward him until the Al Marion tells him that the combine has decided to fight for its neutrality there is much brotherly grasping of arms or maybe tentacles the Al Marion's will fight alongside the newly formed resistance squadrons look I'm really not invested in them being neutral I don't care it's not compelling but like this is not neutral this thing they're doing of joining forces with one side to fight the other side and also supporting them financially and and harboring them against the other ones none of this is neutral they kind of just haven't been neutral this entire time which is not ideal since their one trait is that they're neutral I don't know the neutrality is just a very tell and don't show situation and I realized that in a treatment you're just being told everything but we could still have a scene described wherein they act neutral on chorus entre and fin ignite the local rebellion making progress toward the palace complex there are enough citizens who hate the order / Empire to make a real sign of it against the security forces in the city streets underground etc Snoke is informed he is not worried under the stress of combat Rey lets her guard down for a moment Ren informed Snoke that she is right here in chorus aunt and even now heading toward the palace Snoke is delighted let her come his last concern will be eliminated just as the Skywalker line has been terminated which prompts Ren to ask why Snoke cares so much um if I was kylo Ren my second question would probably be why do you care so much my first question would probably be hey what what did you say about eliminating the entire Skywalker line is that your goal cuz I'm from that family I thought you just wanted to kill Luke and the Jedi you know I'm related to Luke right that I'm a Skywalker I know I still work for youagain snoke's expression Titans and we get a fast moving flashback to before episode 1 - before episode 4 which chronologically is after episode 1 so you could have just said before episode 1 like younger muscular and even handsome figured that we recognize as Snoke bullying others taking what he wants because he can leaning toward the dark side he's confronted by another a hooded figure who warns him that he is set on an untenable path Snoke is not afraid he feels he is more powerful with the force than anyone he and the hooded figure fight in a factory where Snoke is knocked to a vat of chemicals and we finally see the determined yet sympathetic figure of his opponent a young obi-wan Kenobi this oh my god that's truly the best thing so far I mean I don't look about even that it's obi-wan I just don't you just hate when your nemesis is trying to turn you to the side of good in a chemical factory ain't that just the way I guess it's all worth it if we get to see buffs no I'm 1 million percent on board for this flashback back in the palace Snoke turns on rent and his fury causes even Ren to draw back did he think Snoke declares as he indicates his ravaged face that he always looked like this I mean I kind of did because all of the clones that you've made of yourself have turned out looking exactly the way you look now was your chemical disfigurement genetic we're at least three clones deep at this point so yeah I did kind of assume that if there was some kind of buff movie star original Snoke we would have seen it by now Snoke vowed vengeance on Kenobi any of his relatives and every one of his pupils oh my god how many degrees of separation before you just stopped caring if you have some kind of amazing magical consciousness transplanting infinite cloning technology at your disposal why aren't you just like living out your days like that frolicking across this limitless galaxy that you run enjoying your buff immortality instead of wasting like 90 consecutive years trying to get revenge on a long dead guy who made your first body kind of ugly now Kenobi is dead Anakin / Vader is dead Leia Organa Skywalker is dead and finally Luke Skywalker is dead only ren lives but as a disciple of Snoke the best revenge on Kenobi there are so many caveats to this revenge plan so he's mad at Kenobi and he needs revenge on him but Kenobi is already dead and also all of his surviving family to our knowledge they're also all dead so then Snoke needs revenge on Kenobi's apprentice who also is dead so Snoke needs revenge on all of Kenobi's apprentices descendants except kylo kylo school even though he tried to kill him twice Oh succeeded in killing him twice that's fine but Snoke does need revenge on Rey the student of the descendant of the apprentice of the guy who disfigured snoke's first body's face but Snoke did not foresee this girl who was strangely strong with the force she's not a kenobi not a Skywalker but she is the last unpredicted impediment to his rise to complete power and mastery of the force okay so she just needs to die and it's unrelated to his backstory his backstory actually didn't matter his revenge is done forget the backstory he's gotta die cuz she's his enemy which we already knew man I'm glad we learned his backstory Snoke takes no chances she must die and she's coming here right to him truly the ways of the force are rich with irony we cannot tell what Ren is thinking you know what forget Ren I want to know what Alan Dean Foster is thinking we get along space battle but I'm skipping it because it's not very exciting to read basically Poe and the Al Marion's went out over Huck's because they have the idea to utilize drones giving them the advantage in firepower just because they have a lot of them there's also a line in there about how the first order has installed new shields that prevent attacks coming at Lightspeed which I assume is Alan Dean Foster expressing frustration about the whole doe maneuver thing which is just kind of ironic considering that he's now introduced a kind of law-breaking element that the characters can just use drones which if that had been the case all along everything would have been pointless and apparently you can just make so many drones on such short notice first-order slash Empire security I'm so glad he renamed it to also be Empire so now every time he mentions that he has to type first-order slash Empire when he could have just let it be called the thing it was already called verse order slash Empire security and crowd control battle the surging crowds Wraith in rows and supporters take down guards and fight their way into the palace complex they fight their way into the reception room ran is there asks her to surrender they can't win rey argues ran steps aside to reveal Snoke he greets her she and finn are shocked stunned c-3po is in ohdear mode she looks at ren c-3po is a girl alone he tells her perfect clone indistinguishable from the original how many she asks ren doesn't know more than she could defeat certainly more than he could more than they could together so he's gone fully back to the dark side he drops his head Snoke just laughs this time he won't make the same tactical error he made before not that it matters if he does he looks to his right two more snoke's come through the rear door too many so smoke never really struck me as a team player and I understand that he'd want to help you know himself but all these smokes aren't a hive mind they're not like sharing a consciousness they're just a bunch of clones with perfectly replicated memory so if all of these smokes have the same ambitious and selfish personality and their own lived experiences then how are so many of them content to be bossed around and used as cannon fodder well one of the other snoke's arbitrarily gets to put himself on the throne or sorry throne like seats activating her saber r8l sin and rose to get out continue the fight elsewhere she'll try to hold them off here no way they tell her they fire their weapons the trio of snoke's ward off the shots Snoke freezes the trio Rey drops her saber Snoke orders Ren to complete the work to complete himself firing up his saber Ren approaches the paralyzed Rey who struggles futile II to reach her own weapon I don't know about you guys but what I want from episode 8 is for it to return everything to the status quo from the beginning of episode 8 and then just kind of rehash all of the same scenes proceeding in an almost identical fashion even beat for beat and even with visually similar scenes but then they just end differently to reflect the way that I wanted them to go we're not moving past the stuff I didn't like we're just gonna go backwards now we're just repeating stuff from here on out inside Ren is clearly torn he doesn't want to kill ray but he can't resist Snoke any longer he apologizes steps back raises his saber and strikes Finn and roach scream at the last possible instant something knocks ray aside even so Ren's blow cuts the upper right side of her scalp she falls to the floor gasping Ren stands over her lightsaber poised to strike then red fin wrote an c-3po everyone looked to the main portal their expressions reflecting their utter astonishment a single figure stands there Luke Skywalker she comes forward impossible he's dead we all saw him die at the end of f8 or did we I mean with the kind of week these guys are having can they even pretend to be surprised by this Snoke one growls okay that's not Snoke one is it isn't it like Snoke three is Snoke one just the title of the current standing King Snoke you can be here I searched for you your life force had vanished from perception that's my subscribers whenever I go longer than two weeks between videos from this plane of existence yes doesn't mean I pass to the other I knew you'd keep searching for me using the force so I had to go away for a while to that space in between it's a quiet place the force allows it he smiles I was tired I needed a rest anyway Wow the perfect battle strategy make your enemies think that you're dead by actually being dead but just half way and then when you don't want to be dead anymore just stop being dead Rin screams that it's a projection just like on crate and attacks but this time Luke doesn't duck his strike in one smooth motion he activates his saber his original saber blocks the blow and flings ran aside but the real battle is between him and Snoke or rather snoke's yeah the real battle doesn't involve kylo or ray or any of her friends the new young main characters of this series the real fight is between this old guy who was the lead two trilogies ago and three clones of a different old guy who we don't know that much about this is what the fans want to see go stand over there or main characters of this trilogy it's time for Luke to fight Snoke three times with his original lightsaber whatever that means I think it's supposed to be his green one because that's the one that's not destroyed or physically accounted for and the fans want to see it but that was his second lightsaber so I have no idea what that's about I really hate that this is probably the exact movie some people wanted to see instead of episode 8 this kind of stupid stuff is what people who don't watch Star Wars think it's gonna be like and then they make fun of Star Wars descending down from his seat Snoke ignites a saber of his own so do his two doppelgangers the fight is on Luke kills one Snoke fights the remaining pair elsewhere the battle between the uprising and the security and guards rages Finn and Rose retreat outside among the chaos they hurriedly discuss what they have seen Snoke clones have to come from somewhere they race off I've totally lost a sense of where c-3po is gone in all this but also it's extremely weird that they brought him in the first place so I guess that's fine with Luke and the Snoke clones occupied with one another good band name Ren reaches down extending a hand to Ray then he notices something and freezes we see what he sees ray on the floor breathing hard the upper right side of her head cut away and cauterized amid the exposed bone a small freeform transparency fills part of her head melding sinuously with her brain behind the transparency lights flash and twinkle reaching up ray touches the exposed area and draws back her hand in shock the revelation is as unexpected to her as it is to us I was Realty see what's going on with the upper right side of her own scalp Ren says droid part troy'd no wonder you mastered the use of the force so quickly no wonder you learned so quickly hybrid monster all sympathy all potential affection vanishes from him in an instant so I'm so let's ignore for a second that mechanical prosthetics seem to be a pretty commonplace thing in the Star Wars universe like kind of on par with just getting fillings in your teeth my favorite thing about this is that it's presented as an explanation for why Rey is so good at the force as if this is a plot thread left hanging when force ability has always been a thing that manifests spontaneously and people from all walks of life and then is cultivated through meditation and spirituality to things I would imagine droids are not especially gifted uh he strikes down with his lightsaber rolling rey dodges the blow grabs her own weapon ignites it and fights back they battle I would ask how Rey is not medically in shock from having part of her skull cut away but I think good Star Wars shock just doesn't exist like it's kind of accepted that as long as the wound is cauterized you just have things cut off and you're fine Luke kills another Snoke he forces the last one backward Snoke taunts him truly you are a master of the force Skywalker but so am i and you are one looks toward the back door I am a multitude from the rear door way more snoke's bursts into the room all armed with lightsabers I always knew the Star Wars sequel trilogy would end here and Khorasan with the main character of another trilogy fighting an army of clones of a guy he has no personal connection to there are a lot of lightsabers here so technically this is a really good action sequence amid the combat raging outside Finn and Rose save a high official from being killed by the mob the Supreme Leader's clones where do they come from they persuade the official to show them and head off but not before they have acquired some grenade like weapons from dead security personnel the frightened official shows them the guarded place where Stokes clones are churned out while Finn holds off the guards Rose sets the explosives they have acquired only for her to be trapped with them inside the complex as alarms blare an emergency doorway slam shut she and Finn exchange a look I'm sorry wait how did this blunder occur you mean to tell me that this cloning facilities one and only automated security response is to just close a bunch of doors and lock the intruder in with all the vulnerable clothes and expensive machinery and didn't foster unnecessarily described the explosives as grenade light last I heard the opposite of what you do with a grenade is like walk with it somewhere and set it down and like place them all over the room methodically and take your time with them why didn't they just lob a few through the doorway why did they even split up like how his thin holding off the guard above more and more snoke's pour into the room Snoke snarls at Luke give up he can't possibly win stepping back Luke Ben's picks up a fallen saber maybe he can't but he feels that the force is with him it always has been even when he was at his lowest moments also these are with him he activates the second lightsaber and begins to swing both making two circles then he starts to cross them in front of him and then he begins to pivot faster and faster a veritable dervish surrounded by a ball of multicolored energy he plows into the multiple snoke's obliterating them they can't reach him through the energy sphere he is creating around himself are there honestly people who want this I just want to make it clear that anybody who said the imagery of Leia flying through space was like cheesy or weird is disqualified from defending veritable dervish Luke Skywalker nearby Ren presses Rey they lock sabers he taunts her she came from nowhere her parents were nobodies he will show her let her though she tries to resist but cannot in her mind she sees a rapid montage oh good another famous Star Wars montage her parents junk dealers with an infant an infant with a deformed skulls oh wait the Ray backstory from episode 8 is still true but now just in addition to the robot brain thing they take her to a renegade surgeon on jakku there is one possible operation but it's experimental and highly dangerous it could kill her her parents agree to it ray's operated on the shape of her head is made normal but with part droid componentry inside to keep her alive I have to say that when I found out Rey had a robot brain it never crossed my mind for a moment that it was too cosmetically correct a lumpiness in her head natural skin and hair grow swiftly over the surgical opening her parents can't handle her they abandon her as a young girl paying what they can to unkar plutt to look after her he abandons her as a child but she turns scavenger and somehow survives this is another one of those baffling windows into Foster's creative process like if you really wanted to run with the original sold her for drinking money thing and add this new robot brain thing it seems to me like it would be pretty easy to add this new thing where like her parents sold her to a mad doctor for Hewson medical experimentation it conveys the same emotional narrative of like betrayal and unfairness and it's actually even more betrayal at this point because it's meaner and said we have these bizarre crossed wires we're like Rey's parents loved her enough to try to get her this expensive experimental surgery to fix her lumpy head and it worked and then unrelated later at some point they just became tired of her and sold her for tequila brie is shaken by the recovered memories she relaxes sways shuts off her saber Ren holds off still conflicted but finally decides that he has to kill her to save her from herself to purify the force for his own sake she falls backward her eyes closing and resignation and exhaustion and he moves in right into her reactivated lightsaber as her eyes snap open startled run through and as conflicted as ever Ren dies in front of her killed in the same way he killed his father Wow beautiful I kind of expected some kind of closure regarding which side he would eventually choose but this works too here lies kylo Ren never really found out what his deal was Luke exhausted halts the fireball that has surrounded him vanishes three snoke's remain the first leader is triumphant first leader okay sure a Jedi Master may go on and on but a lightsabers power is finite the trio of Snoke surround him it's over I didn't know that a lightsabers power was finite did they just run out of battery is that way legacy sabers are highly valued and passed down through multiple generations I mean I guess in addition to the Kyber crystal they have power cells that are like batteries so they could just run down or something my understanding was that those just last a really really long time but I'm gonna look it up if assembled correctly a powered cell could last indefinitely and require no further maintenance from the operator okay so yeah below Finn yells that the imprisoned Rose but she just smiles at him a resigned smile as she sets off the explosives Finn ducks away the clone manufacturing area is destroyed well if it's any consolation at least she didn't die in a stupid and preventable way above a startled smoke reacts with his attention momentarily distracted Luke reactivates his twin sabers and throws them to snoke's are speared and killed the surviving Snoke looks toward the rear doorway but there are no more Snopes no more replacement first leaders the many have been reduced to one but it is enough why would he think it's enough Luke just killed 50 of these when they were fighting him all at the same time so I don't know why he thinks that this one remaining one is going to have some tactical advantage raising his own weapon he starts forward Luke waits for the end oh I guess Luke also decided he's done for I guess because he's disarmed too bad that he threw both his lightsabers across the room and has no ability to put them back into his hands Luke Rey throws him her lightsaber Luke catches it and ends Snoke oh that's good it seems like he had ample time for a lightsaber to fly through the air into his hand and then once he had it it was extremely easy to kill Snoke so it's a good thing array was there to throw it to him in fact it's kind of weird that Rey wasn't helping fight the last few snoke's since her only opponent died like several minutes ago she's just been standing there armed why didn't Snoke consider that he was outnumbered and I didn't luke think he was going to die I guess they both just kind of forgot she was in the room good job ray totally justifying your role as protagonist of this trilogy he stumbles over to Ray and she falls against him sobbing we see the exposed part of her brain twinkling there's some stiff competition but that I think that is the best sentence in this treatment he called me a monster I am a monster see that guy over there oh right he's dead okay yeah I guess it doesn't actually matter that much Luke steps back eyes her and holds up his mechanical hand you're not a monster you're ray just an enhanced version together they had out of the reception room I guess to feel better she just had to be reminded of the really obvious fact that it's very commonplace in this universe and now she's fine above almería Poe and r2 are triumphant so are the L marinas but they're still determinately neutral their leader warns Poe sure sure whenever you say grinning Poe replies our two informs him that via the secret hyperspace communications channel that he has been told that the first leader is no more and that Rey and Finn are all right but Rose Finn an r2 turned sober I'd really love to see what a sober r2d2 looks like they head back down to the surface of almería in the palace on chorus on the victorious uprising salutes Luke and Rey as they emerge from the palace into the surrounding area which is littered with smoking fighting machines etc c-3po brushing it himself follows behind I knew there was something familiar about that girl he mutters I am c-3po is that the payoff that he somehow was able to tell that she had a half robot brain cuz that's not familiar it's not like she is part of a droid that he's met and also like what are the implications of that are we meant to believe that something in her nature was changed by having a robot brain because that's not very uplifting Luke suddenly staggers has to sit down up against a tree in the Imperial Park a concerned Rey bends over him how can rave and muster concern at this point when just in the short time she's known him he's set a precedent for doing this after every single battle he smiles it's alright everything is alright now the force is finally in balance she tells him he's going to be okay he tells her he is already okay there is however one small thing she has to do for him what anything he smiles tiredly just a little thing take care of the galaxy he looks toward the Setting Sun one Sun this time his smile widens if there's one thing I love it's seen a third movie in a trilogy that's just a beat for beat slightly stupider reiteration of the same thing that happened in the second movie in the same trilogy it's definitely more poignant this time seeing Luke die in the same position under similar circumstances again looking at the Sun but this time it's only one so it's not an echo of his past it's actually just a reference back to his previous death which I guess we're meant to feel nostalgic for it's great that in Episode eight Luke expends a lot of force energy and then it's established through dialogue that that can kill you and then he dies for that reason and in this movie he just kind of physically exerts himself and is fine and then walks around and goes to a park and then sits down and suddenly just dies for seemingly no reason he stops breathing no in between existence this time he whispers something and Beru and dies eyes open staring aunt Beru not ob1 not han not anybody who's touched his life recently not Sarthe Vader or Padme or even uncle Owen for reasons unknown to us I'm not going to question why Luke the human man is thinking in his dying moments about the woman who raised him but as a storytelling beat it is odd it's just a little curious that across all these stories she's literally never come up since the moment she was burned to death and like he seemed to get over it really quickly and be off on his space adventures she was just kind of a roadblock he had the get past furthermore the audience has no real understanding of aunt Beru as a character very little frame of reference for her relationship with Luke and no emotional attachment to her at all I guess this is just some kind of callback nod I assume we're meant to understand that aunt Beru is well I mean Luke to the afterlife as confirmation that he's actually dead and not just half dead again and I guess uncle Owen was busy today or something there's just something so charming on a meta level about Luke blurting out the words aunt Beru it's like a reference as his last words with no precedent for her being mentioned in any of the other movies this trilogy holding back her sobs Rey gently closes his eyes c-3po is there to comfort her I'd like to take this opportunity to gently question Foster's choice to have c-3po shoulder most of the emotional beats in this story what to c-3po comforting somebody even look like is he embracing her with his rigid metal arms whispering to her through his gaping expressionless mouth I understand that c-3po traditionally has moments of sentimentality they're usually used for contrast though like he's often the comic relief character a coward even selfish that makes it sweet when he worries about his friends and tries to help them so given the contrast thing I feel like that means you get like one per movie and it can't just be constant I clearly foster love c-3po he's had more dialogue than any other character but in this whole movie he's just kind of been sentimental c-3po all the time it's kind of repetitive and weird is the first-order slash Empire really finished c-3po doesn't know but he has seen a great deal and if he has learned anything it is that nothing is ever really completely for certain reaching up he touches her exposed skull portion no has anyone told her lately how really beautiful she is no she sniffs then starts to laugh softly then her expression changes as she sees thin battered but alive limping out of the smoking Imperial complex he comes toward her and she rises to meet him c-3po shakes his head dolefully organics I'll never understand them okay c-3po closing out the movie yeah why not with c-3po just intended to be the protagonist this whole time because like Luke showed up really late it definitely wasn't Rey we pull back as Finn hurries to embrace Rey with c-3po behind them Luke sitting peacefully smiling beneath the tree I love the foster just forgot po existed at some point the end and then he leaves us with this note this story follows upon the events of episode 8 expanding upon them correcting certain errors and filling in plot holes and without contradicting anything that appeared in the previous film that which could not be corrected is passed over so couple things one turning in something as tragically bad as this and then ending with a note about how it's better than the most recent film is a bold move and two I love that this note is basically like I was unhappy with the way things went in episode 8 and I tried to unright some of them in this because like dude we know you weren't playing your cards close to your chest on this one okay so says it's over let me just get out my carving knives and really dissect this they're friendly carving knives they're like the kind that you carve jack-o'-lanterns with and then they have like a little orange handle it's made of plastic and the handle has a smiling Pumpkin face on it so you know that it's friendly one thing we have to establish about foster for fairness is sake is that he was at a distinct disadvantage from everyone else in the sci-fi article because this was not originally written for the sci-fi article everybody else featured knew they were being asked to make predictions not just like pie-in-the-sky goals or ideas or how they wanted it to go like actual predictions which is not at all what this is the others all played it about as safely as you would expect them to they also were writing their opinions in December of 2019 so they had the benefit of all the promotional materials that have come out for the film all the trailers all the other speculation happening around them for example if Alan Dean Foster had known that Palpatine was coming back I am very confident that he would have been extremely excited and also I assume he wouldn't have bothered to bring Snoke back he would have just rolled with Palpatine I presume he only went to all that trouble to bring Snoke back because for some reason he decided his story really needed a very powerful evil old guy and Snoke was the one that he believed was available to him although it is kind of funny to me that like he didn't think bringing Luke back was off the table but for some reason bringing Palpatine back just didn't occur to him this whole story treatment is so baffling to me it conveys such a weird in a bill roll with any punches if you're spinning a fantasy scenario with episode 9 and you can just have whatever you want to have happen happen then like your job is to move forward from there and like anything you didn't like you can put in new stuff too like overcorrect you don't have to undo it all you're really just going to squander your entire run time backpedaling and retconning things that bugged you in the last movie I swear two-thirds of this entire treatment or just resetting the chessboard and then the remaining third is Luke fighting clones this doesn't feel like an episode 9 it's just an extremely sloppy and embarrassing rewrite of episode 8 if anything if you're really upset with where this story left you and you feel like you have something to prove and you want to do better than the last one that you hated so much shouldn't that be some kind of interesting creative challenge if Rey doesn't speak to you as a protagonist and you can't really connect with ROS and you don't understand what kylo ren's deal is like you're in your fantasy in charge now you can change all that like this is your opportunity to imbue them all with character traits that you respond to instead you get this bizarre product where Rose is killed on ceremoniously kylo is killed on ceremoniously and raised sidelined just fighting a boss in the corner for the whole ending of the story while Foster brings back all the characters he liked from the 70s and just puts them back in the starring role it's so embarrassing can you imagine in the original trilogy if we spent all this time with Luke and then he wasn't Darth Vader's son and then in the final movie obi-wan comes back from the dead and just kills Vader for him but there are six Vader's and Luke's like standing there like get'em obi-wan it's even stranger that he's so intent on bringing Snoke back of all people if he doesn't like the other new characters we know even less about snow why was Snoke so indispensable to the story that we had to waste multiple monologues justifying bringing him back in and it's bizarre to me that for some reason foster knew what trajectory he wanted to send Finn on and smoke and even c-3po but Rose had to explode and Rey's primary emotion was weeping over men dying or not liking her if you remove Rey from this story nothing changes not one thing just no impact at all not to be mean but I've never heard a story concept so devoid of emotion excitement or purpose there's some effort to harken back to iconic imagery from previous films but it's done so clumsily and betrays a total misunderstanding of what the point of imagery is and why it's ever employed in any film the narration proudly points out that kylo Ren is killed in the same way he killed his father but not really I mean he was wounded in the same place but it was very different circumstances she wasn't betrayed by someone he loved he didn't passively let it happen he didn't die content or disillusioned or really anything but startled what does it mean that kylo and han both died of a stomach wound because it kind of appears to mean nothing kylo didn't repeat the mistakes of his father it's not a direct link it's not really ironic either qui-gon jinn also died of a stomach stab wound and we're not meant to treat that as a symbolic connection I think this is also what Foster was trying to do with Rosa's death it's visually and circumstantially very similar to her sister they're both sacrificing themselves for the cause and content to do so and it's an explosion what does that mean as a character beat because Rosa's relationship with her sister wasn't really called into question she didn't resent her sister's choice or the resistance for that happening Rose dying in a similar way it doesn't present a conclusion to any character growth or conflict it's just a similar thing happening again the funniest thing to me is his assertion that he's correcting plot holes when I look at the sum total of things that he retconned from the last Jedi the list is like Luke being dead I guess him dying was a plot hole in that foster wasn't happy that that happened Snoke being dead instead of Snoke being alive a hundred times that was a pretty big plot hole and of course Rose being alive instead of Rose being dead in an explosion I'm so glad he fixed that plot hole anyway I didn't like this I thought it was very bad but I did have a fun time reading it I'm glad that I did I don't begrudge Alan Dean foster wanting to write embarrassing speculative fanfic about how he wanted the story to go I literally just did that in my last video with frozen - and don't worry I was bullied for that so all is well I would love if everyone's sequel trilogy ideas could get me into movies because some of them would be awful and it would be really funny but if you untie Roenick li want to see a movie like this that's totally fine but also I don't think we could ever be friends okay I guess that's it bye you liked when Ray was a robot that was fun at least in the end we did have a justification for c-3po having so many emotional beats it was to set him up as a love interest obviously I'm Heike disappointed that Rey's iconic 3 bun style didn't tie into the robot twist like as soon as it was like being spun I was already envisioning that the three bun style was going to be some kind of weird compensation for her lumpy head

Channel: Jenny Nicholson

Views: 753,780

Rating: 4.9254613 out of 5

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Id: aanyjLmB1Bs

Length: 53min 46sec (3226 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 18 2019

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A Series of Unfortunate Snokes