[psmith2.0]

Okay, my final word on all this (thank God). But don't worry, this is kinda funny/entertaining.

Sunday before last, December 15, I pasted over in "The Saga Ends" thread a random, as-I-thought-of-them list of 22 predictions for The Rise of Skywalker, stating that I was confident I'd easily nail 50% of them, and possibly more in the 75-80% range.

Well...

Below is pasted, verbatim, what I typed on December 15. The bolded entries are the things I got right (and new commentary in italics afterwards.


- Gonna be as much of a "soft remake" of Return of the Jedi as The Force Awakens was of the 1977 original...idiotically so, at times (the height of laziness and fan-service chain yanking; it's J.J. Abrams...so let's not delude ourselves into believing otherwise) *The Emperor, Lando, Death Star 2 (including Palpatine's throne room where Luke and Vader fought in ROTJ), Ewoks/Endor, final three-venue battle (air, ground/surface and Jedi/Sith lightsaber), showing aftermath/celebrations across other planets at the end, Luke's green saber, return to Tatooine, forest scenes, Force ghosts smiling at the hero in the closing shots, the Falcon/Lando leading other ships into final battle, red Palpatine guards, music/dance scene, floating skiff/hovercraft in desert setting, Death Star planet-killing tech, Force lightning, lightsaber-throwing, etc. Probably another 5-10 things I just can't recall right now.

- Lando winds up regaining ownership of the Falcon by the end of the movie (Chewie? See below) *Nope, it's Rey's...and that's totally fine with me. She flies it as well as Han ever did, so why not?

- There will be at least one Ewok scene (Wicket/Warwick Davis)...remember, this is ROTJ take 2 *Well of course...a complete no-brainer!

- Force lightning, lots of it, including some from an unexpected source (Rey) *Yep, including the Rey part.

- Threepio's red eyes have to do with programming/reset/alternate "protocol" mode (not somehow becoming an evil "Sith droid"); that's a classic trailer fake-out to make it look more ominous and WTF?! than it really is His memory had to get erased to allow him to bypass his programming so that he could translate some Sith text on a dagger; when he "booted back up", he had red eyes and a different, more monotone/robotic voice, but it wasn't "Sith evil/possession" but just a different operating/translation mode

- Leia dies (Han, Luke and so why not?) Makes production easier, the earlier she goes...not being cruel, just realistic/practical; CGI only gets you so far and nobody wants to be staring at Carrie's uncanny valley for two-plus hours... *Odd that she seemed to have a bit more dialogue/things to do in a movie filmed/released after Fisher died in real life.

- A who's who of saga-wide Force ghosts will surely appear at some point (Yoda, Obi-Wan, Anakin, Qui-Gon, Luke, possibly Leia if she winds up dying), either as a big group or individually throughout, as Rey needs inspiration or enlightenment; I'm thinking Luke may appear more than a few times, visually or voice, since that's her true link/connection to all this stuff and he'll need to be there to guide her *I only missed the form in which they'd appear (voices, vs. their blue glowing form). But it was all of them, and then some (confirmed by the credits): Yoda, Obi-Wan, Mace Windu, Qui-Gon, Anakin, Luke, and voiced by the actors who portrayed them in other installments: Oz, McGregor/Guiness, Jackson, Neeson, Christensen, Hamill. Also Ahsoka Tano and Aayla Secura. They all came to Rey to give her strength/encouragement when she needed it most. And Force ghost Luke appears twice to Rey.

- Chewie hangs it up and "retires" back to his planet/family by the end...he's put in all these years of fighting/sacrifice, he's done being someone's sidekick/wingman; this will be the only genuine tear-jerker in the movie for many (I'm almost crying just thinking about it). *Nope, he seems to stick with his friends.

- Rey is a Skywalker, and why it took them three movies to confirm this is beyond me; surely she's Han and Leia's daughter (which means I hope she and Kylo don't accidentally get it on at some point because that isn't going to fly twice; we overlooked all that business in 1983, don't ask us to do it again). *Missed this one, a biggie. She's Palpatine's granddaughter!

- Kylo dies; he's beyond redemption and, despite J.J.'s presence, I'd like to think they're not going to go the ROTJ "redemption" moment route, again; he's killed too many good people to come back from that. While he may have a small "hero" moment/death in him, even if it's just tossing a saber or something along those lines, I just can't picture him "turning good" after everything; I think "Ben Solo" is long gone, which may bear on Leia's fate/role in some way... *He did die, and he did redeem himself/return to Ben and abandoned the Kylo Rey persona. He joined, and fought beside, Rey against the Emperor, his guards and the Knights of Ren, so yeah...he did have a "hero" moment. And when he died (and disappeared) Leia's already-dead body also disappeared into the Force. She'd died a little earlier reaching out to him with the Force.

- Palpatine isn't in true body form; it'll be some sort of weird glowing spirit/clone/ghost mumbo-jumbo (the reason we've yet to see him in any trailers or marketing material) *I wish the movie better explained all this, but between hints at cloning, "the dark side being a pathway to abilities some fine unnatural" (Palpatine repeats his line he made to Anakin from Revenge of the Sith), he was hooked up to some mechanical arm and hoses, he "healed" when drawing life force from Rey and Kylo, etc. I'm claiming a "yes" on this because there was something creepy and unnatural going on. It wasn't just regular ol' Palpatine...he didn't seem to be an outright ghost, but there appeared to be some Sith alchemy/ooga-booga at play and this thing wasn't completely the Palpatine we saw on the second Death Star in 1983, IMO.

- Related to that, the little Baby Green Frog from the Mandalorian winds up being part of the reason for his return...extracted Force-healing/ghosting mojo decades prior leads scientists or Sith devotees to conjure up some Palpatine + Frankenstein abomination *Gotta claim partial credit on this one...while there seemed to be no direct ties to Palpatine's return (unless something is revealed in the final episode this coming Friday), the Force healing that Rey uses twice and Kylo uses once in the movie seems to directly spring from the little Baby Force Frog doing this in episode 7 that aired last Wednesday, two days before the movie opened. This particular ability, as we saw it used in TROS has never shown up in the previous eight movies, so I'm not sure how suddenly Rey and Kylo have "healing touch" powers, but they do. Maybe we learn something a bit more concrete/helpful Friday?

- Finn lives, Poe lives. And no, they don't make out or declare their love for one another *However, there is a same-sex kiss shown between two female Resistance members in the closing celebration.

- Rose lives, nobody gives a shit Yep, and yep.

- At least two fake-out/rug-pull "deaths" (Poe, Chewie, etc.). *Nailed it...Chewie, Rey, Kylo and, in a way, Threepio

- Hux dies, as do all the First Order bigwigs; but before that, Hux will have some weird twist/angle to it because it's been pretty useless and played a bit too broadly all this time, leading me to believe that there has to be something more (he's the offspring of someone famous, or he'll reveal something really big; he just seems to have been wasted for two movies, but his rank/position puts him in a position, as a foil/adversary to Kylo, to throw a wrench into things in some way. I don't think he's a traitor or anything along those lines, but I don't fully buy him as a all-out, true evil villain either (I just don't think he's 100% on board with the Kylo/Snoke/First Order stuff); I started thinking this in The Last Jedi, from a couple of things he said/did, and the look on his face in a few scenes; he may prove to be one of the more interesting parts to all this, just from how utterly underused he's been so far; they've saved it for something, I truly believe Nailed the shit out of this. He was indeed a mole, helping the Resistance throughout. I KNEW there was something going on with this guy. But it was funny how it played out...not because he's any fan/supporter of the Resistance, but just that he hates Kylo Ren so much!

- If all these ships are returning, lined up behind the Falcon in the trailer, then we're going to see some familiar ones, from all eras of the saga...some more obscure than others, some big crowd pleasers (Slave 1, etc.). The occupants of a few of them may make for a genuine "holy crap!" moment; a familiar face/character or two putting in a final appearance *I'm reading that the Ghost from that Rebels TV show is indeed present, plus I recognized some Rebel fleet ships and a few other models I don't know the names of. And we saw Wedge(!) manning the Falcon gunner chair at the end. Odd that he wasn't in an X-wing, but we still saw him, silver hair and all. Literally a 1-2 second cameo where he has a line directed toward Lando in the cockpit.

- Han Solo/Harrison Ford appears (yes, it's the stupidest thing ever, but, again, it's J.J...I put nothing past him and his fan-service desires; whether it's a dream sequence, flashback or "vision", he'll appear; I'd like to think he wouldn't be a glowing blue Force ghost (for dozens of reasons), but, again, you never can tell with this bunch. And as one final J.J.-ism, his appearance/presence won't be explained in any reasonable way...it'll just "happen", Just Because™; we'll just have to figure it out, fill in the blanks, fan-theory it to death, etc. *Particularly proud of this one because it was the one friends and others in real life told me I was crazy for predicting. But I just knew...I knew J.J. wasn't going to pass up the chance. Apparently a vision/hallucination by Kylo, but I'm not 100% sure. They had a full-on conversation, so I guess it was just Kylo talking to himself or imagining what it might go like?

- Anakin most certainly has to appear, either with the other Force ghosts or in some sort of final acknowledgement/torch pass to Rey (the start of the saga, the end of the saga). Sebastian Shaw is long dead, and the pedo-leering Anakin is apparently canon now, so look for Hayden Christensen...robed, glowing, blue and still unable to act *Got the "he did appear", missed the form (voice vs. physical/visual). He was among the voices encouraging Rey.

- BB8 remains with Rey, as Artoo did with Luke all those years; that's her droid/sidekick now *Definitely. In fact, these two are the last characters we see, staring into the Tatooine twin sunset, just before the iris-out to credits.

- Lando will be used mostly as comic relief, and they'll play up the "smooth hustler"/ladies man aspect (there will be some cringe-y reference to that whole droid-banging thing, unfortunately). He lives, BTW I won't claim this in full, but he did have a couple of lines/expressions meant to be funny. And I can't tell if he was hitting on Jannah a bit at the end? Partial credit.

- Tatooine, twin suns (likely the very final scene, with someone - or several someones - staring into the sunset before iris-out)...I'm guessing Rey and BB8, with or without some blue-glowing company... *See above...how could it be anything but? The last five minutes of the movie were my favorite...Rey returning to the Lars homestead on Tatooine to bury Luke and Leia's lightsabers and (IMO, theory) sizing up the joint for a possible future Jedi academy. Her expression didn't strike me as wistful nostalgia, but, rather one of purpose and wheels turning in her head as she looked around the place, into the rooms in the the sunken pit area, etc. That's what I took from the scene, but I could be wrong. She might've hopped back on the Falcon with BB-8 after watching the suns set, never to return again. And Force ghost Luke and Leia appear, so I got that. I thought it might've been many more, but you end with the human twins plus the twin suns, so I guess that was more appropriate.

That's 18 out of 22 (17 full, plus two partial credits = 1). I believe that puts it squarely in the 80% neighborhood? I'll take it.