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the first half of probably my least favourite scene in rise of skywalker, luke's island adventure

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fevered.earth/index.php/20... #StarWars

There’s an odd set of symmetries here that don’t quite resolve into anything meaningful: Rey arrives in Kylo Ren’s TIE and leaves in Luke’s X-Wing. Rey throws Luke’s lightsaber into the fire and finds Leia’s lightsaber in a wall. Kylo Ren crushed Rey’s wayfinder on the Death Star ruins but she pulls his from the wreckage of the TIE. Luke tried to kill Kylo and fled to the island and Rey healed Kylo and fled to the island. Han’s ghost inspires Kylo to turn good and Luke’s ghost inspires Rey to continue the plot. Someone was trying to make a film that was about something here, but all we have is torn up patterns in the sand. And two lightsabers.

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Jamie Faith @jamiefaith.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

SCENE #25: THE POWER OF TWO 43 INDIVIDUAL SCENES FROM 'RISE OF SKYWALKER' is a project reviewing each scene from the final star wars film, one by one, in a random order fevered.earth/index.php/20... #StarWars

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My man Chris Terrio with the impossible task of trying to salvage TROS

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the first half of probably my least favourite scene in rise of skywalker, luke's island adventure

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Benjamin (he/him/his) @benzed.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

i get a lot of emails intended for other people but it's rare they have this much dramatic unity

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The shape of the Trade Federation's ship at the beginning of the Phantom Menace is a sphere within a larger circle — it's a visual representation of the theme of symbiosis that runs throughout the saga and is especially important to Phantom Menace.

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fevered.earth/index.php/20... #StarWars

I’m sure this has been long since hammered into the dust of discourse, but it’s striking how unbounded the scope of the problem the Resistance face here is. Even the Death Star, the point of which is to grant the Empire seemingly unbeatable power, is circumscribed within that big, simple circle. If you can X that out, the rebels win. Here it seems like even if the Exegol fleet just flopped out of the sky it’d be a mammoth job to mop up the pieces – there’d be a trove of only slightly scuffed materiel just lying around that maybe wouldn’t be as impressive as a completed fleet for the First Order but surely would be a concern. There’s just way too many of them, and what are they doing? Hovering? Something went very wrong in the conception of this climax but it’s hard to imagine what because the rolling infinite fleet is the very concept, there’s no obvious way to handicap it that would make the Resistance fight against it seem even plausible. It’s meant to be the arrival of the also-infinite Lando fleet, I guess, but those two things don’t just cancel each other out.

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Gizka Core 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @gizkacore.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

unwisely considering the logistics of the final order fleet

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I'm like those OG vampires where if you spill a bunch of beans everywhere, they'll stay up counting each one all night. instead of beans though, it's calculating how many ships can travel through a dangerous, barely charted hyperlane into and out of the unknown regions all at once?

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Gizka Core 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @gizkacore.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I frankly dgaf about the ST, but given how there IS an in-universe history book that applies historical materialism to the wider Star Wars universe.... that also begs for a sequel in-universe historian to map out the logistics of both fleets respectively... that I can't help but want to figure out

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unwisely considering the logistics of the final order fleet

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SCENE #24: LOG.EXE 43 INDIVIDUAL SCENES FROM 'RISE OF SKYWALKER' is a project reviewing each scene from the final star wars film, one by one, in a random order fevered.earth/index.php/20... #StarWars

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i'm not saying that me paying attention to rise of skywalker like this has summoned an episode X into existence, but i can't disprove it

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fevered.earth/index.php/20... #StarWars

Luke turning to dust on the wind in The Last Jedi is logical enough in context, I guess – his teachers were Obi-wan and Yoda, so he kinda has to follow suit. But Luke is a character who ultimately follows a spiritual path (even if there’s plenty of adventuring along the way). It’s easy enough to read his passing from the mortal plane as a metaphor of transcendence, as with Obi-wan. He escapes Kylo and the First Order like Ben escaped Vader. Leia’s death, however, is much harder to explain. Unable (by virtue of the method used to keep her in the film) to explain what she’s attempting or why, she dies and subsequently vanishes like Leonard Nimoy in the Simpsons, a flat statement that the time for Leia to be occurring is over now.

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SCENE #23: THE END 43 INDIVIDUAL SCENES FROM 'RISE OF SKYWALKER' is a project reviewing each scene from the final star wars film, one by one, in a random order fevered.earth/index.php/20... #StarWars

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filmic stress device @fevered.earth · 26/09/2026

i'm not saying that me paying attention to rise of skywalker like this has summoned an episode X into existence, but i can't disprove it

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fevered.earth/index.php/20... #StarWars

Even the downtime part, with Finn and Poe accusing Chewie of cheating at space Warhammer, is charming and efficient. The pedant in me wants to mark down the naked appeals to nostalgia, the flickery stop-motion figurines from A New Hope being hauled out again (and not for the last time) despite being a wholly inconsequential part of that movie; it’s weird that it’s the same, that we never see a different space board game. Where’s space Settlers of Catan, maybe Chewie sucks at that. Maybe he gets all the bad dice rolls. Still, it’s all charming and it makes something of Chewbacca’s mostly unremarked-on status as the elder statesman of the group – this guy knew Yoda, was involved in the destruction of two Death Stars, and introduced his mother to Han Solo for Christmas. They should give him a medal.

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filmic stress device @fevered.earth · 26/09/2026

SCENE #22: HELLO, BOOLIO 43 INDIVIDUAL SCENES FROM 'RISE OF SKYWALKER' is a project reviewing each scene from the final star wars film, one by one, in a random order fevered.earth/index.php/20... #StarWars

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filmic stress device @fevered.earth · 26/09/2026

come read the essays that posters on reddit describe as "An attempt to be the next Pinkett with a sprinkle of Cinemas Sins"

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some light thoughts on threepio

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SCENE #21: THREEPIO'S MOMENT OF HEROISM 43 INDIVIDUAL SCENES FROM 'RISE OF SKYWALKER' is a project reviewing each scene from the final star wars film, one by one, in a random order fevered.earth/index.php/20... #StarWars

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Gizka Core 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @gizkacore.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

fevered.earth/index.php/20... #StarWars

So it’s nice that despite everything else about the script for Rise of Skywalker, here it allows C3P0 the genuinely heroic act of choosing oblivion for himself in service of the Rebellion (as-was) and in service of his friends. Eternal robo-butler, first to Anakin and Padme and later Luke and Leia and Han, here C3P0 is his own droid and makes his own call. It’s a moment of sincerity that the movie around it doesn’t seem quite able to believe is taking place.

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...but in TROS? It's just disrespectful and tone-deaf... especially when 3PO calls them all his beloved friends... even though he seemingly has 0 connection to these resistance agents other than the events of TFA

Gizka Core 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @gizkacore.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

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it's undercut by how much disrespect they give 3PO. It's funny when Han and Leia do it in ESB because 3PO is being overly anxious (and thus unhelpful in the moment, but helpful for the intended audience to have an emotional anchor that sells the danger) and it shows how scared they themselves are

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some light thoughts on threepio

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being mean to mark hamill, as is traditional

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fevered.earth/index.php/20... #StarWars

Back at the Death Star ruins it’s time for the start of the big tear-jerker scene between Kylo Ren and Han Solo, who very thankfully does not appear in the form of a luminous ghost. I strongly suspect they did some testing of various effects for making Solo slightly ghost-y here and rightly thought better of it – you can just about get Alec Guinness to rattle off some dramatic lines with panache despite glowing blue and wobbling at the edges, even if he will need to rest his ghostly legs, but as we see later in this film you absolutely cannot do the same with Mark Hamill. Ford’s strength of emotion here comes from his vision of stoic acceptance, a grounded presence that cuts through the campy melodrama inherent to the character of Kylo Ren.

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Doctor Ironic @vardacinemas.art · 21/09/2026

SCENE #20: DEAD LEIA, WET BEN 43 INDIVIDUAL SCENES FROM 'RISE OF SKYWALKER' is a project reviewing each scene from the final star wars film, one by one, in a random order fevered.earth/index.php/20... #StarWars

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Can we admit Breadtube is an economic scam at this point

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filmic stress device @fevered.earth · 23/09/2026

being mean to mark hamill, as is traditional

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this one's all about leia

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filmic stress device @fevered.earth · 23/09/2026

fevered.earth/index.php/20... #StarWars #RiseOfSkywalker

Rey, Finn and Poe are the protagonists of these films, in a way that just a few years later might not have been the case, not just because the ability for aging stars to be composited into action films was increasing – Ford was rolled out for Dial of Destiny after all – but also because appearing as second strings to legacy stars became a much less appealing prospect to up-and-coming actors. Everything worthwhile here comes from Ridley, Boyega and Isaac giving it their all against a production process that just wants to insert as many fawning appearances for Leia Lando as possible. Returns will always diminish. This is why the only aspect of Disney Star Wars to show genuine promise in the last few years was The Hunt for Ben Solo; unfortunately Disney is totally incapable of making it.

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filmic stress device @fevered.earth · 23/09/2026

SCENE #19: BB-8 CRUSHED BY A TREE 43 INDIVIDUAL SCENES FROM 'RISE OF SKYWALKER' is a project reviewing each scene from the final star wars film, one by one, in a random order fevered.earth/index.php/20... #StarWars

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filmic stress device @fevered.earth · 22/09/2026

somehow, palpatine returned

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filmic stress device @fevered.earth · 22/09/2026

fevered.earth/index.php/20... #StarWars

Thats what makes this such a weird, uncanny scene. It would be one thing for it to be a boring bit of functional work connecting the Boolio sequence to the trip to the sand planet, the movie is full of those and they’re all much of a muchness. It’s that nothing in the film suggests that Palpatine’s return is an unknown quantity – everyone knows about it! Kylo knows, Richard E. Grant knows, Luke knows, the Knights of Ren know. And everyone in the Resistance kind of seems to know too. Oscar Isaacs’ resigned sigh of the title line is well known, but just as odd is Merry Brandybuck’s rattled-off follow up: “Dark science, cloning, secrets only the Sith knew.” Aside from sounding like it’s the notes for writing the dialogue rather than the intended dialogue itself, it makes Palpatines’s return sound so inevitable that it cannot have been a surprise. And it wasn’t.

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filmic stress device @fevered.earth · 22/09/2026

SCENE #18: SOMEHOW, PALPATINE RETURNED 43 INDIVIDUAL SCENES FROM 'RISE OF SKYWALKER' is a project reviewing each scene from the final star wars film, one by one, in a random order fevered.earth/index.php/20... #StarWars

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Benjamin (he/him/his) @benzed.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

If you haven't been reading it already, you guys will love Josh's ongoing series of write-ups on individual scenes from TROS. It's absolutely hilarious and delightful to see someone just break them all down individually, since he's watching them in a random order.

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Gizka Core 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @gizkacore.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

A big reason why I'm okay with Sephiroth's return in Advent Children and not okay with Sidious's return in TROS is that the latter just does away with Anakin's prophecy of the chosen one AND leaves things so messy that yeah, it just seems like Palpatine will endlessly return until Sam Witwer dies

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NethaEndaFendr @nethaendafendr.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

It's such a freaking joke. PALPATINE, STOP SHOOTING THE LIGHTNING. YOU KNOW FIRSTHAND WHAT HAVING THAT DIRECTED BACK AT YOU DOES TO YOU.

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filmic stress device @fevered.earth · 21/09/2026

Aside from absolutely anything else, this feels like a chronically insubstantial way to see off a villain who not only started the film by having escaped his certain fate from Return of the Jedi but also just described how doing this will mean he wins. Palpatine’s second return isn’t so much an option as a necessity. Hunting down the Emperor’s clones must be the entire purpose of the New Republic once they find out what happened here. Begun, the clone wars have!