Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

[baumer]

Only discuss this film after you have seen it.  This is not for the box office.  This is for reviews only.

[TomCruiseTop]

C+ total mess in terms of pacing, I felt like I blacked out and missed segments. Driver carries it despite having a seemingly reduced role. Still my preferred of the Disney Trilogy. 

[Dephira]

The movie is not terrible and has a few genuinely great scenes and set pieces, but it definitely suffers from the fact that JJ Abrams insisted on telling his vision of the story AT. ALL. COSTS.

 

The movie succeeds where it follows the themes set up in Episode 8 - the Kylo-Rey relationship, the completion of Luke's arc, the idea of the rebellion as a group of underestimated underdogs, who band together through hope (which coincidentally also harkens back to the beloved original trilogy).

 

And fails completely where JJ Abrams shoehorns in stuff he really wanted, even though he knew RJ abandoned them in Episode 8 - Rey's heritage, the whole Palpatine nonsense, the chasing after mystical MacGuffins.

 

Now, I understand that this is basically where JJ Abrams wanted to take the whole trilogy. And yes, Rian deviated from the plan first, but insisting on telling this story even though TLJ already exists was a big mistake. And this is the worst of both worlds for us fans - we neither get the derivative but polished & riveting trilogy that JJ Abrams wanted, nor the rough around the edges but surprising and somewhat novel trilogy that Rian Johnson wanted.

[Noctis]

My thoughts on the film:

 

Rey and Kylo Ren are far and away the best characters (and the most interesting ones) with great performances from Ridley and Driver. Their storyline is the heart of the film and on that front (and the most important one), they largely succeed.

 

The first 35 minutes are utterly boring and schizophrenic. The editing during the first act gave me so much whiplash it's unreal. The editing does get better during the second and third act but is still problematic.

 

The movie makes the fatal mistake of NOT. BEING. ABLE. TO. BREATHE. AND. LET. A. MOMENT. SINK. IN. Words cannot express how surprised I was that they didn't bother lingering on important pivotal moments...just boom, to the next scene. This flaw extends to visuals, too...so many shots should have been longer to just take in the view but nope...

 

The final battle was decent... but you just didn't feel any sense of urgency and a lot of that is due to how rushed the film is. Palpatine was actually menacing and there are some great scenes involving him.

 

Final scene was fantastic and ended the series well, but everything else preceding it was not up to par aside from a few standout sections. All characters besides Rey, Kylo, and Palpatine make little to no impression with maybe the exception of Poe. 

 

It's the rare film that simultaneously has too much and too little story. Rey's a great heroine, and the best thing about this trilogy. It honestly lacks new ideas but they did the best with what they could regarding one storyline...everything else just feels like a rehash of the other films in one way or another. 

 

C

 

 

 

[Ozymandias]

SAD!/10

[shayhiri]

Will see it for the first time tonight @ the midnight premiere.

 

It's one of the best movies ever!! 10/10

 

Can't wait to see it six more times in the following weeks.

 

PS: Oh, and LOL @ at the haters voting F. Deal with it, your precious Ep. 8 (TLJ) is dead and food for the fishes now.

Edited December 19, 2019 by shayhiri

[CoolioD1]

total nonsense. sometimes fun. kinda lags in the middle. the first act is good with a lot of 3po business (my fav character) and the last is good because of the good palpatine ham. it's all dumb fanservice but whatever some of it hit the right spot with me. just don't overthink it.

[Noctis]

4 hours ago, CoolioD1 said:

total nonsense. sometimes fun. kinda lags in the middle. the first act is good with a lot of 3po business (my fav character) and the last is good because of the good palpatine ham. it's all dumb fanservice but whatever some of it hit the right spot with me. just don't overthink it.

the editing gave me whiplash.

[aabattery]

It's a convoluted ball of fuckery for the most part but it had some nice moments sprinkled throughout. 

 

Actually got pretty into the last act. Sue me but the ol' fleet arrives move always gets me. Big Mass Effect 3 vibes.

[CoolioD1]

babu frik tho. Best new character of this trilogy

[rukaio101]

Simultaneously better and worse than I was expecting it to be. I will say upfront that I'm firmly on the side of 'TLJ was a great movie' and that I feel this movie wasted a lot of the potential that that movie set up, but I'll try and ignore that for now and judge it on its merits. Which it has a few of, I guess?

 

I'll say upfront though that the first half was very much not good. They were clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel in regards to 'usable footage of Carrie Fisher' and it definitely showed with a bunch of early scenes involving her that made almost no sense pacing, dialogue or just generally plot-wise. My particular favourite was when Rey gave Leia her lightsaber in a moment of doubt, only for Leia to return it about two scenes later with barely anything actually having changed, scenes that were clearly just there because Disney had footage of Carrie Fisher handing Daisy a lightsaber and vice-versa and wanted to use them somewhere.

 

Also the treasure hunt they go on for the macguffin is bad and almost half of it feels like padding. Seriously, they go to one planet to find a person to find a clue to find the vault to find the macguffin to find the planet that Palpatine is on and end up getting sidetracked twice to rescue Chewbacca and help C3PO translate the dagger. Most of it could easily have been cut/compressed for time and fails to add much character-wise or world-building wise. And for all that he's supposed to be the big threat looming over the heroes, Palpatine has almost zero presence in the movie for the vast majority of it. He gets one brief scene at the beginning with Kylo (complete with LOOK GUYS, WE EXPLAINED SNOKE! ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?) And then does absolutely nothing until the final act.

 

However, honestly, I did feel the movie picked up by the second half and I found myself enjoying it a lot more than I expected. Admittedly, it was the same kind of basic broad strokes storytelling as TFA, rather than anything more ambitious like TLJ, so I'm not exactly going to give it massive amount of credit, but it was fun enough. It may have been like switching from a rich steak back to a common hamburger but fuck it, I'll eat a hamburger. And Emperor Palpatine is nothing if not rich in ham.

 

Honestly, as much as I was ultimately unsatisfied by this movie, there are legitimately a lot of ideas in here I like, some of which are actually pulled off reasonably well? While I still think Rey was far more interesting as a nobody, if you had to give her a 'special' bloodline, making her a Palpatine wasn't a bad choice (even if the movie didn't really do anything all that interesting with it). The general arcs that they were going for with the characters, while obvious as fuck, do land and stuff like Finn bonding with the former stormtroopers was great. Although why they keep feeling the need to try and force female love interests for Finn and Poe when Oscar Isaac and John Boyega clearly share the best romantic chemistry in the franchise is beyond me. (Don't worry though LGBT fans, because there's a split-second kiss between two unnamed female background extras- clearly designed to be easily removed in the foreign edits- for you to enjoy! Who says that Disney is bad at representation?!)

 

Honestly, I'd say the acting is strong across the board here, in spite of the weaker writing. While Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver are probably the standouts (as usual with these films), it's hard to think of anyone who doesn't do a good job. The effects are also on point and the action choreography, while never really blowing me away, never left me particularly bored either. Plus, who doesn't love a cool fleet Big Damn Heroes scene?

 

With that said though, it's ultimately still not a great film. Not completely garbage perhaps, but not particularly good either. It tries to drag the formula back down to its tried and tested roots after TLJ's controversies, but ultimately does so in such a clumsy way that it leaves neither side satisfied. 

 

 

Also, Babu Frik for life.

Edited December 19, 2019 by rukaio101

[Jim Shorts]

16 hours ago, CoolioD1 said:

babu frik tho. Best new character of this trilogy

[FTF]

Recently got back. My lowered expectations helped I think as I thought it was enjoyable enough. I was expecting BvS levels of terrible after all the reviews but it was fine. Def the weakest of the ST atm though and was def meh on Rey being Palpatine's granddaughter and Reylo kiss at the end, but the action was really good, 3PO was great, the funny parts were funny and weren't cringy or anything, seeing Luke again was nice, the flash back with Luke and Leia was cool, the ending with Rey on Tatooine was great, the lightsaber force swap fight with Rey and Kylo was cool, seeing Lando was great, Finn and Poe had better roles, Rey saying she was a Skywalker at the end, etc. so there was def alot of positives. The store was a mess though and def felt rushed as JJ was under such a time crunch. Def feel it would have been better if he had more time/an extra year and this came out Dec 2020 instead of now. Oh well.

It's def a bummer and feeling of melancholy now that the trilogy is over though...feels like just yesterday there was the teaser trailer for TFA and how amazing leading up to that release was and seeing it in theaters 4 years ago, etc. I will be seeing this again tomorrow and I always feel the second showings of much anticipated movies are more enjoyable/I'm able to judge them better since there's no build up of anticipation and I can just watch it for what it is, etc. so curious if my feeling change (for better or worse) after additional viewing(s).

 

atm:  B-

[DAJK]

Reylo kiss was stupid

 

Kylo's death was very poorly directed, but made sense narratively.

 

Leia's death similarly poorly handled; I understand the constraints they had but I think more thought shoulda been put into writing that

 

Pacing was frenetic. Shoulda been a 3 hour movie just to allow some of the beats to sink in

 

I'm on the side of TLJ sucked as a Star Wars movie so I'm glad they explained away some holes from that movie "doing a Holdo is a 1 in a million shot"

 

Made Luke's character in TLJ part of an arc rather than a misunderstanding of the character

 

Finally gave Rey some kind of character conflict. Yes, the "I want to know who my family is" was interesting for the first half of TFA, but this film gave her something to fear (i.e. herself) and every good character should have a fear.

 

Action was great, felt very Star Wars-y

 

Loved the inclusion of some Palpes lines from Revenge of the Sith (do it, and the dark side is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural) felt like that was intentional, and was a good callback for the memers

 

Loved than camaraderie between the three new leads. They definitely felt like a trio rather than scattered characters. Payoff woulda been better if the other movies had set that up, but it was really well handled here. 

 

Still don't like Rey Skywalker, I think it would have made more sense for her to be "just Rey" because part of the theme was that lineage and bloodlines isn't the most important thing. So rather than becoming part of a bloodline like Skywalker, forge your own in a sense. 

 

I also like how it ended the Skywalker lineage; made it feel like a true end to all 9 movies. 

[The Panda]

This movie was like watching a “Previously On” segment of TV that’s meant to catch you up on the plot, except it goes on for 2 and half hours and the movie never starts

[jb007]

What a ride!!!!

 

The movie exceeded my expectations. It was funny, emotional and plain bad ass. The interaction between Han and Solo is brilliant and made me cry.  Luke's sequence with Rey is just perfect. Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley were very good. Their character arcs have a perfect ending.  Technically brilliant withe an awesome score. Covers the entire gamut of scores from Imperial march to Luke, Leia, Rey and Ren's themes. Action scenes are excellent.  On par with TFA and Way better than TLJ. Pacing is fast. JJ Abrams just doesn't let up. Kudos to JJ for ending the Skywalker Saga with a bang. The final scene with Rey looking up at the two suns ala Luke is fantastic.

 

Rey Skywalker... 😍😍😍

 

Rating: A 

Edited December 20, 2019 by jb007

[Cap]

I miss Carrie and Debbie so much. I cried the whole movie cause of Leia. 

[fabiopazzo2]

D.

 

Rey and finn are really bad characters

Edited December 20, 2019 by fabiopazzo2

[PPZVGOS]

On 12/17/2019 at 4:41 PM, JamesCameronScholar said:

C+ total mess in terms of pacing, I felt like I blacked out and missed segments. Driver carries it despite having a seemingly reduced role. Still my preferred of the Disney Trilogy. 

It's definitely the best of the Disney trilogy, but the immense damage inflicted by TLJ cannot be undone. Rogue One was much better though. 

[IcaroRibeiro]

C-

 

By far the worst Star Wars movie in last 20 years. God how can studio as big as Disney don't know how the hell edit a movie ?