Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

[mcclaine]

The movie itself isn't good. Is better than TLJ, but that isn't good measure by my standards. Too convoluted, too fast pace when it didn't need it to. But i think that's what happens when you don't make an arc for the trilogy, and give that freedom to (originally) 3 different directors, and they fuck each others up. You ended up with 2 set up movies, no middle act, and a final movie that has to tie everything.

 

MODERATION:  This post has been edited to remove personal attacks

[mcclaine]

6 hours ago, PPZVGOS said:

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. 

Agreed. 

Rogue One is the best film since Disney took over. 

 

I forgot to mention that i dislike the last scene very much. "I'm Rey Skywalker". Jesus. As i was watching the film, i kept thinking, "this is called The Rise of Skywalker so Luke will have his deserved justice or some Skywalker will have its golden moment, something...." Nah, is just Rey taking the name. Infuriating. 

 

[MOVIEGUY]

This wasn't bad. I agree with what a lot of what I've seen here and elsewhere, it's not the complete trainwreck that some reviews and reactions would have you believe. I think a lot of people who hate JJ Abrams and everything he stands for went in ready to hate this and declare it a piece of crap, so they did. But there's a lot of stuff to like here. 

 

So, stuff I liked:

-Kylo Ren's redemption. He is far and away my favorite character in the new trilogy and that has so much to do with what a great presence Adam Driver is. I thought he absolutely shone here, his redemption felt very earned, and like others have said I wish we got to spend more time with him as Ben. It was a little moment, but it was the probably the funniest moment of the movie when he jumps in that big hole to rescue Rey and lands on the big metal chain and just quietly goes "Ow." It was really funny and Driver sells it so well. It doesn't feel like some big obnoxious "HEY AUDIENCE HERE'S THE JOKE, LAUGH NOW" attempt at humor that I feel like so many modern blockbusters do now. 

-I liked the kiss, it felt earned and like a very sweet moment. These movies have pretty obviously been building to some sort of romance between the two and I liked it. And I feel like Kylo Ren had to die, he couldn't just stay the good guy and now all is forgiven for all the evil he's done. Obviously this mirrors Vader's redemption arc and death, but here it doesn't feel like empty fan service or nostalgia, but a good job of carrying on the themes of original films while still staying true to the new characters they've established.

-The very last scene was quite touching. I like the idea that after all the Skywalkers are gone Rey gets to earn that legacy, rather than just being born into it. It felt very nice and meaningful for her character (which WOULD HAVE been so much more meaningful if she were truly from a family of nobodies, but more on that later, ahem). Also I realized when she slid down that sand hill and when she was searching the old Death Star II ruins that a big part of the charm of TFA was watching her as a scavenger on Jakku, and I had missed that part of her character.

-I thought it was a good idea to keep the heroes together as a group. I'm not someone who thinks a flaw of TLJ was splitting them up, but since this is the last one with these characters for a while it was nice to see them all together. I've seen a lot of complaints saying this part of the movie was just a Macguffin quest, and yeah, sure... but I thought it was pretty good fun (especially the part on the desert planet and the speeder chase).

-CHEWIE GOT HIS MEDAL! This is absolutely 100% fan service, not at all essential to the story, but damnit I liked it. HE DESERVED IT.

-Also Chewie and R2's reaction to Leia's passing were kind of heartbreaking, probably the most I felt during the movie.

 

Stuff I did not like:

-PALPATINE. Booooy did I hate the choice to bring him back. It just felt like the laziest, most uninspired, "we don't know what the fuck to do here" decision. I've heard it was maybe the plan to bring him back from the start? I don't know and I don't care. It was such a lame choice. And look, Palpatine is a great, one-dimensional "I am pure evil and want to conquer the universe MUAHAHAHA" villain, but we got that already in ROTJ. He got his own whole arc in the prequels. He died. Bringing him back here and making him the big bad was pointless and everything about it really brought the movie down. Maybe there was an elegant way to bring him back but they sure as hell didn't pull it off.

-Making Rey his granddaughter. This was the thing that left me genuinely kinda annoyed about the movie. For all the talk about this movie trying to walk back Rian Johnson's choices on TLJ, this was the one moment where they really did do that. I thought it was such a great idea to have Rey come from a family of nobodies and an important development for her character, so much better than this shit. God what a dumb choice.

-Like many, many others have said this movie starts out pretty rough. I don't know how exactly to put my finger on it but it just feels very rushed and sloppy. It does start to pick up though once they arrive on the desert planet.

 

Overall it's a pretty enjoyable Star Wars movie that's good fun for a lot of its runtime. I think the biggest problem (along with a stupid, stupid choice with the villain) is that it doesn't really feel like the big, epic ending to a trilogy. There's something about it that feels very safe and I'm pretty comfortable calling it the weakest of this current trilogy. TLJ was such an exciting and cool direction to take the series and this just felt like a big step backwards. However like I said before there was some genuine pathos earned at the end with Kylo and Rey which was nice.

 

Other random thoughts:

-Some of the Leia scenes felt very awkward. Which I can't fault the filmmakers too much for, there's only so much you can do there.

-I've said it before, but all of these movies have been a big waste of Lupita Nyong'o's talent, which is a shame.

-It didn't bother me that much, but Chewie's fakeout death was dumb. I don't typically like fakeout deaths in movies (hated Leia's in TLJ) and when I saw this one I just kinda rolled my eyes like "Oh no. A beloved character died offscreen, no way we'll ever see him again."

-I liked the Han scene. That was a genuine surprise, and it's always just nice to see Harrison Ford in the role. However I'm not sure how I feel about them reusing "I know" line. That scene is as perfect as Star Wars ever gets (and honestly? About as perfect as any movie gets), it gives me chills every time when he says that line and "Han Solo and the Princess" starts swelling, so I don't know how I feel about them reusing it here.

-I feel like most of the anger towards Abrams for trying to change or undo Rian Johnson's choices on TLJ (outside of Rey's lineage) are pretty childish. They're different filmmakers, they're going to do things differently. For example people shitting on him because Rose had a smaller role in this one. There's a bunch of fuckin' characters in these movies, someone's going to get the short end of the stick. That doesn't mean Abrams is telling Rian Johnson to go suck it. Honestly the toxicity with some of the fans is just getting exhausting at this point.

Edited December 21, 2019 by MOVIEGUY

[AnDr3s]

the rey origin is the dumbest shit ever and the reylo moment is the most fanfic shit ever

[SLAM!]

The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were both cinematically vibrant, while Rise of the Skywalker, unfortunately, is cinematically sterile. C

[filmlover]

 

literally my reaction when the lights came up.

 

I'm a Star Wars fan. Not a die hard fan who lives breathes everything Star Wars, but someone who has always held the original trilogy of movies close and enjoyed the others (yes, even the prequels, flaws and all). But this was not good. It's not awful since it's very well-made from a tech standpoint and features a couple of good action pieces, but those moments are isolated in a mostly hollow exercise of dumb writing choices. This is not only a much worse movie than either The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, but it actually devalues them and mainly exists as an underwhelming conclusion to the Skywalker saga.

 

Really, did an executive make this thing? It's like the studio saw the nasty attitude of the "fans" after The Last Jedi's controversial storytelling choices and decided to make the blandest movie they possibly could to not ruffle anyone's feathers (I sure hope said fans are happy about that). It's all barely coherent and often some of the writing choices feel like they were from fan fiction (and bad fan fiction at that). I never thought J.J. Abrams was capable of making a movie almost completely devoid of personality, but here we are.

 

And the choice to have Carrie Fisher in the movie via unused footage from the previous sequels? Yeesh. They would've been better off just having her die off screen and having it mentioned in passing than going through this treatment.

 

The actors do the most they can, especially Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver, who continue their excellent performances here despite some of the dubious writing handed to them (it must be said that some of the dialogue here is even clunkier than anything Lucas wrote in those much denounced prequels). Oscar Isaac and John Boyega are alright, but neither Poe or Finn ever became remotely interesting characters unfortunately. Keri Russell is underused while Richard E. Grant is wasted. Billy Dee Williams is only in the movie to provide fan service. And while I sorta welcomed the return of Ian McDiarmid's scenery-chewing, his only function in this is to fill the villain void left after Snoke died in the previous movie.

 

The last scene was actually a great way to conclude the saga. It's unfortunate that pretty much everything that comes before it is such a frustrating case of total indifference. Farwell (for now), Star Wars. You deserved a better exit.

 

C

[dxmatrixdt]

.

Edited June 26, 2020 by abusive brainwashed Christ

[cannastop]

4 hours ago, filmlover said:

Billy Dee Williams is only in the movie to provide fan service.

Nah he was good.

[titanic2187]

The movie does feature a lot of fan services, and many of the fan services were pretty cheap and stupid actually. 

There are few fake emotional manipulative moment in the movie that just left me cool. 

 

TLJ was stupid while TROS was cheap.

 

I disagree with whatever critics said for TLJ. if they really like to create new thing, new direction, go and invent a new franchise, not on SW. 

 

This round TROS however, I quite agree with what critics said in general.   

 

At least the movie didn't got me angry in the screening like how TLJ did to me.

 

My ranks on SW films.

1. ESB - 9.0

2. TFA - 7.0

3. RO - 7.0

4. ANH - 7.0

5. ROTS - 6.5

6. ROTJ  - 6.5

7. TROS - 6.0

8. TPM - 6.0

9. TLJ - 5.0 (Is this even a SW film?)

10. AoTC - 4.0

[Webslinger]

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a strange film that feels like a paradox in that it’s practically overflowing with characters, subplots, and homages, and yet it feels less expansive and much less satisfying than its predecessors in the newest trilogy. Following the shockingly divisive reaction to The Last Jedi, it constantly feels like director and co-writer J.J. Abrams is trying as hard as he can to please fans by hitting as many of the saga’s standard beats as he can; but in the process, he loses sight of the cleverness and subversion of tropes that made Last Jedi work *and* also falls well short of the nostalgic vibe of new characters in a classic setting that he nailed down in The Force Awakens. Instead, what we’re left with is a narrative that races to tie up every conceivable loose end and wants to act as the closing chapter of its saga rather than continuing the previous film’s promise of a much wider universe with plenty of rich stories yet to be told. Structurally, the film starts off weak with a frenetically paced first hour in which the plot moves so quickly that it’s tough to get invested in the characters because it feels as though their actions are animated in a obligatory, plot-driven fashion rather than an organic, character-driven one. Much like Rogue One, though, it recovers nicely in its second half and has its share of rousing moments. While much of the fanservice is obvious enough to track from a mile away, Abrams’s effectiveness behind the camera and affection for the source material allows for a large amount of it to land; even some of the developments that might sound silly on paper won me over through how they were presented onscreen. Just as the characters are at their weakest in the script, so too are the actors in their least impressive form across the trilogy. Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver are left with surprisingly little to work with on an emotional level, and that’s a shame after the level of chemistry they had in The Last Jedi; both are clearly capable of delivering far better work than what this script affords them. The same holds true for the other returning faces as well, though Oscar Isaac (who has been under-utilized throughout this entire trilogy, honestly) gets some fun quips here and there. It probably sounds like I didn’t really enjoy this movie, but I did; it’s fun and it’s ultimately effective enough in playing into the collective legacy of its brand name that I had a good time watching it and left the theater fairly pleased with what I saw. But with the very different strengths of the two films that preceded it – not to mention several of the older entries in the other two trilogies – just “fairly pleased” isn’t nearly what I hoped for out of The Rise of Skywalker.

 

B-

 

And now for the spoilery stray thought fun:

- I knew they were going to undo the bit about Rey's parentage, and that was never going to sit well with me - the idea that enormous Force power could belong to anyone rather than have an implicitly hereditary basis was really powerful. But I already had enough questions about how she could possibly be a Skywalker (the direction I thought this film would go in, given the title), but I have even more questions about how she's a Palpatine. It feels like J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio were just going for a shocking twist without really thinking through its implications. Palpatine does not strike me as the kind of guy who ever had a wife *or* a kid out of wedlock running around, much less a granddaughter.

 

- The redemption arc for Kylo Ren/Ben/whatever could have been compelling (and c'mon, it's Adam Driver playing him - the guy could have pulled it off), but the filmmakers just rush into it with precious little setup. Like, yes, we have seen moments of conflict from him in the previous two films, but it still feels like a huge jump to see him just give up all the Sith bona fides he worked so hard to get.

 

- They really could have done without Carrie Fisher. Leia doesn't get to do much that couldn't be accomplished with other characters (yes, there's that ever-so-brief moment with her son, but Han's the one who ultimately effects the change-of-heart) and she very clearly feels like an awkward composite of unused material.

[Nerfy]

Well I have some crow to eat. This was my favorite of the sequel trilogy. 

 

The worst-made movie, but the best Star Wars movie of the three. This and TFA together actually make some kind of sense, but half of the movie was just reversing and replacing everything that happened in TLJ which made it rushed, bloated and convoluted. Still, this was the first one I actually felt something from the characters (Ben and Rey), and expanded the lore. I would actually be interested to see more from Rey after this which I would not have said before.

 

B-

[Cap]

The more I think about this movie, the more I hate it.

• Sidelining Rose and Connix while some random dude from Lost got more screen time than both of them: Unforgivable.
• Reylo Kiss: UNFORGIVIABLE.
• Destroying Finn's arc and Finn and Rey's relationship: U N F O R G I V A B L E.  

[lilmac]

I really liked TROS. With that said..Kathleen Kennedy should probably go.


KK’s job is to wrangle talent and put films together. Every single film has seen decisions made and overturned, or the output made for a divided fanbase. Stunning incompetence given her track record. Mind you, I liked and even loved all the final product but just look at this, will you:

TFA - Hired Arndt, fired Arndt
Rogue One - Major revisions and reshoots in post production
Unknown spinoff - hired Josh Trank, fired Josh Trank
Solo - Hired Lord and Miller. Either they went off the sanctioned creative path and went wrong or she didn’t have visibility beforehand on their approach
TLJ - went smoothly but the fan reaction was divisive
TROS - so far it looks like this will be divisive as well and the lowest grossing (breaking the trilogy pattern streak). Before that, Colin Trevorrow was hired, then fired.
Benioff and Weis trilogy - Hired and unofficially fired.


I am far from comparing myself to Iger (the thought of that makes me chuckle) but in the real world I am a manager of managers. The quality I want to see, besides them treating their people well, is do they exercise good judgement. Despite me for the most part, enjoying the end result of the Disney SW films, I think a change at the top (i.e. KK) is now warranted given the haphazard manner in way the franchise has been ostensibly run.

[DAR]

It’s not a perfect movie by any means but I did kind of love it.  

Edited December 23, 2019 by DAR

[Webslinger]

2 hours ago, Force Ghost Cap said:

Sidelining Rose and Connix while some random dude from Lost got more screen time than both of them: Unforgivable.

Agreed. I knew they would relegate Rose to the background as a reaction to the backlash the character engendered (which makes me sad because I really enjoyed her - she was a fun addition to the universe and clicked really well with John Boyega), but that doesn’t make it any less of a letdown. The Screen Junkies panel also made a really good point that giving Billie Lourd more to do would have been a really good way to honor Carrie Fisher’s legacy while also signaling a passing of the torch (and after how fun she was in Booksmart, who wouldn’t want to see her get more to do?).

 

For a movie that didn’t seem shy about taking advantage of a whole bunch of opportunities good and bad, those are two pretty big missed opportunities.

[Cap]

1 minute ago, Webslinger said:

The Screen Junkies panel also made a really good point that giving Billie Lourd more to do would have been a really good way to honor Carrie Fisher’s legacy while also signaling a passing of the torch (and after how fun she was in Booksmart, who wouldn’t want to see her get more to do?).

Ding Ding Ding.  We have a winner.

 

All offense to Zorri and Jannah, but 

 

 

I've spent two movies with the Trio, and one movie with Rose, and now you two are just gonna show up in the last hour of the movie, suck up all of the screen time, and except me to be like YAY more women?  I don't care that you're almost dying!  I'm WAAAAY too concerned about where is Rose and is she okay?  

 

It's such a horrible miscalculation. 

[VENOM]

4 hours ago, Force Ghost Cap said:

The more I think about this movie, the more I hate it.

• Sidelining Rose and Connix while some random dude from Lost got more screen time than both of them: Unforgivable.
• Reylo Kiss: UNFORGIVIABLE.
• Destroying Finn's arc and Finn and Rey's relationship: U N F O R G I V A B L E.  

I agree the way it was set up in TFA it’s obvious Rey and Finn were supposed to be a thing with Finn possibly having force powers like Rey and them fighting the Sith together as Jedi's. But RJ subverted expectations with his whole doing the opposite of everything.
 

You’d think JJ would spend time establishing the Rey, Finn and Poe dynamic and make us actually believe these characters care about each other by the end of the movie and that we should care about them. But then you remember he’s a hack so after a short reunion it’s straight into ripping off the whole Pirates of the Caribbean find this thing to tell us how to find that thing x10 with some sprinkling of Reylo mixed in to get people ready for that ridiculous Reylo kiss at the end. Get some girlfriends who nobody cares about for Poe and Finn to take away more screen time from the main characters we already don’t know much about in the first place annnd movies over. Absolute mess of a movie. 

Edited December 23, 2019 by VENOM

[filmlover]

14 hours ago, Force Ghost Cap said:

Sidelining Rose and Connix while some random dude from Lost got more screen time than both of them: Unforgivable.

Dominic Monaghan randomly appearing throughout this was obviously J.J. just giving a friend a job. In fact I feel like that's the only way we can explain Keri Russell's nothing role in this as well. I kept hoping that the character would play a major role in this but that never happened (also disappointing that we never got to see her without the helmet on, aside from that scene with Poe where she briefly raises her visor).

Edited December 23, 2019 by filmlover

[Godzilla]

It's kind of rare for a movie to feel so rushed and long at the same time. 

[Cap]

29 minutes ago, VENOM said:

But RJ subverted expectations with his whole doing the opposite of everything.

People keep saying this.  To quote the Princess Bride: 

 

 

In TLJ, similar to the structure of Empire Strike Back, our heroes parted for their own adventures.  So while they might've been disappointing they didn't stick together, it wasn't exactly shocking or subversive.  Finn's adventure was important to his journey.  In The Force Awakens, he decided to stay with the Resistance for Rey.  In The Last Jedi, he decided to stay with the Resistance for himself.  That's the whole point of Canto Bright.

 

 

9 minutes ago, filmlover said:

Dominic Monaghan randomly appearing throughout this was obviously J.J. just giving a friend a job. 

Only Greg Grunberg gets this excuse.  😒