[POTENTIAL SPOILERS] So I saw "The Rise of Skywalker" today... · 11:37pm Dec 27th, 2019
I'd already seen the reviews, heard all the complaints, the whole shebang. But I figured, "you know, maybe it won't seem as bad to me once I see it in person". So when my family went to see it today, I went in to the theater with as open a mind as possible.
And you know what?
The critics are right. About everything. It really is a mess of a movie. I'm not even sure how much I can really say about it at this point, because somebody else has probably said it a lot better than I could, much less care to.
There are a few things that I will say now, though. For one, the pacing is insanely fast. It just throws you right into things and never lets up, and not in a good way. For the first half of the movie, it felt like I was getting rapid-fire punched in the face with all the new things happening. *BOOM!* *BOOM!* *BOOM!* One after the other, and I just didn't have time to process anything.
We get a whole bunch of new characters and potential plot threads that are just thrown at us, and all that ends up happening is that it just bogs everything down. And a lot of it feels like it doesn't go anywhere at all. Case in point; Finn has something he keeps trying to tell Rey, but we never get to hear what it is. At all.
There's also some instances where they fail at the principle of "show don't tell". We are told that Rey has seen a vision of herself on the Emperor's throne at that desert planet, but we don't get to see her see it. We are told by Maz that Leia telepathically communicating with Ben will kill her, and that's obviously a flaw of them having to film around stock footage of Carrie Fisher. Speaking of which, every scene involving Leia just feels...off. Like it's obvious they're writing the dialogue around that footage, and it just feels awkward and weird.
The Final Order fleet is literally just a bunch of original trilogy-type Star Destroyers with a really big gun slapped to their undersides. They're kit-bashes. At least the First Order went to the trouble of creating new designs. And those red Sith Troopers that we saw in the marketing? They only appeared for like two minutes tops, and they were about as effective as your average grunt Stormtrooper. Same goes for the Knights of Ren. All that mystique, and you could replace 'em with any old Stormtrooper.
It makes absolutely no sense that there are pieces of the Death Star II still intact, to the point where the Emperor's throne room just looks like it had a bad hurricane go through it. Remember what it looked like at the end of Return of the Jedi?
Yeah. Exactly. Gone. Reduced to atoms. And yet there's about a full eighth of it or so still intact on Endor or wherever. Also, how did that huge, enormous piece not make a massive crater and wipe out half of everything on that planet when it crashed? There's suspending disbelief, and then there's this.
Also, "light speed skipping"? Wasn't there something about having to be really careful about how you use hyperdrive because of gravity wells or something? They go to like five different locales with this method and not once is it brought up. And somehow those TIE Fighters are able to follow them. I guess Disney watched Star Trek: Discovery and wanted to replicate that one scene with the spore drive or whatever.
*sigh* I could talk a lot more about this, but I honestly don't want to right now, and other people have likely gone over it. Maybe I'll do a better analysis later. This was just stuff that I'm rattling off from the top of my head. Sorry guys, but this is not what I'd call a good movie.
I had problems with it too (I agree, it's way too fast and a little confusing to follow at first, and it feels like it's trying to reassure fans by restating preestablished facts "from another point of view") but I still enjoyed it. It had that Star Wars feel to it. It wrapped up Snoke's origin, provided a good plot twist in Rey's parentage, and wrapped it all up with a good final battle. I also thoroughly enjoyed the character development in Kylo and Rey, and the way the Skywalker story finally ended was touching.
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I will admit that part of me was glad that Kylo finally got a happy ending. And that smile of his after he kisses Rey was...oh, this is gonna sound weird...kinda adorable.
Y'know, that was one of the few twists that The Last Jedi did that I actually liked. Why does everyone have to be related? I honestly was disappointed that they went with the Palpatine thing. I dunno, there's just something about that that feels like some edgy fan theory. Like having a main character who's the offspring of...I dunno...of Princess Luna and King Sombra or something crazy like that.*
Also, Palpatine had a son with somebody. First...EWWW!!! Second...who was this guy?! Why didn't we get to hear more about him?! That could have been a story all of its own.
*No offense to your Alicorn OC story. I absolutely love that thing, and every single one of your works is better than the entire sequel trilogy.
I haven't seen it yet but I agree with you.
i.imgflip.com/21ulff.jpg
BTW, I hadn't seen it yet, but I agree with you. I'm more of a fan of George Lucas Star Wars, both the prequels and the originals, but not the new trilogy because he's not the director or executive producers of these movies when he sold them to Disney, which is a shame to the fans and himself.
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Basically everything Ben Solo does is frickin adorable...........
You hit so many good points in here this is very satisfying to read. I agreed perfectly with everything you say here.....it's great to know that there's others that share my views.
THIS DROVE ME CRAZY!!!!! I was burning with curiosity the whole time, and it never got satisfied!
It was an....okay movie. There were many, many glaring issues. JJ did a lot of things wrong.....but I'd still watch it again.
I agree, there was no story. Just... Action. Sadness. And they missed the perfect opportunity. Instead of Rey saying I'm Rey Skywalker, they should have had her say Rey Palpantine. She isn't ashamed of her cursed heritage, she has risen above it.
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EXACTLY!
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THANK YOU!
on the plus side, you know when kylo threw his lightsaber away? I shouted THIS BITCH EMPTY, YEET in the theater and every single teen/kid clapped/cheered for me.
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Like this?
media0.giphy.com/media/l3V0wkQ2KKcAeW8Cs/giphy.gif
Also, am I the only one who was reminded of Star Trek: Discovery's spore drive with that lightspeed skipping sequence?
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Yep that's it.
OMG that was such a mess, my dad almost got motion sickness.
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It's nice to know that one isn't alone, isn't it?
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*reads comment*
*star wars line immediately pops into head*
"You're not alone."
"Neither are you."
(SORRY. I HAD TO.)
5176510
Which one's that from?
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The Last Jedi. It was a conversation between Ben and Rey.
There are problems with this movie, but you know what? I enjoyed it. Palpatine was as awesomely hammy as I wanted, it was great to see Luke as a Force Ghost, and I have no shame in admitting that it hit me really hard to see Leia pass away after reaching out to her son, and that it hit me really hard to see her and Luke as Force spirits.
This movie moves at breakneck pace, like Rogue One, but unlike Rogue One, I actually had fun with that. I enjoyed Daisy Ridley a lot in her performance as Rey, I liked seeing Finn do more than just be a buffoon who gets lectured by Rose, I liked seeing more of Poe's struggles with leadership in the Resistance. As little time as it got, I even enjoyed that Hux was the Resistance spy, just because of the motive for it.
Yeah, it's not perfect, but still, it felt a lot a damn bit more like Star Wars to me than some of these other recent movies have been. *shrugs*
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In regards to the pacing, I will say that for some reason, it felt a lot better around the second half of the movie or so. I don't know if it's because I was finally able to mentally catch up or if I'd just checked myself out, but either way, I was able to process it a little more.
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I do think that its pacing gets better in the second half of the movie, yes.
Though I still had more fun with it than Rogue One, which I also think begins with a real breakneck "boom-boom-boom" pace.
At least in this movie I had characters that I could actually care about, like Rey, Chewie, Finn and company, rather than Felicity Jones and whoever else.
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I strongly disagree with that. Why should she take the name "Palpatine"? Leia and Han and Luke were so much more of her family in the short time that she knew them, of course she'd choose to honor them (especially Luke and Leia) by taking the name Skywalker. She has every reason to be ashamed of the name Palpatine, given that the old bastard had her parents killed and was, y'know, planning to turn her into a meat puppet so he could continue to terrorize and dominate the galaxy in the name of his own ginormous ego.
There are some names that just cannot be turned into something good. And also, too, having her take the name "Palpatine" would, to me, be like the film was saying that in the end, bloodlines DO matter and not the good that the individual does. (Plus, do you really want the last word in the final Star Wars trilogy to really be "Palpatine"?)