Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker

Never heard of any of the Negative Nellies.


Perri from Collider gives it a 6 out of 10 though.

Yes.

But, honestly, all three principal creatives bear some responsibility for how this all turned out.

JJ thought he could just re-do ANH with some new characters and then leave the rest up to someone else. He introduced elements like Snoke, the Knights of Ren, and Rey having a connection with the lightsaber but didn’t know what any of that stuff meant or how it fit in with what had already been established. The rest was a rehash like Star Trek Into Darkness. But it was financially successful and it made Disney happy.

Having no overall plan for the trilogy, Rian Johnson decided to do whatever he wanted and jettisoned whatever ideas JJ had planted. Unfortunately his ideas were not very popular with a segment of the fans, he wrote Luke as horribly out of character and acted like a dick to fans, basically telling them the lore didn’t matter. He also left the second part of a three part story in a very weird place, with no obvious way to follow it up. Subverting expectations is all well and good but not in the middle of a trilogy thats supposed to cap a larger saga. And his attitude and aggression towards fans didn’t help at all.

Kennedy should have been the overall visionary of the trilogy and the franchise but unlike Kevin Feige it was clear she had no idea what she was doing and didn’t know anything about Star Wars except that it was a brand that could generate money. At least the prequels had an over-arching idea. There was no clear plan or vision for Disney Star Wars and that shows in the director shake-ups in Rogue One and Solo and with how disjointed this main trilogy has turned out. I think she will be out soon and Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni will take over creatively.

Filoni has done some of the best Star Wars work outside the novels/expanded universe and the OT. He made Anakin a decent character in Clone Wars and partly redeemed the prequels and he did a good job connecting the trilogies with Rebels. His working with Favreau seems to be paying off too.

If they didn’t want to follow Lucas’s plan for a sequel trilogy then maybe they should have at least looked at Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy, Dark Empire, the Vong storyline, or even the New Jedi Order stuff with Jacen Solo/Darth Caedus. Kylo Ren is a poor imitation. Kennedy, apparently wasn’t even aware that stuff existed.

A whiner that aged into an old grump?
How inconsistent!

This well thought out and accurate post got a tl;dr from Dicky. Unbelievable.

Stop rep-whining.
Hypocrite.

Say what you will about TLJ--I simultaneously love it and hate it--it is the only episode of the ST (I'm presuming, since I haven't seen RoS) that feels like it tried to break new ground.

It tried and failed.

YMMV.

Semi-related. It's interesting who retweeted this by Mark Hamill.



I'll point out that Francis Ford Coppola did the film adaptation of S. E. Hinton's "The Outsiders" and he and George are good friends. Wonder if S. E. met George while they were shooting "The Outsiders?"

DenOfGeek puts it in the "good, but not great" category:

https://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies...er-review-a-fitting-end-to-the-skywalker-saga

Just saw it. Nothing special.

Too much going on, too many nods and winks, too much to echo ROTJ. A big miss mash.

Good to see some old friends, but thats about it.

Far more excited to see TopGun maverick and badboys3

Seeing it tonight.

Jesus fucking Christ, with TFA and TLJ, it was comments sections that were trying to spoil shit, now it's the fucking journalists!
Time to go internet dark until tomorrow.

Won't give a spoiler review since most haven't seen it, but that was a great plot for episodes 8 and 9 in the form of one movie.

So the Emporor just sat around for forty years? Let his empire crumble? I guess Anakin really wasn’t meant to bring balance to the force right? Right? I mean those six movies mean little now.

Just came out of it.




Okay.

This really shouldn't work.





But it kinda does.

More detailed review to follow.

So, I went in expecting to hate it, and, surprisingly, I had a pretty good time with it.

Is it a good ending to the saga? No, not really. It's clear there was no plan for this trilogy either on its own or as part of the larger saga.


So, what's good?

1. The pacing. Holy shit does this movie move. Pauses in the action are few and far between,

2. The chemistry of the three new leads. They play well together, and I kinda wish this trilogy had more of that.

3. I'm gonna put resurrected Carrie Fisher here, as I think it mostly works. If you didn't know, you might not suspect. In her scenes, she does tend to talk in somewhat generic sound bytes, but there was at least one reaction shot of hers that was as good as you could do with a live actress. Yes, the scenes are written to facilitate the use of those sound bytes, but they sorta work.

4. Some emotional beats in the conclusion of Rey's story...actually hit.

5. We do get an...adequate...explanation of Rey's heritage. Any earlier explanations fall into that "from a certain point of view" category of Jedi douchebaggery.

6. A cool flashback featuring

7. C3PO has a role in the story, more than just being an annoying twat.


What's bad?

1. The story feels like a video game. Proceed here to unlock next level. Proceed here to unlock next level.

2. Bad guy superweaponry has multiple(!) Achilles' heels.

3. Good guys act in suicidally brave ways.

4. There's not a whole lot of new ground here.

5. The filmmakers cheat on one impactful incident. It's not a valid gotcha if you couldn't reasonably see it coming.

6. Austin Powers: "My wife, Vanessa, was a fembot!" Basil Exposition: "Yes, we knew all along, sadly." - You'll know it when you see it.

7. An important character in the sequel trilogy comes to a way-too-abrupt end.


What's ugly?

1. I love Abrams' movies where people must use an artifact (the map to Luke in TFA, the knife in this one) to find some important thing, but there's no reason such an artifact would ever have been created. Nor should the people seeking the artifact have any awareness of its existence if it did exist. I laughed when I saw how the knife was used. Who the f*** would print a clue in a language only a legitimate reader could understand, but then have the extra step of requiring the use the artifact in a ridiculously unforseeable way? And, anyway, everyone who should need to find what the artifact leads to already knows where it is.

2. The story is really contrived. No, I mean REALLY contrived.

3. A lot of things go explained, with some near-explanations being frustrating non-explanations. Remember Professor X's surprise appearance in the end credits scene in The Wolverine? He's been dead, Logan asks how he's back, and good ol' Charlie says "You're not the only one with gifts." F**k you, old man! I want answers, and that's not an answer!

Cameos?
You know about this first one 'cause he's in the previews...

Prolly some others I missed, but those were the main ones.

If you didn't like TLJ, this one is the cure both in tone and in retconning certain plot points.

If you didn't like Leia Poppins or Force holograms, you're probably really not going to like

I actually liked these. It's like with each film we get a new Force power. It's like how Knight Rider had a new feature each episode, or how Bond gets a new gadget in every film (well, the older films, anyway).

Yes, Rey is overpowered in this one. It's kinda okay, since Kylo is as well. And there's another antagonist who, of course, has a Ludicrous Mode.

So, as an ending to the saga, it sucks.

On its own? It's an enjoyable, fast-paced, mostly unoriginal, still occasionally poignant space opera action film. Maybe that's what a Star Wars movie is, after all...

7.0/10.

One thing that’s pissed me off more than anything else is the use of R2. The prequels he did so much, Clone Wars was Anakin’s right hand man, OT, Luke’s right hand man and in TLJ should have been the turning point to get Luke off his ass and do something. Does R2 do anything in this movie?

Nope. Spends maybe 10seconds giving C3PO a hot beef injection but aside from that, nada....

He does have a sad at one point.

Even BB-8 takes a back seat to the new droid D-O, who I thought worked very well.

Well that's pretty stupid then. I'm pretty sure Lucas had said he pictured the Star Wars saga to be too from the R2D2's and C3PO's point of view. They were both pretty much present for episodes 1-6. Aside from C3PO's memory wipe at the end of episode 3.

And, I'm back from seeing it.

https://dickynoo.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-rise-of-skywalker-2019.html

Sounded like he was actively working on the whole "find a powerful new force user to corrupt and possess" plan the whole time, with the Snoke clones and Ben and Rey and probably baby Yoda as well. Maybe that was his real plan for Luke as well.

Let the ass kissing begin!

One reveal which actually works well is the explanation of why the Sith always take on apprentices knowing they will eventually turn on them. Also gives new context to the discussion of the ancient Sith secret to conquering death.

Was anyone else thinking about the end of Independence Day when there were the shots of the Star Destroyers going down at Cloud City and Endor?

Totally explains why the Sith are losers.

Guy has control of the known galaxy. Has billions upon billions of soldiers under his command. Thousands and thousands of capital ships.

Blows it all away because he can't see past the Force and realize that he's top dog.

Got tickets to see it tonight.

The Empire and whatnot is all temporary, nothing compared to the promise of immortality. And his current body has been compromised since before he became Emperor.

We didn't get a clear answer on whether that's his original body irradiated by the reactor from ROTJ, or if he's in a fresh clone that re-aged.

I'd like to think the Emperor could walk and chew gum at the same time.

He has the resources of the entire galaxy at his disposal. Can't work on immortality and being Emperor at the same time?