Rise of Skywalker with Spoilers

I liked it. It was rushed at spots, but overall good. Will post more when I don't have 4 hours until I have to wake up and go to work.
I'm with you. It was rushed for a while until they made back what story they had to catch up after VIII (like, VIII? What VIII? I mean, they more or less pulled a Highlander III almost pretending the movie before did not exist; I liked how they justified the lack of Holdo manoeuvers before the one) and could go into what was properly Ep IX. It sure could have been more, and better, overall, but I liked it and will see it a second time, then in the english version.
Even the sceptics we had along felt good enough afterwards that all they complained about was the looks of Adam Driver and why they couldn't just bomb the nav beacon. Need to see it again before I would rate it, but I still feel satisfied by now.
 
I'm still not certain if we need to buffer spoilers for the "new posts" feature or not. So, I'm doing it in the interest of not accidentally spoiling things.


not yet



a bit more



There, I think that should be good?

So, my feelings. The movie is rushed, they jump from set piece to set piece in an effort to explain away or correct most of the issues I had with Last Jedi. I will now go over some of my thoughts on the plot.
  • Palpatine's not dead, ok, interesting. Seems he was gravely injured by the fall, but not entirely killed. Though he did say he had been "dead before", so maybe this is more sith necromancy than really surviving. How that happened though is a mystery. I do like that they had a simple explanation for Snoke though and can put that issue to rest. Plus, Palpatine was just badass in this, I really liked how they used him all throughout. He felt like the OT Emperor and not the cartoony version from the Prequels.
  • I am not really a fan of Rey being the granddaughter of Palpatine, but it works in service to the story. I don't have a problem with it and it does explain why she is so powerful. I also like that she adopted the name Skywalker at the end.
  • We finally see the Knights of Ren! No info on them, though, they are just there to be menacing and give Kylo Ben someone to slow him down in the conclusion. Maybe we will see more of them later in some other form.
  • The whole Chewie died, oh no there was another ship thing. Eh, not my favorite, but fine, they wanted the dramatic tension and to show off the lightning. Probably could have been done better if they had more time and didn't have to clean up so much.
  • C-3P0's quick subplot. I liked it. The jokes worked and it gave 3P0 something to actually DO other than to simply be fussy and there.
  • Plenty of saber battles, which were all fine. The connection being brought up again and the actual displacement of items was interesting and proved useful later on when they transferred the saber so that at least was worthwhile.
  • The final battle (both on land and in space) was epic and I loved it, even if it was a bit predictable. Everyone knew the good guys would rally and win.
  • Ben bringing Rey back at the end worked, the kiss not so much. Ben dying right after and fading away at the same time as Leia felt right.
  • And finally, LEIA. So they had some issues fully integrating what little of Carrie Fisher they had. Body double was obvious and there were scenes where you could tell they essentially gave Leia's dialogue to the other person in the scene. Most notably Rey. "I'll go run the course"/"I'll earn your brother's saber someday." etc. all felt like they should have come from Leia instead of being spoken at her. They did what they could and while not totally happy with it, they did end up giving her the sendoff she deserved.
I'm still mulling things over, so may have more to say later.
 
Overall I liked it (granted, I also liked TLJ, for different reasons than this one). I definitely see why critics were harsh about how much of a re-tread it was (resurrect the old "scary" bad guy, visit all the same old places, basically no new characters) but for the (ostensibly) last movie of an epic like this, I was fine with it. Some things I thought were neat:
  • All the major characters having something to do throughout the movie that felt like it actually advanced the plot (e.g. no Canto Bight nonsense). For me, it felt like Finn finally had a plot for the first time since he helped Poe escape in TFA.
  • The new characters didn't seem overly shoehorned in (Poe's old flame from the planet with the black market droid baby-alien, the crew of people who were all First Order defectors around the Death Star wreckage). The latter seemed particularly nice to finally add in - clearly not everyone would blindly follow orders and there would be other defectors around. I thought they helped to round out Finn's character a bit.
  • Poor General Hux was a bit of a deus ex machina, but I'm glad that he wasn't presented as "hey, I'm a good guy!" and more "I just don't want that bastard to win" type of character.
  • I loved the light(n)ing for the Emperor's face - it made the shifting features and hulking machinery creepier in the Evil Sith Lair.
  • I admit, I giggled a bit at the fact that translating the "forbidden language" made C3P0 catch a case of red-eye disease - like, why is that a feature of his programming?
  • My favorite totally minor detail that I spotted was in Kylo's costuming - after the fight and subsequent resurrection on the Death Star wreckage, as Kylo turns to watch Rey fly his ship away, you can see he has a little stab hole in his cloak from where the light saber came out his back. Kudos to the costume designer and continuity people for that!
I am not really a fan of Rey being the granddaughter of Palpatine, but it works in service to the story. I don't have a problem with it and it does explain why she is so powerful. I also like that she adopted the name Skywalker at the end.

The final battle (both on land and in space) was epic and I loved it, even if it was a bit predictable. Everyone knew the good guys would rally and win.

And finally, LEIA. So they had some issues fully integrating what little of Carrie Fisher they had. Body double was obvious and there were scenes where you could tell they essentially gave Leia's dialogue to the other person in the scene. Most notably Rey. "I'll go run the course"/"I'll earn your brother's saber someday." etc. all felt like they should have come from Leia instead of being spoken at her. They did what they could and while not totally happy with it, they did end up giving her the sendoff she deserved.
I am also a bit sad that they made Rey be a Palpatine, but if the alternative for generating a super-powerful Jedi is what we got in TPM ("You are JediJesus, born of woman and The ForceMidichlorians, hence your enormous power") then the Palpatine plot was definitely the way to go. It made Rey's struggles/fears about the dark side much easier to understand, though certainly not presented in a novel way.

I was dreading what they would do with Leia, but overall I think they did the best they could. I'm glad they didn't go the Peter Cushing route and CGI her (as the General, anyway). They still can't quite get her younger self's face right, though.

The final battle seemed appropriately epic, with just a touch of novelty (Foot soldiers storming a ship by fighting on its surface! That was pretty neat!) I thought it was a bit of mostly believable tension when the newly-revived emperor was electrocuting all the ships in the sky - though by that late in the movie, of course the heroes would have to win (it IS Disney after all) but wouldn't it be such a cruel twist if the Emperor managed to demolish every one of that massive not-Navy in one fell swoop? Some of the fanservice bits did feel a bit rushed (like Maz Kanata giving Chewie his "missing" medal from ANH in the last moments) but overall I was happy with the cheesy, feel-good ending.
 
I had an over-all good experience. I didn't feel like I wasted my money, and I was entertained. But it wasn't perfect, and nothing ever is, not even the original trilogy.

The Bad: The Palpatine connection. The Emperor being alive? Eeeeerrrrrgggghhhhhhhhh... okay, I'll allow it. Rey being a Palpatine? C'mon. Look, I know Star Wars is a soap opera, and it's like Checkov's Family Tree, where is someone is introduced in the first act, they're going to be related somehow in the third act. For a second, I though they were going to make Jannah Landos's kid, and then I would have thrown something at the screen. I was hoping they'd go the Star Wars Rebels route where the Empire was hunting down Force-sensitive kids and they realized Rey was super-powerful and so they hid her. I would explain the early vision of Luke on a burning desert planet. OR maybe have them go the Ego route, where Palpatine had a lot of kids running around in the hopes that one would develop Sith powers. But the, "Hey, I had a son I never mentioned, like, ever, and you're his kid" was honestly my biggest letdown in this whole movie. Star Wars canon gives so many outs for this, and we wouldn't have Jesus!Anakin crap again.

The pacing. They were trying to squeeze a LOT of story in there, and I really think they should have slowed down from time-to-time to let a little more emotion sink in. They didn't meander the plot like gambling-planet in TLJ, but it was just ACTIONACTIONACTIONALLTHETIME, which isn't great, either.

The kiss. That felts wholy unnecessary, but then he died, so I was okay with it. I just didn't want it to turn into Jedi Wuv.

The Good: Leia. I like that for all his faults, at least J.J. Abrahms kept some of the better parts of TLJ going. Yes, it wasn't perfect because they could only do so much with Carrie Fisher's passing. But Leia being shown having Jedi training is like a big middle fingers to all those bitchers and whiners seeing her use the Force in TLJ. I said it before, I'll say it again: She's Princess-Fucking-Leia. She commandeered her own rescue from the get-go. She's going to use every resource she has, and if she find out she has the Force? Hell yeah she's going to try to use it! And I can buy her stepping away from it when she worried about Ben. Her only teacher was Luke, who was still pretty new to being a Jedi and teaching anyone else. He had a very minimal education, too, but I think the only thing that saved his ass was being trained by Obi-Wan and Yoda. Also, I want Leia's lightsaber.

The Jedi talk. I like that all the Jedi came together with Rey. I recognized a lot of the voices from all the movies and the tv shows. It was an easter egg that made me so happy.

The no-kiss. I liked that Poe ACTUALLY ASKED Zorii if it was okay to kiss her. Twice! And making it okay that she said no! Thank you, Hollywood, it's about time! Yes, it is sexy to ask, and even better that hearing "no" wasn't a giant ego-strike. Please do this more instead of assuming it's okay to kiss someone because you feel like it.

The core group. I still love Rey, Finn and Poe together, and they made the trilogy for me.

There's probably more good and bad, but I have to go do some errands, so they'll come to me later.
 
I liked it. I don't think it was any worse than most of the other movies. I think it would have been better if the first half of this movie was the middle movie, because I think it did a much better job of setting stakes we'd expect from Star Wars.

That said, poly relationship between Finn, Poe, and Rey when?

(Also, I was complaining to my husband when I made my Saber at Disney that I couldn't make a yellow one and it was bullshit. Now I'm even more mad.)
 
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  • Am i the only one who thinks it would have been better if Palpatine was a fake, and the actual reason why the Sith Lord wanted Rey there was so he can take over her body as revenge for being killed in his sleep by grampa?

  • And yes, it would have been nice if Palpatine was mentioned as having a couple of bastards from his young days on Naboo.

  • Also, again, this has too many rehashed and remixed elements from the OT (turn to the dark side or my trap will kill your friends; destroy the antenna thing to allow us to attack the planet destroying weapon/s). As i mentioned before, that was understandable for TFA, but they have no excuse for the 2 after.
 

Dave

Staff member
Every planet has breathable atmosphere. Rey can stand in the middle of a storm at sea and not get wet. Fucking HORSES IN SPACE?!?
 
Every planet has breathable atmosphere.
That's always been true of Star Wars. Even asteroids can be walked on with nothing more than a bag over your face. This is fantasy, not sci-fi.

*Note, movie is still meh though. As others have said it's... Fine.
 

Dave

Staff member
SUPER cheesy & predictable. I'm glad they only made 3 Star Wars movies. Had they tried sequels or - god forbid - prequels, they'd have sucked and ruined everything.
 
It was fine. My kid absolutely loved it so a successful Star Wars movie.

I am now ready for new Star Wars adventures that do not rely or need to call back to.... anything.
 
It was fine. My kid absolutely loved it so a successful Star Wars movie.

I am now ready for new Star Wars adventures that do not rely or need to call back to.... anything.
I was in that exact mood. Which is why I subscribed to Disney+ and started watching The Mandalorian. I'm only 3 episodes in and I'm already hooked and definitely more engaged than I was for 90% of this movie.
 
For me, the conceit was the biggest folly. Palpatine raising an unstoppable armada of planet killers literally from the ground (No factories? The crews came from...?) was all terribly eye-rolling. The reliance on a bunch of civilians to show up when needed was also completely stupid.

Where a lot of the critics were wrong:

- TLJ didn't get retconned. I think making Rey someone special was less than ideal but it definitely served the story, so...okay. In fact, I think Abrams picked up what TLJ left him more often than not.

- Also, most of the fan service stuff was fine. The medal at the end was dumb. The x-wing coming out of the water was great, though, and foreshadowed in TLJ.

- I feel like Leia was actually not well placed in the movie. Her dialog felt pasted in. Her scenes often seemed out of place to me.

- They don't all stay together the whole time. Why are people saying this?

Where the critics are mostly right is the pacing. It doesn't slow down enough to establish the stakes properly. There were nice moments to breathe, but it wasn't enough.

I agree with someone above. The lightsaber battles were forgettable.

I'm the end, it was a serviceable conclusion to the nonology. It tied together some things across the whole series and I left feeling like the saga was over. That's all I could ask for, really.
 
DUDE! WEDGE ANTILLES SHOWED UP!
Hey! A spoiler I hadn't heard yet! Neat!
(I don't mean this as any sort of dig, I'm aware I'm in the spoiler thread - people all just tend to consider the same things "important" spoilers which means you'll hear those a hundred times, and this isn't one of them)
 
I dunno what thread to put this in, so here it goes.

It is canon now that the Ren in Knights of Ren means lightsaber. So, Ben Solo's chosen name is Kylo Lightsaber.

 
I was disappointed that Rey buried the lightsabers instead of handing one to Finn, and training him.
She didn't destroy them, so you never know...
I also read somewhere that with the Final Order's fleet having star-destroying capabilities, there's now a glut of Khyber crystals, so she might be encouraging any future Force-users to seek out their own path/lightsabers. It would make sense, considering she rejected being a Palpatine and Ben seemed to be seduced to the dark side by his grandfather's legacy.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
A lot of movie characters have used Christ symbology to show their hero as a savior. Rey gets to be the Ark of the Covenant and melt the face off a space nazi.

I think I'm okay with this.
 
When I made this thread I was planning on posting expanded thoughts. But its been a week and I'm still just...blah
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Twitter asks a good question, "why did Snoke bother with Starkiller base when his boss/creator had a thousand planet-destroying ships parked in his garage?"

How the hell were they able to fit planet destroying weapons on Star Destroyers anyway? Weren't the Death Stars and Starkiller Base huge because they had to be in order to have planet destroying weapons?
 
Twitter asks a good question, "why did Snoke bother with Starkiller base when his boss/creator had a thousand planet-destroying ships parked in his garage?"

How the hell were they able to fit planet destroying weapons on Star Destroyers anyway? Weren't the Death Stars and Starkiller Base huge because they had to be in order to have planet destroying weapons?
The answer is hey look, it's Wedge! Remember Wedge? Here's Lando! You like Lando, right? Lap it up you dumb Star Wars nerds and give us your money!
 
Twitter asks a good question, "why did Snoke bother with Starkiller base when his boss/creator had a thousand planet-destroying ships parked in his garage?"
Apparently it's cheaper to drive a planet around than an entire fleet of starships? Why bring out the ExtraSuperMassive weapon if the SuperMassive weapon will do to quash the rebel resistance scum? Or possibly the legion of Sith Minions (who may or may not have been spirits of sith past or current living groupies) were still installing the cupholders and air fresheners in the Fleet o' Doom during TFA so they couldn't deploy yet? And per TRoS, Snoke was a (potentially literal) puppet with the Emperor pulling the strings, so it wasn't particularly his call to make to deploy the huge fleet.

(All that being said, I enjoyed TFA and TRoS...)
 
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