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The Rise Of Skywalker — Official Review and Opinions Thread — Page 33

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Yeah my feelings are it isn’t so simple as one botched opportunity, more the dam busting after a series of unchecked cracks that started to add up over time. One of the bigger complaints about TROS is the breakneck pacing, but consider all the elements unresolved from the previous two IX now had to juggle or otherwise ignore like the Knights of Ren. All while trying to balance an appropriate ending to the trilogy, the saga, and being its own movie. So for me while it’s not blameless and I do think TROS took the lazy way out, it’s a tricky situation and some of it lands on time wasted not establishing more prior when there was time to spare. “We’ll figure it out later”, then all of the sudden we’re at the finale and later became too late.

“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” - DV

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act on instinct said:

Yeah my feelings are it isn’t so simple as one botched opportunity, more the dam busting after a series of unchecked cracks that started to add up over time. One of the bigger complaints about TROS is the breakneck pacing, but consider all the elements unresolved from the previous two IX now had to juggle or otherwise ignore like the Knights of Ren. All while trying to balance an appropriate ending to the trilogy, the saga, and being its own movie. So for me while it’s not blameless and I do think TROS took the lazy way out, it’s a tricky situation and some of it lands on time wasted not establishing more prior when there was time to spare. “We’ll figure it out later”, then all of the sudden we’re at the finale and later became too late.

I don’t really buy that. I mean sure, there were plenty of unresolved elements, but considering TROS didn’t bother to resolve or really spend any time on most of them I don’t think that was the issue. Not to mention the film easily could have just been longer, TLJ had ten minutes on it and Endgame proved you could be 30 minutes longer than that and still make plenty of cash. No, the issue was for whatever reason JJ and Terrio felt the need to add in a million new elements out of nowhere that all needed to be set up and resolved within one movie, which is what really makes it feel so crammed (first act is full of new exposition, second act features all new revelations, third act has to wrap it all up). They shot themselves in the foot trying to outsmart themselves when they could have easily just stayed the course, so to speak.

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Exactly. I will give a bit of leeway due to the talk that it was the studio heads which required all the cuts to the film late in the process, but the primary fault is still with the filmmakers for overstuffing the film with pointless elements in the first place. Besides, regardless of the pacing the underlying story is fundamentally vapid.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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I do tend to think if they had more time to work on it they would have been able to simplify and cut it down in the scripting stage rather than the editing stage, but ultimately yes some of the choices are stupid regardless.

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It wasn’t evening-me’s fault the dog ran off and go run over, it was afternoon-me’s fault for leaving the gate open. What was I supposed to do when walking into a situation like that fresh?

My stance on revising fan edits.

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It feels like the use of props like the wayfinder and the dagger made a real shorthand to trim down TROS to the barest essentials, it’s almost like they threw their hands up on the organic resolution and just went with what was simple to follow, with whatever was left on the cutting room floor still leading to the same place but less shallow on the details behind those individual pieces.

“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” - DV

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JJ’s complete blackout silence on the film is quite odd, I wonder what he feels about releasing an extended cut of the film. I hope it’s a question that get’s asked in future interviews and fan interactions.

Peace is a lie
There is only passion…

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JJ doesn’t do extended cuts, never has. Asking him about it would just lead to a rambling and very political answer about the artistic vision or whatever.

His silence on the film isn’t odd, either. It didn’t do what anyone involved really wanted it to do, and so he’s just going to stay quiet until his next thing, where he’ll HAVE to talk about it as part of that thing’s press tour.

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I guess the question then is how will he talk about it? In light of criticisms leveled against TFA he seemed to concede a little and acknowledged the ways it was a copy of ANH, though I don’t see him doing the same for TROS being so messy, it’s not as direct of a point. Maybe one day he’ll say he regrets not going in with a stronger plan for the trilogy from the beginning, or admit the whole dagger quest was lazy overall, maybe he’ll talk about the Kylo footage that never made it to the theatrical version, but there won’t be a tell-all book about it anytime soon.

“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” - DV

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He’ll talk about it the same way he talks about Into Darkness or Super 8, probably. If he talks about it.

He might talk about it like he talks about his unmade Superman trilogy.

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idir_hh said:

JJ’s complete blackout silence on the film is quite odd, I wonder what he feels about releasing an extended cut of the film. I hope it’s a question that get’s asked in future interviews and fan interactions.

The movie would 100% benefit from an extra hour. My biggest problem (setting aside everything about how it doesn’t follow through on the previous movie) is the pacing and how nothing really has time to breath.

Luke astro-projects himself to Salt Lake Planet, gets shot at by gorilla walkers, has a non-lightsaber duel with Darth Millennial, then dies of a broken heart, inspiring broom boys throughout the galaxy to get creative with their sweeping. - DuracellEnergizer

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I haven’t had chance to read this thread as yet, but my personal feelings are anything outside the OT are taboo now.

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I know this is kinda an old discussion now, but I’m new to originaltrilogy.com and for my first post I might as well rant a bit about my least favourite SW film. Negativity bias and all that.

To me, Rise of Skywalker feels more like a corporate product instead of an artistic vision. It does so much pandering and backtracks on themes from The Last Jedi, the WORST thing they could do for this already incoherent trilogy. It also seems like a film afraid of its audience, an example being Chewie’s fake-out death; although that scene actually impressed me, I would be OK with it being a ruse IF they gave the reveal when the characters find it out. But instead they do the reveal at the earliest opportunity, a captured Chewie accompanied by a joyous flourish that’s the musical equivalent of “hey look, he’s alive guys! “We didn’t kill him! Please don’t be angry!”

Bringing back Palpatine and a secret fleet of death-star-level warships - which still do nothing for the film’s low stakes - is the cheapest move since, um, The Force Awakens’ story structure. I don’t even enjoy Ian McDiarmid in this film, that’s how bad it is. His existence WOULD somewhat ruin the ending of Return, only I hear he’s a clone - and what says ‘desperate’ more than having a clone of a previous villain as the main antagonist? I’m not even mentioning the death scene. TROS tries to copy Endgame in so many ways to make the same profit it’s painful to watch.

There’s also the issue of the self-indulgent fan service that featured in Force Awakens being blown up in this movie. By self-indulgent, I mean while The Last Jedi featured nostalgic OT things that furthered the plot, this film doesn’t (I’m thinking Yoda’s theme as Luke lifts his x-wing, and Chewie’s medal). A recurring problem in JJ’s films is things that make sense to the audience but not in the context of the story. Here, it’s Chewie’s medal (Jesus Christ) and that after Chewie’s ‘death’, the characters seem to quickly get over him. There’s no more Rey-Poe tension, which I liked, or anything.

In general, I didn’t like most of the over-saturated cinematography or the over-the-top finale. I actually enjoyed Rise of Skywalker on a first watch, carried along by the revelations, but soon decided that it’s so much about constantly driving its video-game plot that it loses the special moments that really make Star Wars, and is just not a rewatchable film. It’s like it’s designed to be seen - or ‘consumed’ - once, then forgotten.

These seem more like nitpicks than a negative review, I just wanted to say more niche things that MAYBE haven’t been mentioned here. Please understand that I now view The Rise of Skywalker as a black hole of garbage that sucks in even John Williams’ soundtrack, which mostly amounts to previous Star Wars themes in the weirdest places. Also, sorry for writing so much, it feels nice to put my thoughts out in a purely SW-fan website/discussion.

“Remember, the Force will be with you. Always.”

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I feel bad for JJ Abrams. It seems like there was a lot of studio interference in this film, and now JJ, who’s a massive Star Wars fan, has his name forever tied to a movie that was a massive let-down for millions of people.

“Remember, the Force will be with you. Always.”

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JJ Abrams was the studio interference. Nobody interfered with him. He did what he wanted.

That’s what it ended up looking like, unfortunately.

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I doubt nobody interfered, the end result feels very chopped and meddled with, some invisible hands were putting on the pressure, we’ll just never know to what extent.

“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” - DV

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I doubt that anyone really interfered. That the result feels chopped and meddled with doesn’t have to be a result of some outside influence forcing hands. Abrams’ movies all feel that way to some degree, both the ones that work and the ones that don’t.

The idea that art is better if you get out of the artists way at all times doesn’t make sense, and isn’t borne out by the history of filmed art, either. It doesn’t have to be some shadowy conspiracy of invisible hands taking a beautiful thing and making it ugly behind the scenes (although that narrative exists for a reason, and everyone’s familiar with it - probably many people here first heard about it in regards to THX-1138 and Lucas’ “they cut the fingers off my child” analogy) it can simply be that the artist in question frankly screwed up the execution.

Which is what happened. The studio did interfere with Episode 9 - that interference was in the form of throwing out Duel of the Fates and bringing in the guys who had free reign to make The Rise of Skywalker, and did so pretty much exactly the way they wanted to, according to them.

If they don’t wish to accept any excuses on that part, I’m not inclined to offer them any.

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The real question is, why not release the deleted scenes? The only other film in the franchise that has no deleted scenes with the BlueRay is Rogue One, and we all know the story with that.

Peace is a lie
There is only passion…

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I think people don’t really care about deleted scenes anymore outside of the fan-edit community. The large preponderance of them aren’t very interesting, and I wouldn’t be surprised if part of why there aren’t any deleted scenes is because whatever there is doesn’t really merit much attention.

That or stuff like spider-baby-head thing is just too weird for them to plop on a disc with not much context.

Of course, to provide the context you basically have to go all the way into the story of how and why that whole Mustafar scene is made more or less entirely pointless in the final edit, and how it was once built out of Trevorrow’s earlier Duel of the Fates ideas, and then you have to get into why Trevorrow got fired, and THERE I’ll fall in line with those who have noted Disney’s ownership of Lucasfilm isn’t very interested in the sorts of warts ‘n’ all behind-the-scenes stuff that independent Lucasfilm didn’t mind indulging - even WITH Lucas’ habitual retconning of history factoring in.

I’ll never understand why they didn’t just cut the whole Mustafar sequence out of the final edit. It’s beyond pointless and you learn nothing from its staying in that you dont learn contextually from the movie later. It’s just a confused mess of jumbled imagery that doesn’t tell a story or help the larger story make any more sense once its done. I mean, I understand why they did it, its just that the reasoning is so half-assed at best and bad at worst that it doesn’t make sense to me (especially since they were already in “Get it under 2:30 at all costs” mode, which was also a dumb decision).

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jedi_bendu said:

I know this is kinda an old discussion now, but I’m new to originaltrilogy.com and for my first post I might as well rant a bit about my least favourite SW film. Negativity bias and all that.

To me, Rise of Skywalker feels more like a corporate product instead of an artistic vision. It does so much pandering and backtracks on themes from The Last Jedi, the WORST thing they could do for this already incoherent trilogy. It also seems like a film afraid of its audience, an example being Chewie’s fake-out death; although that scene actually impressed me, I would be OK with it being a ruse IF they gave the reveal when the characters find it out. But instead they do the reveal at the earliest opportunity, a captured Chewie accompanied by a joyous flourish that’s the musical equivalent of “hey look, he’s alive guys! “We didn’t kill him! Please don’t be angry!”

Bringing back Palpatine and a secret fleet of death-star-level warships - which still do nothing for the film’s low stakes - is the cheapest move since, um, The Force Awakens’ story structure. I don’t even enjoy Ian McDiarmid in this film, that’s how bad it is. His existence WOULD somewhat ruin the ending of Return, only I hear he’s a clone - and what says ‘desperate’ more than having a clone of a previous villain as the main antagonist? I’m not even mentioning the death scene. TROS tries to copy Endgame in so many ways to make the same profit it’s painful to watch.

There’s also the issue of the self-indulgent fan service that featured in Force Awakens being blown up in this movie. By self-indulgent, I mean while The Last Jedi featured nostalgic OT things that furthered the plot, this film doesn’t (I’m thinking Yoda’s theme as Luke lifts his x-wing, and Chewie’s medal). A recurring problem in JJ’s films is things that make sense to the audience but not in the context of the story. Here, it’s Chewie’s medal (Jesus Christ) and that after Chewie’s ‘death’, the characters seem to quickly get over him. There’s no more Rey-Poe tension, which I liked, or anything.

In general, I didn’t like most of the over-saturated cinematography or the over-the-top finale. I actually enjoyed Rise of Skywalker on a first watch, carried along by the revelations, but soon decided that it’s so much about constantly driving its video-game plot that it loses the special moments that really make Star Wars, and is just not a rewatchable film. It’s like it’s designed to be seen - or ‘consumed’ - once, then forgotten.

These seem more like nitpicks than a negative review, I just wanted to say more niche things that MAYBE haven’t been mentioned here. Please understand that I now view The Rise of Skywalker as a black hole of garbage that sucks in even John Williams’ soundtrack, which mostly amounts to previous Star Wars themes in the weirdest places. Also, sorry for writing so much, it feels nice to put my thoughts out in a purely SW-fan website/discussion.

This is all correct.

For people doubting the studio meddling, of course there was. The studio threw out Trevorrow out of fear and brought in JJ because he made them money on the first film…ignoring the fact that he’s never been able to finish a story.

They almost certainly meddled in the script that JJ and Terrio made to make it more ‘safe’. I won’t pin the bigger script mishaps on studio meddling, but there’s no way that this wasn’t an issue.

They absolutely cut out much of the connective tissue of the film before release, to the point that JJ basically gave up on it.

This isn’t to defend JJ’s terrible choices - a good ending would have survived all this meddling - but credit where it’s due, the problems came from all sides.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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NeverarGreat said:

For people doubting the studio meddling, of course there was. The studio threw out Trevorrow out of fear and brought in JJ because he made them money on the first film…ignoring the fact that he’s never been able to finish a story.

I said exactly that a couple posts up. JJ Abrams WAS the studio interference.

They almost certainly meddled in the script that JJ and Terrio made to make it more ‘safe’.

They almost certainly didn’t, and what little we do know from multiple sources re: the behind-the-scenes of this film’s making reinforces that. They gave Abrams and Terrio free reign to go for the big crowdpleasing ending and Abrams/Terrio botched it. I don’t think “interference” beyond Trevorrow’s firing was an issue at all (honestly, there wasn’t much time for Lucasfilm to do anything but simply accept whatever the hell Abrams & Terrio turned in), and there’s not really any reason to believe it was. Again - they don’t want excuses, so there’s no point to offering them up gratis.

It looks, sounds, and feels like a bad JJ Abrams movie. What’s in it for anyone to let him off the hook by trying to say it only ended up that way because the studio “interfered?” He wasn’t handicapped by upper management. They didn’t hamstring him. He made a jumbled, borderline unintelligible movie because that’s always a possibility with him. “They” didn’t make the cuts that rendered the film that way. Abrams and his editors did that themselves. All on their own. And they’re not the first creative team in movies to have done that, either.

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Broom Kid I remember reading your initial impression on the movie where you too felt that the final product had been mucked with to a degree that was uncharacteristic for just JJ, I’m not holding it against you but what made you change your mind?

“The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” - DV