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The Rise Of Skywalker — Official Review and Opinions Thread — Page 36

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StarkillerAG said:

JJ Abrams: Going somewhere, Favreau?
Favreau: Yes JJ, as a matter of fact I was just going to see your boss. Tell Kathleen I’ve got season 2 of Mando.
Abrams: It’s too late. You should have made it when you had the chance. COVID has caused a shutdown so big every post-production worker will be laid off. You’re lucky I found you first.
Favreau: Yeah, but this time I’ve got the show.
Abrams: If you release it now, I might forget I found you.
Favreau: It’s not finished yet. Tell Kathleen-
Abrams: Kathleen’s through with you. She has no time for producers who can’t get their work released on time.
Favreau: Even I get delayed sometimes. You think I had a choice?
Abrams: Tell that to Kathleen. She may only replace you with someone else.
Favreau: Over my dead body.
Abrams: That’s the idea. I’ve been looking forward to this moment for a long time.
Favreau: Yes, I’ll bet you have.

Mando season 2 becomes wildly popular, causing everyone to forget about TROS

Favreau: Sorry about the mess.

Abrams: Macluncky

Maul- A Star Wars Story

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JJ: She’ll make 1.5 billion before streaming, she may not look like much but she’s got it where it counts, kid. I’ve made a lot of special modifications myself, but we’re a little rushed so if you’ll just get on board, we’ll get out of here.

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

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Why don’t you outrun them? I thought you said this thing was fast.

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Watch your mouth or you’re gonna be reading all about it in GQ Magazine.

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 (Edited)

Boohoo I was a nobody until I won the jackpot and got the chance to be in Star Wars, making me a world star and multimillionaire. Poor me😥- John Boyega /GQ magazine

Peace is a lie
There is only passion…

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If someone followed me around constantly asking questions and publishing my responses, I can tell you it would be much worse.

I’d really like a smart speaker that looks like a wayfinder (or maybe a holocron).

“What’s that flashing?”

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idir_hh said:

Boohoo I was a nobody until I won the jackpot and got the chance to be in Star Wars, making me a world star and multimillionaire. Poor me😥- John Boyega /GQ magazine

I think there’s a little more to it than that. I admire John Boyega for speaking out knowing full well this may jeapordize future carreer opportunities. Some things are more important than fame, and money. I can’t disagree with him either. Finn was transformed into a big joke. I also don’t agree with the whole “you won the jackpot, so you should shut up” schtick. He earned the role with his talent and hard work.

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John Boyega @ GQ

Han: Hey Lando! You kept your promise, right? Not a scratch?
Lando: Well, what’s left of her isn’t scratched. All the scratched parts got knocked off along the way.
Han (exasperated): Knocked off?!

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I watched The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker back-to-back today. I still love both movies, flaws and all.

NeverarGreat said:

“Ahh, JJ Abrams. I recognized your empty mystery box when you were brought back on board.”

“Charming to the last. You don’t know how hard I found it, signing the order to terminate Colin Trevorrow’s script.”

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Lol

“The more you tighten your grip, Disney, the more moviegoers will slip through your fingers.”

“Not after we have demonstrated the power of the streaming TV miniseries.”

My stance on revising fan edits.

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“Since you are reluctant to provide us with the unaltered versions, we have chosen to test this sites reconstructive power on the Original Trilogy.“

“No! You can’t possibly…”

“You would prefer us to purchase another box set? Then release the unaltered!“

“Here’s the GOUT.”

“Continue with the operation. You may download when ready.“

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“What?!”

“Your’e far too trusting. The GOUT is merely a Laser Disc transfer, and far too low quality to make an effective demonstration. But don’t worry. The fans will release 4k80 soon enough.”

… (Later, somewhere in the outskirts of Southern California")

George: “It’s as if millions of fans cried out in joy that the restoration of the Original Trilogy has been completed in 4k. And the special editions have been silenced. I feel something terrible has happened.”

(to Rick McCallum) “You better get on with your exercises.”

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I recently purchased two new memory foam bean bag chairs for my movie room, and it’s always been a rule of mine since I was a kid that any new addition to my entertainment area must be broken in while watching a Star Wars movie before anything else.

I decided to go with the one I’ve seen the least (since it’s the newest) The Rise of Skywalker.

I do have some issues with it, but I still love it. I don’t think it’s odd that Palpatine returned, but announcing it in the crawl seems strange. I’d rather have seen exactly how he came back on screen, or have his return be a rumor that the characters don’t believe until they see him themselves, and figuring out how he did it becomes the answer to defeating him.

I preferred Rey being a nobody, but as I said before TRoS was released, her being related to someone does not negate the lessons she learned in The Last Jedi. (No one else can tell you who you are. Friends, family and mentors enrich our lives, but who we are comes from within, not from others.) I suppose this lesson does fit well with Leia telling Rey, "Never be afraid of who you are.” But I still liked the idea of her not being related to anyone.

Aside from that, there is overwhelmingly so much to enjoy. In my opinion the sequel trilogy not only fits well together, but fits well with the rest of the saga. I think people forget how much the passing of Carrie Fisher most likely changed what this movie would have been. All things considered, they handled it well.

It was so great to “take one last look, at my friends.” I enjoyed every single bit of fan service to the fullest extent. When Han says " I know," to Ben, it still gets me every time.

There isn’t any real sense of finality, but how could there be? That galaxy far, far away is still out there, and I’m sure we’ll eventually want to check in on what became of everyone and meet new people as well. (“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” - Orson Welles) I take comfort in the idea of Star Wars continuing on. I feel fortunate to have be among the generation to have lived though its beginning. I can’t wait to see what the next generation of Star Wars brings.

On side note, those bean bag chairs were great. They would be very easy to fall asleep in. Bean bag “technology” has come a long way since I last owned one. I highly recommend them.

The Force will be with you, always.

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Another nitpick I have is how odd it feels for Leia to have had a lightsaber, but chose to leave it with Luke all this time, and his Force ghost leads Rey to it so there can be two sabers in the finale without one having a red blade.

I would have preferred Rey to have started building her own saber earlier on as part of her training. Kylo could have still gotten the Graflex saber from Rey in the same manner, then we could see her use the saber she’d been working on for the first time.

Still, just another nitpick and as I said above, I continue to enjoy the movie very much.

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I finally saw The Rise of Skywalker and I’m happy to say that if you spend months on the Internet encountering people’s explanations of why it’s terrible, it doesn’t come off as awful just not good. It’s bad, but I don’t hate it. I will not claim to have read or remembered all of your thoughts in this thread, so apologies if this is redundant, but it is nice to have a thread where I can write my thoughts out nonetheless.

The Good

  • Well the movie looked amazing. There were a lot of fantastic visuals, such as:
    • Palpatine’s inverted trapezoid floating castle which is actually just a hat to his real fortress which is entirely underground
    • The religious festival
    • Rey & Kylo’s fight where they’re not even in the same room
    • Rey & Kylo’s fight on the wreckage of the DSII
  • Palpatine’s return as an idea and his portrayal as a half-living corpse on the end of a medical robot-arm. I did not like this idea when I first heard it, but ultimately I think it’s pretty good (though not as good as maybe not doing this idea. But it did work.). I also liked the idea that Snoke was just a cloned-puppet, but of course it should have had some setup in the previous films (if they had given anything forethought)
  • Hux is The Spy. You don’t suspect him, but he does have a motive.
  • “The dead speak!” I know people hate this, but it’s pure Star Wars cheesiness, right up there with “War!”
  • The opening sequence with Finn & Poe on an exciting mission
  • Rey’s training and the tension between her and her friends and her priorities in life
  • The ways they managed to get Carrie Fisher into the movie. That was impressive
  • The idea that Palpatine contains the spirit of the previous Sith Lords. That was fantastic.

The Bad (aka Confusing, Poorly Explained, etc)

  • How did the Emperor return? Who knows about it? etc etc. This really should have been shown.
  • What was Kylo doing at the beginning of the movie? Yes, I know he was getting the Wayfinder, but it was way too short. Yes, I know this is because they cut out a lot of stuff - it really felt like they made a mistake there.
  • There should have been more stuff involving The Spy proving useful before his reveal & demise
  • An explanation of how the Emperor came to possess a big fleet. The Sith-Cultist society laboring for decades in secret isolation explanation is both implausible and barely in the film. Would have been better to just do it Katana Fleet style
  • The whole subplot about Rey’s parents being killed by that guy with the dagger was insufficiently set-up and poorly explained
  • Poe & Finn’s dangerous mission at the start should have taken place on Couruscant (fan-editors take note!)

The Ugly

  • Lightspeed skipping
  • The Jetpacks & Speeders chase
  • Not killing Chewie
  • Restoring Threepio’s memory
  • The size of Lando’s backup fleet
  • The attempt to cram as much OT stuff in as possible, especially the meaningless glimpses of Bespin & Ewoks at the end in an obvious but poorly-done and unnecessary callback to the SE ending of ROTJ
  • Obviously the whole thing with the dagger revealing where to find the wayfinder made no sense and was extremely stupid. Thankfully it was brief.
  • The Emperor’s Fleet was overpowered. Enough with the super-weapons, it’s been done, redone, and done again.
  • But if you’re going to blow up a planet, then Poe’s ex should have stayed dead (just like Chewie)
  • I, sadly, found Dominic Monaghan too distracting, as his every appearance just felt like Charlie from Lost had suddenly joined the Rebellion. And I say this as a person who liked Lost!
  • No characters except for Rey & Ben had a story or anything to do. This is a huge screw-up, and the cast’s obvious frustration with this in interviews is completely justified. Poe had a little bit of something when he talked with Lando about the burden of leadership, and that part was actually good, but should’ve been more. Finn had nothing, and should have had the lead-a-stormtrooper-rebellion as originally conceived. Rose had nothing to do and it is so sad. Even if you hate her “Saving what we love” bit in TLJ, her story with Finn was not all bad (except for the horse race, but that’s a different thread) and she should have been treated as part of the gang in this film instead of being reduced to the same level as Grunberg & Monaghan. Similarly, more Hux would have been good.

ROTJ Storyboard Reconstruction Project

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timdiggerm said:

  • No characters except for Rey & Ben had a story or anything to do. This is a huge screw-up, and the cast’s obvious frustration with this in interviews is completely justified. Poe had a little bit of something when he talked with Lando about the burden of leadership, and that part was actually good, but should’ve been more. Finn had nothing, and should have had the lead-a-stormtrooper-rebellion as originally conceived.

Great points. In regard to this last one, I am GUTTED we didn’t get a stormtrooper revolution, especially after hearing that that was initially planned. Stormtroopers are so often just the background bad guys, they’re just there, and it’s very rare an Imperial shows moral conflict or humanity. TFA begins with Finn’s defection and that’s the main example of it ever happening. Logically, it should have been a microcosm of an eventually massive plot point, and as you say, a perfect resolution to Finn’s arc throughout the sequels (which now he doesn’t have) and something purely awesome to watch unfold. I’m serious when I say it would have justified the entire sequel trilogy for me.

Alas, one of my biggest problems with Rise of Skywalker is how the everyman/woman theme that was picked up in TLJ has been dropped YET AGAIN in the saga. Rey apparently needs to be connected to a previous character for her to have a part in the main story, and Finn defects from the First Order because of course he was born a ‘good guy’ (and also force sensitive), while the rest of the brainwashed stormtroopers excluding Naomie Ackie are all bad guys who he can spend the rest of the trilogy killing and cheering on their deaths. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to rant about this for ages. IMO it’s the biggest missed opportunity in Star Wars and I will forever be pissed off about it.

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

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Absolutely. I’d say that the final entry should have been primarily about the First Order losing power from within, as their kidnapped troops were won over by the actions of Finn and Rose. That TROS casually murders these troops offscreen in the final scenes of the movie is the dagger in the back of the entire sequel trilogy.

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:

Absolutely. I’d say that the final entry should have been primarily about the First Order losing power from within, as their kidnapped troops were won over by the actions of Finn and Rose. That TROS casually murders these troops offscreen in the final scenes of the movie is the dagger in the back of the entire sequel trilogy.

That was when I truly realized that this was a movie with nothing artistically worthy to say. The mimicking of the ROTJ celebration and the crashing of the ships was hands down one of the most disappointing moments I have ever had at the movies. I asked myself two things; “what am I actually supposed to take away from this movie?” and “what was the point of being invested in the story in the first place if the conclusion feels like a complete cop-out?”. I actually really hate revisiting the way I felt sitting in that movie theater loll. But as someone who loves films and who wants to be a storyteller, I can’t thank the ST enough. Because its mere existence both inspired me, and made me invested in filmmaking as a whole. Despite my complaints with the story itself, it was a blast over the last few years hanging out on this site and talking about something that I love.

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I’m actually stunned that the story didn’t include a First Order civil war (Kylo vs Hux) and a plot about Finn and Rose finding or rediscovering families who aide the rebels. These are such basic threads they should have picked up on.