The Rise Of Skywalker — Official Review and Opinions Thread — Page 3

Just saw it.

My overall impression: It’s technically the best sequel, but realistically it’s merely better than TFA and TLJ.

In other words, it’s garbage, but it’s the most entertaining garbage out of the sequels. It’s like JJ still tried to pretend to be serious about it in TFA and for this movie he just decided “fuck it” and rolled with the punches and the result is oaky doaky cringe comedy. This movie may as well be a parody and still be funny, but the fact that this is advertised as a real film makes it pretty hilarious.

TFA is bad in a pretty boring way.
TLJ is extremely bad in an even more boringest way.
TROS is extremely bad in a somewhat fun way.

The constant action also distracts from all the obvious issues the movie has, which kinda makes it better than the first two from a mere “having to sit through it” perspective. Not that I feel like rewatching it, but at least it wasn’t too painful to watch.

Also, Rey was kinda dominated by Kylo in the main fight, which is a slight step up from the Mary Sueness of her character in the past movies. She still won for the most awkwardly edited Deus Ex Machina reasons, but hey, it’s something. Little, but something.

I have no idea how to talk about this movie because it was absolutely, without a doubt the worst one in the series in terms of story, but I had more fun watching it than I ever even approached with the PT. It’s preposterous and bad and so bizarrely enjoyable.

I’m really curious to see what the fan editors can do with it.

4throck said:

Just saw it and liked it very much. Editing, music and acting are top.
Better than all the prequels, and perhaps the best of the second trilogy.

Gave me back the sense of adventure, action and magic that Star Wars is all about.
I felt like a 12 year old and that’s what matters 😃

Just finished watching it ten minutes ago. Liked most of it and loved a few parts. It spoke to my 12 year old self who saw ANH in ,77.

I’ve concluded many of you naysayers are just curmudgeons;)

JawsTDS said:

Can J.J. please quit stealing music from other films. He’s not just reusing motifs, he’s just straight up lifting the audio file and dropping it into his film.

The ending motif from TFA is pasted lazily into the final moments of TROS. I haaaaaaaaate that.

Thanks for reminding me. I swear there was a moment where they pasted music from iRobot or Minority Report iirc, not sure which one of them, and then some others too. Not 100% the same maybe, but very similar nonetheless.

My guess is they had placeholder music and then they had John williams remake it, so I expect to find it in the score, if it’s complete enough for that.

With a few hours of hindsight, I think my TROS review is: I can’t wait for Dune.

Speaking of reduntant dialogue… any idea what Finn wanted to tell Rey before “dying” by the way? It was even brought up a minute later in the tunnels, but he never actually said anything in the end?

bromeo said:

Speaking of reduntant dialogue… any idea what Finn wanted to tell Rey before “dying” by the way? It was even brought up a minute later in the tunnels, but he never actually said anything in the end?

Probably some kind of love confession is my guess. Anything else doesn’t really make sense.

Well, I’m really glad I avoided spoilers because if I’d read the leaks I would have gone in thinking it was the dumbest possible story they could have done, because it looks that way on paper, and it probably would have made me hate it.

But I went in completely clean (minus trailers) and…I really liked it.

The first half hour or so was a mess and made me incredibly nervous and skeptical, but the rest sucked me in and I was on board.

I think it’s currently my favorite of the ST, but that could just be recency bias.

I’m going to try to avoid reading too many reactions from other people to let myself digest it on my own terms for a while, but at the moment I’m happy and satisfied with how the saga “ended”…

…until we get the inevitable Episode X in twenty years with Jedi Master Rey Skywalker.

Also, FUCK YEAH YELLOW LIGHTSABER!

My review:

We’ll always have The Last Jedi.

DominicCobb said:

My review:

We’ll always have The Last Jedi.

joefavs “likes” this post.

I think SOMETHING happened either during production, post-production, or even both, because this movie just doesn’t make sense a lot of the time. It’s not just retconning things and moving too fast for its own good (there are not a lot of “moments” in this movie, and it hurts a lot of the emotional punches it’s consistently failing to land), it’s referencing plot points that didn’t happen prior to their referencing, and half the time it’s not finishing off things that they ARE setting up. (What was Finn going to tell Rey? Why was Lando talking to Jannah at the end like we were supposed to insinuate… something? Why is Rey kissing Kylo at all?)

I’m also convinced Palpatine is lit and shot the way he is to cover up his mouth, because more than half of his dialog is completely obscured as he’s speaking it. I don’t think he was supposed to be there as much as he was, and I think he was deployed as a narrative patch job above and beyond “we needed to wrap up the whole saga.” I wouldn’t be surprised at all if something went really sideways on this movie and this was the best effort at making whatever it was they had left work.

Also I understand the refusal to not write Leia out between movies but that would have been preferable to what they did here. By far. She became a literal PROP by the end. And her presence in the scenes she was “active” in was utterly false, no matter how good the CGI lighting and costuming was. There was no feeling that she was acting with anyone, or that anyone was acting with her. There’s good reason for that, of course, and I feel like trying to glide over that unavoidable reason through movie trickery just called more attention to it. The only Leia scene that carried any of the weight it was intended to was Chewie reacting to her death, and even THAT had nothing to do with anything happening in THIS movie, but relied on literal decades of familiarity from previous, much better movies.

This is the worst film Abrams has directed, and I have a hard time believing it’s turned out this way solely because of bad vision and worse execution. Something about this movie just seems straight up broken in multiple ways, and not in the “What else could I do look what I was left with” sort of way, but in the “I have a release date I have to hit no matter what and this movie doesn’t work the way it is but I’m literally out of time so hopefully we can cobble SOMETHING together.”

For the first 45-50 minutes, it’s a sort of bland, speedy, superficial bit of fluff & fun in Star Wars packaging. And then it just keeps skipping and stuttering through whatever its story is trying to be for the five seconds it can maintain focus. I know he’s a flashy, superficial director but this is bad even for him, and it really does seem like there are some extenuating circumstances we might not know about.

It might also be why Abrams decided to work with WB for the foreseeable future and to leave Disney/Lucasfilm behind.

I truly think Carrie Fisher’s death is a major factor here. They were on the record almost from day one about this being Leia’s movie in the way TFA was Han’s and TLJ was Luke’s. I think they got caught completely flat-footed when Carrie died and just absolutely failed in the attempt to pivot to something else.

It’s gotta be, but the flat-out refusal to consider an option where she’s not in the movie just… I know retrospect makes geniuses out of the biggest dummies (hi there!) but she shouldn’t have been in this movie. The idea shouldn’t have been pursued, and that maybe would have freed them up to pursue different storytelling avenues.

I also was resistant to the idea that Abrams was actively going out of his way to “retcon” what Johnson did but there are actually two or three moments on the level of “This will begin to make things right” where it’s beyond obvious Abrams is breaking the fourth wall to comment on what came before. The most notable is Luke solemnly talking about “disrespecting” the weapon of a Jedi. And if that was meant to be a self-deprecating joke at Luke’s expense, (like a ha-ha smartass “remember when I did that? LOL what a dummy I was” sort of thing) it wasn’t acted, shot, or cut like that at all, so that interpretation is almost impossible to make. Luke (whose hair was trash! Why did it LOOK like that?) was essentially a platitude machine. The only part of that whole scene that works? The part of the scene that is riffing on the infinitely better scene from Empire Strikes Back.

Again, I know Abrams isn’t the most graceful director, but there is so much that is structurally FUCKED about this movie and its characterization and arcs that I have a hard time believing this was actually what he wanted to make. Just going from TFA to this, it’s such a MESS comparatively - I believe PARTS of what he actually wanted to make are IN here, but they’re stitched and glued together very, very sloppily.

Yeah, I think I’m going to refrain from engaging with other fans about this movie for a very, very long time. Trying to talk about TLJ exhausted me. This one feels like it’s going to be even worse.

I’ll just take my “I liked the movie” and move on with my life until people start working on fan edits.

Broom Kid said:

It’s gotta be, but the flat-out refusal to consider an option where she’s not in the movie just… I know retrospect makes geniuses out of the biggest dummies (hi there!) but she shouldn’t have been in this movie. The idea shouldn’t have been pursued, and that maybe would have freed them up to pursue different storytelling avenues.

I also was resistant to the idea that Abrams was actively going out of his way to “retcon” what Johnson did but there are actually two or three moments on the level of “This will begin to make things right” where it’s beyond obvious Abrams is breaking the fourth wall to comment on what came before. The most notable is Luke solemnly talking about “disrespecting” the weapon of a Jedi. And if that was meant to be a self-deprecating joke at Luke’s expense, (like a ha-ha smartass “remember when I did that? LOL what a dummy I was” sort of thing) it wasn’t acted, shot, or cut like that at all, so that interpretation is almost impossible to make. Luke (whose hair was trash! Why did it LOOK like that?) was essentially a platitude machine. The only part of that whole scene that works? The part of the scene that is riffing on the infinitely better scene from Empire Strikes Back.

Again, I know Abrams isn’t the most graceful director, but there is so much that is structurally FUCKED about this movie and its characterization and arcs that I have a hard time believing this was actually what he wanted to make. Just going from TFA to this, it’s such a MESS comparatively - I believe PARTS of what he actually wanted to make are IN here, but they’re stitched and glued together very, very sloppily.

I actually didn’t read the saber catch that way at all; I just took it as an acknowledgement of the fact that Luke wasn’t down on the whole Jedi project anymore. The Force ghost effects were definitely weirdly bad, though. Is it because they were in broad daylight? If so, why didn’t they stage the Luke scene at night?

My main issue was the fact that everything that really needed an explanation just got hand-waved. Palpatine’s back! How, you ask? Sith cultists, don’t worry about it. Why is Lando on Pasana? Doesn’t matter, just roll with it. Why does Kylo turn back to the light this time after we’ve seen him go the other way at least twice? I dunno, the comics will probably fix it. They just kept putting down plot points because they needed to happen, and then never even attempted to provide any amount of context that would make it make sense.

joefavs said:

With a few hours of hindsight, I think my TROS review is: I can’t wait for Dune.

This has been me for months now with TROS a forgone conclusion to a trilogy I can’t wait to forget once all the fuss dies down…

yotsuya said:

Shopping Maul said:

I liked it. In fact I was surprised that I genuinely enjoyed it after the debacle of TLJ. In particular I loved the way Rey was tempted by Palpatine in the finale. The idea that she would have to succumb to darkness and inherit the throne as the only way to save her friends was exactly the kind of temptation ROTJ should have had for Luke.

I hope I can enjoy it. Abrams does not have a good track record. So far I have seen 3 of his movies and I have the same felling about all of them. Good idea, bad execution. Star Trek blundered (great cast and great writing of dialog that is true to the Characters, but horrible story). Star Trek Into Darkness fell down a pit (seriously how do you rip off the best Trek film and do it so badly and cringeworthy). TFA was too much an homage to the OT. He cheated the ending by not giving one and doing his stupid mystery box story telling. Now the reports of TROS are that it is even more loving of on the OT while at the same time full of nonsense. I’m going to try and watch it the first time without thinking about editing it. But from the sounds of it, this might be the movie the most in need of major edits (a title I currently give to AOTC). But can it be saved by fan edit? But the reviews so far are just showing that even if I might like the ending on paper (the leaked plot sounded pretty good to me) the way Abrams executes and edits it might be the problem. No one should give him a beloved franchise project again. He f***s it up every time. Every f***ing time. I’m pissed at him and I haven’t even seen it yet. But I blame him because this has Abrams toxic touch all over it. I just hope I like it more then some others have. But considering I think that TFA is the worst of the 8 previous saga films, I don’t have much hope. Still, I love the characters and I hope someone put in enough good stuff that it can be edited into something enjoyable. I don’t know when I am going to see it. Maybe Sunday or maybe later over the holiday break. I was excited to see it, now I’m not. I think I’ll read the spoilers again.

The only things I didn’t like were things necessitated by the previous movies. In other words I’m not thrilled with much of the now-established lore, but I thought this movie made the best of those ideas. And I’m not so bound to ROTJ that I mind any violation of its supposed finality (which obviously bugs other fans). I look forward to your assessment! I kept waiting to be annoyed or have those “oh please!” moments but they just never came. I honestly enjoyed it as a legitimate piece of Star Wars, and having mulled it over for 24 hours I’m even more convinced of this (unlike TFA where I was all “I liked it, but…” and TLJ where I was all “that made no sense…”). For me this is my 3rd favourite behind ANH and TESB which will probably cost me some friends!

There are probably good technical reasons to dislike the film, but I’m not well-versed in that stuff. There’s a LOT going on - it really doesn’t let up for a second and there’s lots of retconning, re-explaining, re-contextualising etc etc. But I liked it. It certainly re-legitimised its immediate predecessors - for me anyway. I will see it again of course and possibly reassess. I look forward to your views!

I think the problem is obvious. You’ll notice Trevorrow and Connelly are credited for story. With the drastically short schedule, Abrams essentially had no choice but to inherit much of Trevorrow’s story (because of preproduction work that had already been put in, without enough time to start from scratch). But Trevorrow’s story was broken enough to get him fired, so…

Also, Hamill is definitely wearing a wig (except for when he lifts the X-wing, which I assume Rian shot for Trevorrow).

When the tickets were first being sold, the runtime was said to be 2h 35m. It seems to me like they did a final squeeze in order to get more showtimes and get a more family friendly runtime. And, oh boy, can you tell. Particularly in the opening act.

If you’ve been following some of the leaked stuff then you know there was much more to this movie than what we got. Palpatine’s reveal was meant to build up throughout the first act instead of just being dropped in out of nowhere from the very beginning.

Lando was supposed to have a daughter that was kidnapped long ago to become a stormtrooper. The end was meant to imply that it was Jannah. But without that set up, you only get them randomly meeting without any idea of why they’re talking to each other. It even makes the exchange seem potentially creepy.

I really hope that we get the deleted stuff in the Bluray because I could feel a good film trying to burst out of the seams of what ended up feeling like a rushed, unearned mess.