The Rise Of Skywalker — Official Review and Opinions Thread — Page 4

krlozdac said:

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.

I’m one of the ones that honestly loved the movie, but I do agree the pacing was insanely quick at the very start and a little towards the end. If this is really the case then I’m both bummed that the version I really like isn’t the entirety of the movie, but hopeful that we do get all those scenes in a bluray. I usually hate extended editions with a passion because they should always put the film as it is in theaters instead of shortening it to detract from the proper vision, but I wouldn’t mind getting an extended cut of Episode 9 officially released instead of fanedits throwing in the deleted scenes.

I thought Leia was handled very well actually (for the most part). I think what they did is a far better solution than writing her out entirely. And killing her off halfway through TLJ would have been an absolutely atrocious idea.

I don’t really have the energy to relitigate TFA or TLJ, which is seems like the discussion in this thread is. I also am not really passionate about TROS to argue much about it, so I probably won’t end up saying much. But I will say, the film, at least in my opinion, renders the whole ST essentially pointless, which plain sucks. Otherwise, I’m pretty mixed on the film.

I will say this though… not only does TROS not feature any shaky cam that I can remember, TFA didn’t either. So I’m not sure where people are getting their info from but that’s not something to worry about.

I also have no clue what people are talking about with the shaky cam. In the Poe/Finn Falcon clip that was released people were saying the shaky cam was god awful but I barely noticed until I saw a million posts complaining about JJ’s style, and even now it doesn’t bother me whatsoever.

I very much enjoyed this in the main.

It felt like the film could have easily gone on for another 10 to 15 minutes; maybe explaining some of the events a little better and not having a rushed feeling in some of the scenes?

It was a fun film and welcome finale to this Sequel Trilogy. It does not come close to the Original Trilogy in my mind, but is a welcome addition to the overall story (for me personally these were far more enjoyable than the Prequels).

Upon first viewing it is another fun Star Wars film - yes! 😃

Lesser said:

I also have no clue what people are talking about with the shaky cam. In the Poe/Finn Falcon clip that was released people were saying the shaky cam was god awful but I barely noticed until I saw a million posts complaining about JJ’s style, and even now it doesn’t bother me whatsoever.

Yeah I mean, there’s basically no shaky cam in that clip.

RU.08 said:

If you like shaky-cam that’s fine, but don’t say it isn’t there because it is.

I know what shaky cam is and I definitely didn’t say it wasn’t there, I was meaning that I had no clue what people were talking about cause my mind just doesn’t register it I guess, then I watched the clip again and saw it, but it seemed too small for me to understand why some people would refuse to see an entire movie solely based on that.

Didn’t notice any shaky camera on the movie at all…
It’s all tracking and steady camera shots, quite conservative by modern standards.

Audience scores have released on RT.com at a surprising 86% after nearly 6700 reviews while the critic rating remains at 58% after now 291 reviews. Not an awesome rating from the audience but pretty good considering the initial bad signs due to the critics and initial reports. The audience rating could still swing a lot either way with it being pretty far off the near 300,000 reviews for TLJ.

Nonetheless it doesn’t change my views on the movie though it is interesting to basically see the ratings almost flipped compared to TLJ and it really just shows how out of touch the critics are with the actual audience.

Something else I also found interesting is what Roz Weston from ET Canada said regarding The Mandalorian basically taking away any anxiety he had going into TROS as Star Wars is already saved (by Mando and a particular character in it). This answers (at least from his perspective) a question asked in another thread here on whether Mando would affect your view / enjoyment of TROS and this seems like a pretty legitimate viewpoint that others may also share. This guy originally went to town on TLJ with his live review on mainstream TV (https://youtu.be/ZQ8ir66M5XU) but for TROS despite a number of noted issues he genuinely enjoyed it and left feeling satisfied.

Below is the quote regarding what he said about The Mandalorian and the video itself for his review of TROS. The quote does contain a minor spoiler for Mando though it’s been all over the internet for weeks now so I’m sure most are well aware of it but I’ve used spoiler tags all the same:

MANDALORIAN SPOILER

Around 8:35
“…I do think that my anxiety and expectations were much lower going into this (TROS) because I love The Mandalorian so much. This movie, TROS didn’t have to save Star Wars, because Baby Yoda already did that!”

https://youtu.be/wRJL46wWfUY

“Shaky cam” is just a colloquial synonym for “hand-held photography.”

Nobody’s actually shaking the camera, it’s just not stabilized on a dolly or tripod or steadicam machine.

It’s not in this movie, OR in The Force Awakens very much.

Audience is always right 😃

RU.08 said:
In the original trilogy, Darth Vader is never referred to as a Sith, he’s a Jedi that has been converted to the dark side (for example I’ve always understood “Your sad devotion to that ancient religion …” to be referring to him as a Jedi not Sith).

It is unfortunate, I think, that there is now so much convoluted garbage in the Star Wars franchise that modern fans don’t understand the original trilogy.

From the original 1976 script:

The awesome, seven-foot-tall Dark Lord of the SITH makes his way into the blinding light of the main passageway. This is Darth Vader, right hand of the Emperor.

So, after thinking I hated it the first time I saw it, I now think I actually really liked this movie. It rendered the rest of the ST pointless, sure, much like the ST had rendered the saga pointless for me before in TFA. The ending is ROTJ on steroids, and since they could make Episode VII from Episode VI, they sure can Episode X this Episode IX, make Palpatine clone someone again and have him be the big bad again in XII… wow this sounds so stupid when I type it or say it out loud. It’s also a shame since it’s exactly what Rian’s film went against. Oh well.

I’m not a fan of TFA at all (that was the movie that made everything else pointless to me, by rebooting the status quo and rendering every single accomplishment that came before pointless), but I appreciated what TLJ tried to do from there, despite disagreeing with it in the most part and thinking it had a very flawed execution at times. But I definitely respected it.

TROS, on the other hand, seemingly embraces with open arms the idea that the ST is nothing more than fan fiction, and I loved it since that’s also what I consider the ST to be. I mean, most story points may as well come from YouTube theorists. The crawl seemed like something 12 year old me would come up with, much like the story. But man, it was extremely enjoyable. Sometimes it seemed like they weren’t giving a fuck, like: have Palpatine use force lightning in hundreds of ships. That was just so ridiculous, much like when he was sucking “force life” out of Rey and Ben. But who cares. It’s so stupid and ridiculous it’s fun.

And that was great for me. I wasn’t sure how IX could save the ST for me, and it did in the most fun way possible: by making everything look silly. I won’t rewatch the ST whenever I rewatch the saga, but I might rewatch it for fun every once in a while. But, man, I do feel bad for Rian. He tried to make something serious and deep out of TFA only for Abrams to literally retcon every one of the major decisions Rian took. A shame. But whatever, I’m happy.

I was surprised by how well they handled Carrie, I thought it would be much worse, and it definitely could’ve been. The one scene I think stood out was the one where she says “be optimist” or whatever. The others work very well.

Broom Kid said:

“Shaky cam” is just a colloquial synonym for “hand-held photography.”

Nobody’s actually shaking the camera, it’s just not stabilized on a dolly or tripod or steadicam machine.

It’s not in this movie, OR in The Force Awakens very much.

This. Shaky cam doesn’t mean moving camera. It’s means handheld photography. And it’s almost entirely absent in the film. In that clip, not a single live action shot is handheld.

Oh, dear. At this point this may be the least favourite Star Wars ‘anything’ I’ve experienced. Everything I expected from a JJA film that followed the reaction to TLJ and so on, and so forth - only… nightmarishly worse? The prequels seem somewhat quaint compared to this lifeless husk.

Audience reactions have appeared on Rotten Tomatoes. Instead of the 58% the 309 critics have given it, 9628 audience reactions rate it at 86%. So right now it is critically panned but loved by the audience.

The one thought i had throughout this film was “This is a childrens movie. How is a child supposed to enjoy this?”

Not as good as TLJ.

Far too much movie even for its massive runtime, just too many setpeices. But there were parts that I absolutely loved, so its a generous 7/10 for me.

Seeing it again on Monday but I feel that might be too soon.

4throck said:

Audience is always right 😃

Alternatively, the audience and critics are both always wrong.