Star Wars - The Rise of Skywalker

[Heathcliff]

A while ago I started a thread about how I re-watched The Last Jedi and appreciated it more than I had the first time. I since watched it again and I like it a lot now.

I finally saw The Rise of Skywalker over the last weekend. So couldn't resist asking... what do we all think?

The director changed back to JJ Abrams, and it's obviously an attempt to get to something much more fan-friendly than Last Jedi because some fans hated Last Jedi (some quite unpleasantly).

Before I go further- SPOILER ALERT!!!! If you haven't seen it yet and don't want to know more, stop here.
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Ok - pros and cons, in my opinion.

Pros:
- Most importantly - Adam Driver is as good as ever as Kylo Ren
- It looks amazing. Rey and Ren's fight where the waves are crashing over them - it just looks spectacular.  
- I still like the less choreographed lightsaber fights in the new trilogy
- Ian McDiarmid is always cool - and is a bit scary.
- The characters are more together so it "feels" more like a traditional Star Wars movie.

Cons:
- Most importantly - bringing back Palpatine was the most gutless, silly thing to do.
- Some fans hated Last Jedi, so this movie chickens out and doesn't really follow up on Last Jedi at all.
- The plot is just a series of "Go to here, get the clue".

-  They completely bottle out of killing Chewbacca. "Rey has accidentally killed him in a shocking moment!" But to please the fans or kids or something, literally 5 minutes later we are shown he's ok.
- Everything is turned up to 11. Every ship now has a planet destroying weapon, Palpatine's lightning used to hurt a person and throw them on the floor. Now he can destroy a fleet of spaceships with it. What??
- If you try and work out the timescale of Rey being Palpatine's granddaughter - did someone screw Palpatine when he was all horrible and white? Or just before that? It's stupid!
- Who built all those Star Destroyers anyway? The Palpatine Engineering Company??

So - I enjoyed it, but actually my favourite of the new trilogy is Last Jedi - but that's because it's the Star Wars Movie that tried to not be a typical Star Wars movie, and I am not a total Star Wars fan, though I enjoy it.

I can see that if I was a very big fan, I'd hate The Last Jedi. But, I'm glad we have it, and I reckon it's better than this was.

Let me know what you think.

 

 

[Eights of Spades]

So I’m pretty sure I jumped in on the last thread, but I still reaffirm my love of The Last Jedi and I am a very big Star Wars fan.  I thought it made some definitely bold choices (good and bad from a movie making perspective) and really tried to set itself apart.  To me, it embodied a lot of Empire strikes back in that it tried to be somewhat more philosophical about what everyone was fighting for, which to me is the core of Star Wars stories.

I still liked the Rise of Skywalker, it was just a LOT of movie in one movie.  Haha. I actually was glad they brought back Palpatine since I think it’d made sense to round out the third trilogy with the same ultimate villain from the first two, completing the whole Skywalker vs Palpatine arc, but I think he felt more like a 90’s video game boss than a character within the story.  In the prequels his character had a definitive arc and even in Return of the Jedi there was some development.  I was hoping for more of that.  Also agree with the Chewie statement.  I was in shock for the 30 seconds I thought he was dead and that Rey had killed him.  haha.

All that said, I still love them and will continue to watch them for years to come.  It honestly makes me a bit sad that so many people hate on these movies that took years of hard work to put together.  The movie still looks gorgeous, regardless of how much sense things made.

[Travel]

I've made my love for The Last Jedi evident on its respective thread. I liked The Rise of Skywalker. It's my least favorite of the new trilogy but I still found it enjoyable with some great moments. Some elements like Rey's parentage and Palpatine returning still rub me the wrong way but I've made my peace with them, and I think they make sense for the message of the film and the overall trilogy as well. I also think the directing feels a bit rushed. It's a beautiful looking film for sure, but it seems the sense of pace and suspense that was present in The Force Awakens is pretty much gone. I still enjoyed it. 

[NoV]

I enjoyed The Rise of Skywalker to a greater degree that The Last Jedi. My big criticism of it was that it contained such a surfeit of ideas, as if they had crammed a whole two movies into one. Scenes were just not given enough time to develop, new characters arrive in blink and you miss it cameos (Zorii Bliss anyone?). JJ Abrams, obviously having disagreed with the direction taken by Rian Johnson, tried to make two movies at once, setting up episode 9 and also trying to deliver it within the same movie. 

The Force Awakens remains my favorite of the new batch, nostalgic retread though it may be.

[Blah!?]

lol I guess I'm the odd one out here. I hated almost everything about The Rise of Skywalker, and of all the Star Wars films, I think it's the only one that I genuinely never want to watch again. It's not "the worst movie I've ever seen" or anything that hyperbolic, there's too much technical competence on display for that. However I thought it was far and away the worst written of the Disney-era films. I've never agreed with the sentiment that The Last Jedi betrays or undoes what was set up in The Force Awakens, but frankly I think The Rise of Skywalker betrays not only The Last Jedi, but also The Force Awakens. Despite Abrams' and Johnson's different approaches at the time, I actually thought the first two sequel films fit together nicely. The Rise of Skywalker just makes the entire sequel trilogy feel completely vestigial to me.

[Bondi]

I MAY watch episode 9 over the weekend, depending on various factors, so no opinion thus far. I will say that Dark Horse Comics already brought Palpatine back in the Dark Empire series way back in 1991, which, granted, probably isn't my favorite Star Wars thing either, but whatever. 

[megacycle]

I've already left my criticisms... they went in without a plan and it backfired.
First film felt too much like a new hope... nothing really new just new characters being introduced, cashing in on some nostalgia.
Second film portrayed Luke poorly but it did try to do something different... the movie felt padded in some areas with wasted opportunities or pointless side quests.  
Third film tried to retcon the second film by picking and choosing what to keep and what to ignore, trying to be two films in one and failing horribly. It was doomed from the get go.
This trilogy didn't feel very cohesive and it didn't honor the original trilogy, it's main purpose was to pass the torch to the next generation... they should've chose one director to do all three films, this passing the baton approach was a bad idea.

[•.*°•☆. Q .☆•°*.•]

2 hours ago, Blah!? said:

lol I guess I'm the odd one out here. I hated almost everything about The Rise of Skywalker, and of all the Star Wars films, I think it's the only one that I genuinely never want to watch again. It's not "the worst movie I've ever seen" or anything that hyperbolic, there's too much technical competence on display for that. However I thought it was far and away the worst written of the Disney-era films. I've never agreed with the sentiment that The Last Jedi betrays or undoes what was set up in The Force Awakens, but frankly I think The Rise of Skywalker betrays not only The Last Jedi, but also The Force Awakens. Despite Abrams' and Johnson's different approaches at the time, I actually thought the first two sequel films fit together nicely. The Rise of Skywalker just makes the entire sequel trilogy feel completely vestigial to me.

yep, couldn't have said it better myself 

[Bondi]

Well, I actually watched the entire Disney sequel trilogy back-to-back yesterday, and I thought the movies were pretty good. Definitely liked Last Jedi a bit more the second time around, I think I got it better than I did when I first watched it, though I can understand why it might've rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, too.

In defense of the force lightning criticism, in some of the Legends novels, force lightning can be used to torture or to kill someone, depending on the intensity with which it's employed, same with real life electrical voltages, though yeah, being able to use it to destroy a whole bunch of ships at once would probably require a great deal of energy.

I'd say that the first hour or so did kind of feel like a generic adventure movie, but it did get better as it moved along. Ending's pretty weird, similar to the Dark Empire: Emperor's End comics, though not as stupid.

It's possible that Rey's parents could have been conceived around the same time Luke and Leia were conceived, since Rey and Kylo are probably around the same age within the movie. I'm not sure when Palpatine would've had the time to go after them after Rey's birth.

Them faking out Chewie's death might have been in reference to the Vector Prime book, where they supposedly kill Chewie by dropping a moon on him. I have not read that book and don't really want to for a number of reasons, such as it's the first of a 19-book series and I don't feel like investing in that, but yeah, that might explain why they handled it that way.

As far as post-Return of the Jedi material goes, I still prefer the Thrawn trilogy, though with a few adjustments, it could be made to fit with the new canon, though I haven't read Timothy Zahn's new canonical Thrawn books at this time. Still, the prequels are good movies, a lot better than the prequels, though still not as good as the original trilogy.

[Heathcliff]

5 hours ago, Bondi said:

Well, I actually watched the entire Disney sequel trilogy back-to-back yesterday, and I thought the movies were pretty good. Definitely liked Last Jedi a bit more the second time around, I think I got it better than I did when I first watched it, though I can understand why it might've rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, too. 

I do think The Last Jedi improves on second or multiple viewings. When you accept the fact the Luke is not going to act how you expect him to, and the final lightsaber battle is sort of a trick (and you have to watch Luke milk a weird cow), you can settle down and see other things in it. More and more I believe it's the Star Wars movie for people who like Star Wars, but are not superfans and are interested in a director doing something different and subversive with the franchise.

I also don't think what Luke does is entirely out of character. He's a Skywalker - Skywalkers are brilliant Jedi who are flawed (whereas Palpatine is not flawed, he is the movie's representation of pure evil).

Luke's father was a good man who was deeply flawed, ultimately there was good in Anakin, but he allowed his anger and fear to allow Palpatine to turn him into a mass-murderer. That's pretty terrible.

Luke is flawed too - but far less. He allows his fear over Ben Solo's corruption to make him contemplate killing him, just for a moment - and this is a mistake with awful consequences. Luke is again flawed because in the aftermath he convinces himself this means the Jedi do more harm than good and he should isolate himself on an island and not help the resistance, rather than face up to his mistakes.

I also love the scene where Luke is going to burn down the first Jedi temple, but he is still respectful of it and can't do it - and then Yoda appears and burns it to the ground. Luke is distraught, but Yoda tells him the Jedi texts are not important any more, because Rey already has what she needs. That is actually close to a religious message - the texts are not the important thing, its what people know and do, and what they have faith in.

See, I'm waffling because I love this movie!  

5 hours ago, Bondi said:

Them faking out Chewie's death might have been in reference to the Vector Prime book, where they supposedly kill Chewie by dropping a moon on him.

I'm sorry - I laughed out loud at this, because I imagined a Looney Tunes cartoon scene, you know like when someone gets a big anvil dropped on them? Chewie looks up and says "Gulp!" before a massive moon falls on him. 😂