SW:RISE OF SKYWALKER Discussion (All the Spoilers Here)

[Eivion]

2 hours ago, EVA said:

I’ve always disagreed with the idea that Johnson made a mess.  If anything, he tidied up the narrative significantly and honed in on the best, most significant conflict in the new trilogy (Rey vs. Kylo).  He basically teed up whoever came after him to tell a simple story focused on character—Kylo tries to kill her (which is what he SAID he was going to do at the end of TLJ, no bizarre bargain with Palpatine necessary) and Rey tries to stop him and save him.

The fact that J.J. couldn’t conceive of a way to tell the story of Ben’s redemption without needing to airdrop in a ton of new story and An Even Bigger Bad to unify the two of them against just speaks to his lack of imagination.

I agree that Johnson did a lot to tidy up the Ren/Rey narrative, but where he left things more or less made it impossible to go through with a proper redemption arc for Ren with only one film left on the slate, especially with Carrie Fisher's passing. There wasn't a anything set up to deal with First Order's defeat. The Resistance had barely anything left. Johnson made a good film, but there needed to be another 2 or 3 films to get to any sort of solid finale with what he did. This was not simply on Abrams's lack of imagination. Johnson absolutely left them in a bad position.  

[John from Cincinnati]

Important question for someone who's seen the movie: How much Keri Russell? Over/under five minutes? And is she mostly under a helmet?

[Control]

5 minutes ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

Important question for someone who's seen the movie: How much Keri Russell? Over/under five minutes? And is she mostly under a helmet?

Imma say 7 minutes. Always helmeted.

[John from Cincinnati]

Terrible. 

[Ace]

Keri Russell, Kelly Marie Tran, and Naomi Ackie were all underutilized, in my opinion. That's probably my biggest criticism.

 

Also, Wikipedia has a list of all the Jedi voices Rey hears at the climax

Spoiler

Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker
Olivia d'Abo as Luminara Unduli
Ashley Eckstein as Ahsoka Tano
Jennifer Hale as Aayla Secura
Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu
Ewan McGregor and Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi
Frank Oz as Yoda
Angelique Perrin as Adi Gallia
Freddie Prinze Jr. as Kanan Jarrus
Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn

 

Edited December 21, 2019 by Ace

[nofuture]

Decent movie, but definitely very overstuffed with no time to let anything breathe.  Just felt like "let's go to as many places as possible 10 minutes at a time".  I feel like this one will age the worst out of the 3 in the trilogy.

[odessasteps]

15 hours ago, Eivion said:

They desperately needed a Kevin Feige.

I wonder what is more important to Disney: marvel or star wars. 

Maybe they would shift him over to Star Wars. 

[Eivion]

13 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

I wonder what is more important to Disney: marvel or star wars. 

Maybe they would shift him over to Star Wars. 

He is kind of running most of Marvel now so that won't be happening. I do recall rumors of them looking at giving him a Star Wars film.

[A_K]

9 hours ago, EVA said:

I’ve always disagreed with the idea that Johnson made a mess.  If anything, he tidied up the narrative significantly and honed in on the best, most significant conflict in the new trilogy (Rey vs. Kylo).  He basically teed up whoever came after him to tell a simple story focused on character—Kylo tries to kill her (which is what he SAID he was going to do at the end of TLJ, no bizarre bargain with Palpatine necessary) and Rey tries to stop him and save him.

The fact that J.J. couldn’t conceive of a way to tell the story of Ben’s redemption without needing to airdrop in a ton of new story and An Even Bigger Bad to unify the two of them against just speaks to his lack of imagination.

He teed up whoever was going to come after his to deal with a completely disenfranchised core fan base, and a wholly non-plussed general public, as reflected in the tepid anticipation of the 3rd instalment.

Predictably, audience scores are trending much higher than TLJ & critic reception. One would think that — sooner or later — it would sink in with some that the wider public do not yearn for “subversion” in every area of life and culture. The desperation to subvert & ‘tell another story’ with TLJ should have manifested itself in a wholly different film series rather than to manipulate a much-loved piece of culture to the point it was trying to masquerade as something else entirely. 

Edited December 22, 2019 by A_K

[EVA]

“Tepid” = nearly $200 million opening weekend?

The more you know!

[John from Cincinnati]

3 hours ago, Ace said:

Keri Russell, Kelly Marie Tran, and Naomi Ackie were all underutilized, in my opinion. That's probably my biggest criticism.

Disney gonna Disney. They have money to burn, and lots of their movies feature top-tier talent in nothing roles. I'm not surprised at all. 

[EVA]

Whoever is responsible for what they did to Kelly Marie Tran in this movie should be jailed.  It’s genuinely craven and shameful. I wasn’t counting lines or anything, but her screen time and relevance to the plot is, at most, equal to and quite possibly lesser than Dominic Monoghan’s as Lieutenant Whoever The Fuck.

[lostinube]

19 hours ago, Eivion said:

Never read Aftermath, but are you talking about Snap? I only know about him via the Poe Dameron comic, but that kind of pissed me off. 

Yeah, I wasn't sure if I should name names but boy was I irritated when they killed off Snap only to have Lando show up right after with the calvary. They even gave him that "humorous" exchange with Leia! Never read the Poe Dameron comic but Aftermath introduces Snap as a kid. Oh, and even better:
 

Spoiler

Wedge Antilles marries Snap's mom. Guess who shows up with Lando after Snap bit the dust? Gah!

 

[Eivion]

1 hour ago, lostinube said:

Yeah, I wasn't sure if I should name names but boy was I irritated when they killed off Snap only to have Lando show up right after with the calvary. They even gave him that "humorous" exchange with Leia! Never read the Poe Dameron comic but Aftermath introduces Snap as a kid. Oh, and even better:
 

  Hide contents

Wedge Antilles marries Snap's mom. Guess who shows up with Lando after Snap bit the dust? Gah!

 

Wow, that just pisses me off even more. Why the waste?

[lostinube]

I assume that they needed a death that would resonate with Poe. But since it's right before Lando (who definitely offered the galaxy cases of Colt 45 if they came) appears it's barely an emotional blip.

Or, it could be a "haha" callback to Porkins in ANH. As in "haha the big sorta chunky pilot bites it!"

[Craig H]

This movie. This fucking movie. I loved TFA. I loved TLJ. This was a movie I somehow both really liked and was really annoyed by at the same time. It's one of the most confounding movies I can recall seeing because of how over the place it is. The times where it's really focused it's great, but then you get a bunch of random ass cuts and scenes and my head was spinning. My friend described it as a mad libs movie and I think that's exactly right. There's more to get into, but that's the gist of it: Nearly loved it and was really annoyed by it simultaneously.

AND ARE WE REALLY ENDING THIS FUCKING MOVIE WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT FINN WANTED TO TELL REY? ROSE IS GONNA HUG CHEWIE, BUT NOT FINN?! THE FUCK???!?

On 12/20/2019 at 7:50 PM, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

Thanks for trying to warn us. Forewarned is forearmed. 

This is a top tier comment and callback that isn't getting nearly enough love. Come on y'all. Put some respect on this comment AND AxB's forearms.

[Craig H]

Fuck...I've never seen more convenience in one movie before. Their speeders get blown up, they fall into sand, which turns into quicksand, which drops them into a tunnel where THEY GET A MACGUFFIN DAGGER TO FIND THE MACGUFFIN SITH BEACON OH AND THERE'S A SANDWORM BUT LUCKILY IT'S INJURED SO REY CAN HEAL THE FUCKING THING WHICH MAKES IT MOVE SO THEY CAN ESCAPE.

THIS MOVIE IS LIKE A FUCKING TELLTALE GAME

[The Natural]

On 12/21/2019 at 12:33 AM, AxB said:

  

In 2015, I called who Rey was. 

I like how you've held onto that quote all this time! 

On 12/21/2019 at 12:50 AM, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

Thanks for trying to warn us. Forewarned is forearmed. 

Nice one.

[The Natural]

My best friend who is a Brother to me is a big Star Wars fan. Adam/Aje watched The Rise of Skywalker yesterday and "HATED the first half, it was atrocious. Second half only just won me back. Mid table outing when it comes to Star Wars movies."

Edited December 22, 2019 by The Natural

[Craig H]

Mysterious space maps. So many mysterious space maps. The fuck is up with JJ Abrams and shoehorning in all of these space maps?

[Leonidas]

As time stood still in the cinema, I wondered whether it had been 4, 5 or 15 hours they had been trying to get to Exegal, and if indeed the dagger or C3PO subplot had indeed even been important or necessary. Then they opened the dagger and One Eyed Willyed© their way to some place on an old death star that had some other Maguffin that could get them to Exegal. It has now been 48 hours since I last had food or water, the cinema is dark, I can't find my family, maybe they're on Exegal, I sure hope there's another skimmer so I can get across the water, oh there is, because of course there is. 0.5*/5 

[Robert S]

I had that feeling when watching TLJ, where when I left the cinema, I was sure that a day has passed.

I went into this (IX) movie expecting little (though I should admit that I am not really a Star Wars fan, out of the 8 previous main-line movies, I would call maybe 3 good with only one of them being great) and was just trying to get a popcorn-flick experience and from that regard I was not disappointed. At least it was much more straightforward as TLJ with its 100 subplots that lasted forever and lead to little. Here it was pretty linear A to B to C to D, even if little mattered.

From a production point-of-view, the Leia stuff was so bad. It was like a youtube-spoof where someone takes random reaction shots of an original mixed with his own stuff.

[EVA]

Just when I thought I was over this Marriage Story meme...

 

[supremebve]

21 hours ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

Important question for someone who's seen the movie: How much Keri Russell? Over/under five minutes? And is she mostly under a helmet?

The biggest missed opportunity in the entire series is them revealing a little bit of Poe's past right at the time when you realize that you don't know a damn thing about the characters you've spent two whole movies watching.  She could have been a fan favorite, but she's not around long enough to really care about.  

10 hours ago, Craig H said:

.

AND ARE WE REALLY ENDING THIS FUCKING MOVIE WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT FINN WANTED TO TELL REY? ROSE IS GONNA HUG CHEWIE, BUT NOT FINN?! THE FUCK???!?

We watched 3 whole movies with Finn being a main character, and his entire character arc was spelled out in the very first scene.  He doesn't want to be a stormtrooper.  I challenge anyone to give me something they can say for sure about him as a character.  If we didn't meet Poe's old crew for 15 minutes, we could say the same for him.  

[AxB]

So JJ Abrams has had control over not only two Star Wars movies, but also three Star Trek movies as well. And basically, with both franchises, he's either fundamentally misunderstood what they are supposed to be, or he's chosen to reject the core identity of the story and install his own (lack of) vision. What he did to Trek was far more egregious (Shatner's Captain Kirk is supposed to be right at the limit for recklessness and impetuousity in star fleet (that's why he was the only one to volunteer to lead a deep exploration mission where you leave known space and don't return for five whole years), so naturally JJ creates an alternate reality version that's even more reckless and impetuous). But when he buggered up Trek, it was because he was a Star Wars guy, and wanted to make Trek more Wars-y. Get rid of the contemplative moments and examinations of the morality of choosing to act (or not act). Fuck that, wham bam action man. And then with Wars... OK, Lucas' whole deal was "Faster, more intense", but there's supposed to be an underlying spirituality and some cod-Buddhist stuff about bringing the Universe into balance, isn't there? 

Basically, a Spot Monkey is what he is. A derivative spot monkey.