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


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I went in with rock bottom expectations, and had a fucking blast. I thought it was a fun roller coaster ride. Star wars was never meant to be high art, and I love that "fan service"  is somehow a pejorative, while subverting expectations(ie disappoint your paying customers with horseshit) is positive. Add me into the group that thinks Solo's and this movie performance at the box office is directly tied to the shitting on the franchise that Johnson did. TLJ was a chore to sit through and I haven't bothered to see it twice. I loved this one. YMMV and good for you.

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In The Phantom Menace, the galaxy was threatened by something it didn't know about. In Attack of the Clones, some clones attacked. In Revenge of the Sith... well, I'm not sure what they actually were avenging specifically, but the Sith certainly took vengeance on the Jedi. In A New Hope, there was a new hope. In The Empire Strikes Back, the empire struck back. In Return of the Jedi, the number of Jedi in the galaxy increased from zero to one. In The Force Awakens... well, I'm not sure the force actually sleeps, but it did seem to get a bit more active at the time. In the Last Jedi... well I was going to say Luke Skywalker died and he was the only Jedi there was, but apparently they've retconned and Leia was a fully trained and qualified Jedi master too, so never mind. And in The Rise of Skywalker, Ben Solo climbed out of a hole, and Rey Palpatine changed her last name.

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Remember, the lesson of the movie is it doesn't matter what your family history is or what people think you *might* be, it's all about who you are inside and you should be proud of that and let that be what defines you...

 

 

 

 

unless your last name is Palpatine, then change that shit.

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Saw it. Movie moved so fast I sometimes couldn’t even process what was going on.  Now I have,and I didn't really dig it. Not horrible, but not my favorite.  I'm part of the problem too.

My negatives
*Opening scroll - Palpatine is back.  Okay. I wonder how? I wonder why? 

Quote

In a new interview with HuffPost, “Rise of Skywalker” editor Maryann Brandon confirms that the explanation about how Palpatine survived and/or came back to life after “Return of the Jedi” was removed from the “Skywalker” theatrical cut. “[There was originally] a little more information about it, what was keeping [Palpatine] alive,” Brandon said, “[but] it seemed to go off topic.” 

“It was kind of a delicate balance and went back and forth a lot about how much we wanted to reveal,” she said. “Some scenes changed quite a bit, the way that we wanted to present it to the audience. In the end, we ended up showing a lot less of it than we started with.”

“There was so much information in the film and so many characters that we wanted to have an audience concentrate on. I think we felt we didn’t want to clutter the film up with things you didn’t need to know,” she said.

*Pace - In some ways this might have been a positive when I saw it because there was no time to think about mysterious daggers and lost memories.

*Stakes/Consequences -  The Chewie fake out felt unnecessary. I would guess most fans of the franchise and/or people who enjoyed the movie didn't want to see Chewie die.  Fine. Why even tease it then if you ultimately didn’t have the teeth to go through with it. The resolution to it also felt clunky because they resolve it so quickly while his apparent death is still fresh and just keep moving forward to the next scene. See also: C-3PO sacrifices his memories.

*Finn has to tell to Rey something before they die - Why did they keep bringing this up, especially if they weren't going to address it?  If it is as lame as "he's force-sensitive”, which isn’t explain in the movie, why would he need to tell Rey this alone?  The trope is  to declare love or feelings for someone in those dire situations, but they didn’t even play off of that trope. I’m just confuse.

*Side Characters - I'm guessing some of them will have a Disney plus future, but man, did they squeeze-in characters in this one who don't get much shine.  Zorii and Jannah stand out in that regard.  

Things I just didn’t like, but I understand why they did it
*Rey is Emperor’s Kid. – Eh. I prefer her having no parents of fame or just bite the bullet, and make her Obi-Wan’s abandon kid.  I sort of get why they went the way they did even if I don’t agree.

* The Kiss - Eh. I felt like they have more of the romantic chemistry vibes in TLJ.  I didn't get that vibe by the end of this movie so I wasn't feeling it.  Someone let out a "What?" (or maybe it was "No!") in my theater audience, which was more dramatic than the moment.  I'm sure others loved it though.  Not too stirred up about it.

My positives
*I like the actors in the main trio and they have chemistry when they are actually in scenes together.  It's probably the main reason why I liked Force Awakens the first time I saw it, despite it rehashing old Star Wars plots. 

*I think Adam Driver was better in the previous movies, but maybe I was just down on Rylo/Ben’s whole redemption arc in this film. However, I did get a kick out of him  running into Palpatine’s spot in a black outfit straight out of Kanye West’s clothing line near the end of the movie to assist Rey.  We got to see Ben’s fashion style.  You wanted answers.

*DeathStar scene looked cool. Burning Man scene looked neat.  Whether I like the movie or not, I can definitely acknowledge that the set design and costume crew put in work on this film.  This movie blows through sets at the fanatic rate and those motherfuckers had keep up and create all of it.

*General Armitage Hux - I don't know how I feel about his arc in this one, but the actor playing him seems to be having a good time in this one.  Tough break – getting shot as proof he’s not a traitor, and then again shot again for being one

*Rey’s yellow lightsaber. Good choice.

 

 

Edited by _MJ_
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4 hours ago, Raziel said:

Remember, the lesson of the movie is it doesn't matter what your family history is or what people think you *might* be, it's all about who you are inside and you should be proud of that and let that be what defines you...

 

 

 

 

unless your last name is Palpatine, then change that shit.

Reminds me of a recent episode of the Dollop about Hitler's nephew and the number of people with the last name Hitler.

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Saw it on Sunday in celebration of recovering from the creeping crud I've still got a touch of.

Not the best SW movie I've seen, but not the worst either.  

Palpatine somehow surviving Vader's gorilla press slam down a reactor shaft was totally fucking stupid, but it was no less WTF than the scene in Attack of the Clones where everyone somehow survivies the sub-orbital re-entry collision of a fucking Trade Federation heavy cruiser and somehow the ship does not create an extinction level event when it crashes planetside.

I have come to expect bad science for the sake of plot progression in these movies, so I guess I am able to overlook these things.

I suppose I am also part of the problem.

The whole thing with Rey being Palpatine's granddaughter was also a bit much. You'd think that Palpatine would've either done a better job of indoctrinating his kids into the Sith order, or would've simply made clones of himself to solve the legacy problem. 

I think it would've made more sense if Rey were somehow genetically linked to Vader or Skywalker since she pretty much had the same upbringing circumstances as Anakin and Luke (complete with desert planet life) and Palpatine's plan would simply be taking a page out of The Boys From Brazil and groom Rey to struggle with the Light side eventually fall like Vader did.

Edited by J.T.
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Finally saw it again earlier today. I liked it better upon 2nd viewing. The little things that bothered me on first viewing didn't bother me as much. I caught a bit more of the dialogue and story I missed the first time around that helped out a bit. It's still in 3rd place out of the new trilogy, and it's still far from a perfect movie, but it's better than I thought immediately after the first viewing. I think my biggest issue is that it's supposed to be the big ending. 40 years and 9 movies later, it's supposed to tie up the Skywalker Saga, but so many strings were left dangling at the end. It seemed to have opened up just as many if not more things that it closed, like yet another trilogy was being set up. Or a TV show on Disney+ with Poe and Zorii and Babu Frick detailing Poe's past life with them.
 

I think there's just too much talent involved and too much good in it to outright call it BAD. It's kind of like how I talk about current WWE with a co-worker. They just have too great a talent roster to say that they are a bad show. I don't exactly like the overall story telling, and there are some pretty bad moments throughout if you focus on them, but if you get Cesaro in the ring with Mustafa Ali and let them go for 10 minutes, that 10 minutes is going to be great no matter if the storytelling of why they are in the ring together is good or not. ROS is chock full of great moments and wonderful performances, even if the overarching story from beginning to end may be lacking. 

 

I'm one who actually did like The Last Jedi, so that puts ROS in 3rd place in this trilogy and pretty far down my list of favorite overall SW films, but it's way better than ANY of the prequel films. Maybe a 5.5 out of 10 

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That's the really odd thing about this movie.  It's well acted.  It's very sound from a technical filmmaking pov.  It's fun and keeps your attention through the whole thing.  It had a bunch of cool "YEAH!" moments that even my grumpy, cyncial self popped for (Like Wedge showing up).  If you asked me if I enjoyed it, I will absolutly say yes.

 

But from a storytelling standpoint and ending to the Star Wars saga, it was the worst of the entire 10 movies.  I mean, yeah, AotC was pretty bad from an acting standpoint, but the story fit in the context of the whole, rather than just be a big middle finger to Episode I.

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For me, what I realize it boils down to is that Lucas was allowed to make the execrable prequels, because at least it was his.  After 2 "new" movies, I really REALLY wanted to see more, but 8 & 9 just found a way to murder that sense of anticipation for a new SW movie.

And I'm fairly certain my sense of anticipation will stay deader than the Emperor.

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1 hour ago, Bustronaut said:

Oh jeez, they totally telegraphed the Palpatine return with the Maul return in SOLO.

Vader took a lava bath.  The fucker should've been incinerated but he lived.

In SW, his fighter collides with another spacecraft traveling at God knows how fast.  The impact should've destroyed both spaceships, but Vader's craft just careens out of control....

He doesn't crash into the Death Star superstructure like the other TIE fighter, nor is he tracked and fired upon by any of the other surviving fighter pilots.  Wedge probably couldn't have finished Vader off since he had system issues, but there is one Y-Wing that also makes the victory trip home with Wedge and Luke , right?  Where the fuck was that guy? 

Vader just veers off into space somehow outside of the Death Star blast wake and regains control of his ship just in time to fly off to fuck knows where.

Yes, bad guys in SW movies have a nasty cockroach like habit of surviving things that would kill other people.

Edited by J.T.
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1 hour ago, J.T. said:

Wedge probably couldn't have finished Vader off since he had system issues, but there is one Y-Wing that also makes the victory trip home with Wedge and Luke , right?  Where the fuck was that guy? 

As someone who played way too much X-Wing in the 90s... have you actually ever tried using a Y-Wing?

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2 hours ago, Bustronaut said:

Oh jeez, they totally telegraphed the Palpatine return with the Maul return in SOLO.

Maul has been alive since

Spoiler

Clone Wars. Rebels shows his actual death

.

Edited by Eivion
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17 hours ago, Eivion said:

 

I know spoilers for stuff that happened a long time ago are usually fine, but there's a pretty large number of people on the board who have talked about watching through Clone Wars and Rebels for the first time once Disney+ dropped and it might be nice to put that into a spoiler box just in case.  

Edited by CSC
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Yeah, Maul's survival of TPM has been canon for ages. He went through loads of sets of robot legs, looked like a spider centaur at one point. Emperor Palpatine surviving falling into a reactor (followed by the entire Death Star 2.0 exploding, while whatever was left of him was still on board) is I think supposed to be a clone duplicate mental transfer deal, although why you wouldn't have the clone body kept young and pretty I don't know.

Still, considering how Lucas spent the prequels making it all about politics and economics, JJ surely doesn't care to explain how the First Order (or Final Order, I forget) afforded all those Super Star Destroyers and nobody noticed. It's a lost planet nobody can find or get to, except Arms Dealers apparently.

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19 minutes ago, CSC said:

I know spoilers for stuff that happened a long time ago are usually fine, but there's a pretty large number of people on the board who have talked about watching through Clone Wars and Rebels for the first time once Disney+ dropped and it might be nice to put that into a spoiler box just in case.  

Good point. I forgot how many were thrown for a loop by Maul's appearance in Solo

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Palpatine returns wasn't the issue I had, it was that they didn't bother to explain it or even place it as some sort of reveal over the course of the movie. They didn't hint towards it in any of the previous movies.  They just said in the crawl "he's back" and that was it.. he was back. The definition of lazy. 

Maul coming back was first in the animated series. Anyway,  Chris Terrio explained in an interview that Palpatine was back because Kathleen Kennedy said it'd be cool to have Palpatine back. 

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