spoilers [SPOILERS] Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker

[Jace, Extat]

9 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Dunno about the rest of them, but the conversation I was talking in wasn't about TRoS, it was how ANH and TFA are both pretty chock-filled with coincidence and bizarre chance that would make the movie go. TRoS...it's probably most telling to me that I've simply not really thought that much about it, and what I did remember is not really about the story itself. 

I mean, here's a great example. You know those randos that Ren is slaughtering in the beginning? Where is that happening? Apparently it's on fucking Mustafar, and they were some weird-ass cultists that were hanging out around the ruins of Vader's castle. But would you know that from watching the movie? Nope! There's nothing indicating it's Mustafar, there's no visual cues that it is the same planet as a lava planet, there's no idea it's anywhere near Vader's castle, there's no indication that those guys are cultists or anything other than random peasants that Ren is killing. 

That is just a mess. And that's literally the first thing we see in the movie. Who are these guys? Where are they? We eventually get the why - the wayfinder - but why would they have it? Why would Ren come there or know to come there? It's just...there. 

Yeah, movie's a nightmare. But I'm gonna rant about something and remember that it's not necessarily at you. As far as I'm concerned you're my best friend in the whole wide world and I think you looked especially handsome last night.

This false equivocating. It's unbearable. People didn't like The Last Jedi, and some of the criticizing of that movie went way out of bounds. But whether you liked it or not, nobody felt the need to sit there and nitpick the shit out of longstanding quality films in an attempt to wave away the cinematic equivalent of frothing madness. Last time I checked, the #15 film of all fucking time according to the American Film Institute is called Star Wars. So you can go fuck yourself in the skull with an ice pick if you're going to sit there at your little desk and besmirch a damn fine film in the pursuit of your rampant fanboiism. Get the fuck off my planet with that shit. What the fuck is wrong with you people? If you can't see the difference between things happening that form a story like some droids crashing on an desert planet where a farmboy lives near a wizard and

"That's a First Order Captains Medallion. Unrestricted access to any ship or port in the fleet."

"Yeah, any cargo. No questions."

"Damn, how am I going to get on Kylo Ren's ship?"

"Remember all the good times we had?"

"Yeah, lots."

"Sad now. Take Medallion."

"Can't."

"Must."

"Okay."

"Quick, put the medallion in the medallion slot on this decades old ship that is specifically designed to fit this particular device used by a formerly new fascist offshoot state of the old Empire."

                                                                                                                                                                                  then you have a problem with the way you experience movies.

I can reference charts. And academic minds. And great filmmakers of the past fifty years to explain to you in detail why The Last Star Wars is rambling impotence on a script from a basic filmmaking 101 perspective. If you're criticizing the Holy Fucking Trilogy, and that includes Ewoks and all, you're referencing a Cracked.com article that's supposed to be a goddamn joke you stupid fucking fuckers. You're not supposed to take the clickbait seriously.

Context matters. A movie was made. And then a sequel. And after the trilogy had been seen a satisfactory, if imperfect, ending an entire universe was born out of those isolated collections of picture and sound. Star Wars isn't real. You don't got to apply real logic to it. It creates its own logic, and that is the standard against which it must be judged. It doesn't matter that in real life it's really unlikely that those droids would have met Luke or Obi-Wan. In Star Wars, shit like that can happen sometimes 'cause of the force. And you know what, up until ten days ago no one felt the need to criticize that. It was a part of the story. But now that you can just not be dead now, and people walked into the theater knowing they were going to fucking LOVE THAT MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! have to defend that you can just not be dead now and become Space Jesus in a way that was like a lovable joke about Anakin in the course of one jumbled film.... Well, I guess it really does seem silly that those droids happened to land in range of the Lars farm.

It's almost like the whole structure of the overarching story just collapsed in a spectacular heap. As if it just all seems silly with this new context... I think there's a word for something like that. It's called a bad fucking movie. At the end of the day, it don't matter if some folks just enjoyed the action and the pictures. Some people just like action, and don't really need the stuff that tethers great action together in a good film. That's okay. But any time a film has broad swaths of an otherwise genre-disposed audience asking itself "what's the fucking point of this?" That's a deal breaker, ladies.

Writing that last line, I actually got pretty curious about the gender breakdown on approval of this film. I bet that chicks hate it at a more severe rate than men. 'Cause we're smarterer, some present company notwithstanding. [That's a joke! It's a joke, take it easy. I'm just being catty. Call me a coldhearted bitch who sucks at dancing and will die alone, you won't be lying]

Anyway, there's that rant. I've been on fire lately. How 'bout that. I think it's the Christmas Spirit trying to get me to save it from the godless heathens. Maybe the answer is at the bottom of this next bong hit...

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

But whether you liked it or not, nobody felt the need to sit there and nitpick the shit out of longstanding quality films in an attempt to wave away the cinematic equivalent of frothing madness.

Uh, were you not around for the TLJ discussions on the board? Lots of people had a go at the OT to justify decisions made in TLJ...

[Jace, Extat]

Just now, Ran said:

Uh, were you not around for the TLJ discussions on the board? Lots of people had a go at the OT to justify decisions made in TLJ...

Not like this.

 

I was trying to make the point, admittedly rambling, that the lengths you have to go to to excuse this film are so absurd that it goes to people insinuating that the original movies don't have good stories that stand up.

I saw people waving away stuff like the Holdo jump by comparing it to the death star shot, space travel complaints they didn't even understand regarding the crippled Falcon and the Resistance Fleet. Lots of little shit like that. But clearly nobody made me think they were calling the actual quality of the film making into question. This rant has less to do with The Rise of Skywalker than with the lengths people are willing to go to defend it.

It's Trumpian. I hate that I have to say that, but everything is this way now. There are precious few who can say "eh, I had fun. But it was awful." They're out there, but they seem like unicorns for having a very mild opinion. People feel the need to defend shit they like, even if it's not worth defending. Even if they admit up front that it's not worth defending and that forms the crux of their defense "why are we even complaining, the originals had plotholes!", people have been conditioned to pick a side and dig in like a tick.

It's really fascinating. From an enthusiastic observer status.

 

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

I was trying to make the point, admittedly rambling, that the lengths you have to go to to excuse this film are so absurd that it goes to people insinuating that the original movies don't have good stories that stand up.

So, first, this was exactly what was going on with some of the TLJ discussions on the board. It was pervasive. 

Secondly, anyone who feels they have to do that to defend TRoS is trying too hard. The first act is a mess. The final act works like gangbusters. The end. 

[Jace, Extat]

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

So, first, this was exactly what was going on with some of the TLJ discussions on the board. It was pervasive. 

Secondly, anyone who feels they have to do that to defend TRoS is trying too hard. The first act is a mess. The final act works like gangbusters. The end. 

First you axe my perfectly filmable SNL Skit, now you won't let me riff?

Are you an Always Sunny fan? Everyone's an Always Sunny fan. Here's a reference.

 

[Ran]

Just now, Jace, Basilissa said:

First you axe my perfectly filmable SNL Skit, now you won't let me riff?

Are you an Always Sunny fan? Everyone's an Always Sunny fan. Here's a reference.

 

Not a watcher of the show and that clip is region blocked. To be honest, I'm not even sure it's available in Sweden on any platform.

[Jace, Extat]

Boooo!

Well, it would have been mildly entertaining. Damn Fascist Bolsheviks... That's why I'll never go South of the equator. 

[Kalbear]

9 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

I was trying to make the point, admittedly rambling, that the lengths you have to go to to excuse this film are so absurd that it goes to people insinuating that the original movies don't have good stories that stand up. 

Again, I know you're not talking specifically about me but you kind of totally are - 

The point was that Star Wars is a GREAT story and has pretty awesome acting, but the actual plot is pretty contrived. And that's okay! What bothers me is people looking at the new stuff and saying 'I hate it because the plot is so contrived'. No, you almost certainly don't. You hate it because it bothers you emotionally and then you're looking around for reasons to justify it. That's exactly what happened with the bullshit of Rey in TFA and her force power, or (more recently) @Toth hating how implausible it was that the Falcon was on Jakku. If you want to pick nits, there's tons of things there, but that is just a person attempting to rationalize their irrational and entirely reasonable viewpoint. 

 

[Kalbear]

Also Merry Christmas everyone

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2019/12/25

[Raja]

[felice]

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I mean, they manage to show us places like Jakku and Endor's forest moon without explaining that that's where they are - give the viewers some credit for being able to piece it together.  

Apparently, what they actually did is fail to explain that the Death Star fragment was on an entirely different, Ewokless moon of Endor...

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

The point was that Star Wars is a GREAT story and has pretty awesome acting, but the actual plot is pretty contrived. And that's okay! What bothers me is people looking at the new stuff and saying 'I hate it because the plot is so contrived'. No, you almost certainly don't.

You seriously think the original trilogy and the sequel trilogy were equally well-plotted? The originals might not be flawless, but they're in a completely different league from the works of JJ "cool shit happens because it's cool" Abrams.

[Rhom]

4 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

There are precious few who can say "eh, I had fun, but it was awful.”

 

FWIW that’s exactly how I described it to my brother in law.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, felice said:

Apparently, what they actually did is fail to explain that the Death Star fragment was on an entirely different, Ewokless moon of Endor...

No, I was talking about the ending, where we see them on the forest moon and we see an older Wicket celebrating a Holdo maneuver. 

1 hour ago, felice said:

You seriously think the original trilogy and the sequel trilogy were equally well-plotted? The originals might not be flawless, but they're in a completely different league from the works of JJ "cool shit happens because it's cool" Abrams.

I don't think that they're equally well plotted, no. TLJ probably comes the closest to an actual good plot, IMO, but no, they're not equally well-plotted. They're probably adequately plotted however, and that's definitely not the weakest link of the ST issues, not by a long margin. 

Another thing I think is that for the most part JJ just didn't get what was great about Star Wars. He has the trappings down very well - the music, the banter, the visuals and practical effects. It looks really solid, and the acting is very very good (especially Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver and Mark Hamill). It's beautiful, and it looks just like Star Wars likely should. The aesthetic is great. But the actual wonder of the series seems to be just...gone, and the friendships and relationships aren't there either. JJ's universe feels tiny and insulated and weirdly antiquated, with retreads of things we've seen and heard before instead of a world that is expansive and surprising. Aliens are designed fine, but they aren't particularly interesting races or weird in odd ways, they're just...there. It is both too rushed and too vapid at once, and that's weird. Reading some of the visual guide it seems like they had some pretty decent ideas - revisiting places like Mustafar, making Jannah Lando's daughter who got kidnapped early on, having an actual Sith historian, having Rose develop new ships and munitions - but none of that made it to the screen. 

[Corvinus85]

I’ve watched it a 2^nd time, and have more thoughts:

Story and Plot

• What annoys me the most is that too much stuff happens off screen that is brought into this movie with little or no explanation. The previous two had this issue, of course, especially with regards to world-building, but this was one also covered plot devices. For example, TLJ left of with Rey holding a severed lightsaber. The saber’s kyber crystal had been severed, not just the handle. Movie starts with the saber fixed, no worries. If you want to know what happened you have to buy The Visual Dictionary, or some other book, to find out Rey learned from one of the Jedi books how to use to the force to heal the crystal, and then the rest was easy. It would have been nice if her story started with that. Lucas deleted the scene in RotJ where we see Luke build his green saber; JJ shouldn’t have followed suit.
• Another thing is that JJ and Terio didn’t even give two shits about the background stuff created by these new movies. When they find out that they need to go in the vicinity of Endor, Finn says “Isn’t that were the last war ended?” eh, no, according to the Disney-established canon, the Battle of Jakku was the final decisive battle, explored in at least one video game and one novel that I know of; and there was some treaty afterwards, too. But hey, nostalgia amaright?
• I still don’t understand the whole timeline with Rey’s parents, the Jedi-hunter dude who kills them using that dagger for some reason, why it had to be a dagger, and not something else, and how the Jedi-hunter dude ended up on that planet where they found his ship. It’s all one big mess.
• The star destroyer armada premise was also a bloated mess, and, I think, for the first time, I found myself bored by a SW space battle. (The one in TPM was more stupid than boring)
• Why were star destroyers dropping out of the sky all over the galaxy? Was this like a Night King thing?

Direction, cinematography

• I like the way the movie was shot, and there are several great shots.
• There are some directorial mistakes I spotted, though I can only think of one right now, involving Greg Grunberg’s character.
• Several of us have mentioned plenty of times how JJ doesn’t understand space, and this movie is no exception. In fact, he placed the bar so low with this one, that any future SW movie has a chance to seem scientifically accurate.

The Humor

There was much humor that was on point, but some was still cringy. C3PO’s humor was excellent, the new character of Babu Frik was funny, even Hux was less cringy this time. Poe and Finn’s were ok, especially the “you used to be a spice smuggler? You used to be a stormtrooper?” exchange. The biggest eye roll for me was when Snap Waxley (Greg Grunberg) was forced by Rose to attempt to turn a dire situation into a positive moment. They stole that from Robin Hood Men in Tights, and it was cringy as fuck.

Misused or misplaced characters

• Chewbacca deserved more – give us something that’s all him, he deserved that much; surely the desert speeder chase could have been reduced, and we could have seen Chewie attempt to fend off the Knights of Ren before being overwhelmed. Instead he gets captured like a chump, and then he needs rescue.
• Speaking of the KoR, they were disappointing – despite them being in the film a reasonable amount of time, I still have no idea who/what they are, why they fight with non-lightsaber melee weapons, and what else can they do. But part of this is on Johnson for ignoring that setup from TFA.
• The main two astromechs – BB-8 is Poe’s droid, but spends less time with Poe than with other characters. R2 barely does a thing, other than restore C-3PO’s memory and give a sad whistle when Leia dies. But for some reason, it was R2 that was in Poe’s X-Wing in the battle, because BB-8 went with Finn to… open a hatch. (What system was he supposed to unlock if they had hit the original tower?)

The Score

I noticed some new themes at the start of the movie, when Kylo Ren searches for Palapatine, and at the end, when Rey buries the lightsabers. In between, I didn’t catch anything new. That being said, there were some moments when I nearly teared up at the blaring of classic SW themes, especially when the Falcon showed up with the armada of ships. And it was nice that Williams got a cameo in this one.

A few things I realized that may or may not be true canon-wise

• With Finn pretty much confirmed as being force sensitive, it’s quite possible, based on his dialogue with Jennah, that all the ex-stormtroopers who deserted are force sensitive, and they could form the core of a new order of galaxy protectors.
• I think Leia didn’t die immediately. (her body was dead so to speak) She may have linked her spirit to Ben, which possibly helped him turn toward the light side. That’s why her body only vanished with his. If true, a nice touch and one final good moment for Leia.

[Suzanna Stormborn]

6 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

"eh, I had fun. But it was awful." They're out there, but they seem like unicorns for having a very mild opinion.

 

 

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

FWIW that’s exactly how I described it to my brother in law.

Me and my husband and father all felt exactly this way as well. It was interesting visually and it’s a Star Wars movie. But it fucking sucked and I do not recommend it except that it’s fucking Episode IX so you gotta watch it.

 

why do people on this thread keep saying C3PO’s humor/jokes were funny? 

He was not funny. He wasn’t funny in Episode II and he wasn’t funny in Episode IX. Can we please stop saying he was funny?!?

[Nictarion]

26 minutes ago, Suzanna Stormborn said:

 

Me and my husband and father all felt exactly this way as well. It was interesting visually and it’s a Star Wars movie. But it fucking sucked and I do not recommend it except that it’s fucking Episode IX so you gotta watch it.

 

why do people on this thread keep saying C3PO’s humor/jokes were funny? 

He was not funny. He wasn’t funny in Episode II and he wasn’t funny in Episode IX. Can we please stop saying he was funny?!?

I thought 3PO was great in this. 

[felice]

1 hour ago, Nictarion said:

I thought 3PO was great in this. 

What I mostly recall is a running joke about nobody caring whether he's ok, followed by nobody caring that he sacrifices his life to translate the inscription. It didn't improve my opinion of the rest of the characters.

[Jace, Extat]

@Kalbear

There's actually not a lot of hate in me for this movie itself. I hate the way people are defending a shit film, I felt little but a cold humor after the movie. Actually, that's a lie. I felt bad for almost laughing out loud at the nonsense when my best friend of three decades was sitting next to me with a confused and hurt look on his face. He kept saying that he didn't think the movie was going to be good before we saw it, but clearly he had a lot more emotional investment remaining than he let on.

I will eviscerate this film because as a film it does not work. You cannot introduce a character who references long time relations with a main character, have her try to kill him, then give him a skeleton key to the entire bad guy fleet in the space of five minutes before leaving that setting for the rest of the film.

That's not how movies are supposed to work. Clearly you can do it. You can absolutely just do that. J.J. definitely proved that you can shoot that film, edit it down to less than three-hundred seconds, and pay Keri Russell fifteen million dollars to have a stunt double. It doesn't work though. Not unless you're so disinterested in the mechanics of how good movies are structured that you just don't care. In which case, that's fine. You don't need to give a fuck about the requirements of good film making. But if you're defending The Rise of Skywalker, particularly by tearing down actual good films, from most of the criticism it's catching then you are wrong. You are wrong from a movie making perspective.

People like all kinds of movies, it's okay to like a movie with a horrifically structured plot and not a heartbeat's worth of development for the characters. It really is okay to enjoy a movie like that. I can list you two dozen of my personal favorite films that are absolute drek. But you don't have to pretend it's not a confused, retconning, and whiplash-inducing roller coaster where a lot of people wanted to go see a movie. Like what you like. Don't talk out of your ass trying to defend something that's objectively a fucking mess. I don't understand that and I won't accept it.

Smackdown is on Fox every Friday if you just want to see large objects smash into each other and give you all that emotion you're apparently starved for.

51 minutes ago, felice said:

What I mostly recall is a running joke about nobody caring whether he's ok, followed by nobody caring that he sacrifices his life to translate the inscription. It didn't improve my opinion of the rest of the characters.

This also doesn't make sense to me and seems like people making excuses. People don't like C-3P0. He's not the fan favorite. People have latched onto him in this movie because they actually make a gesture towards some kind of arc for him. But it's not good.

As you say, he's getting ready to basically die and none of the main characters give a fuck. The audience was laughing at their disinterest in his well being and impending demise. That's not a sign that the audience has this huge emotional connection to 3P0 and are worried about him. It actually means the opposite. But since that's one of the only moments in the film that feel like there's some kind of stakes for a character we at least recognize, folks cite that sequence as a "strength" of the film even though its context is fucking gibberish.

3P0 can read the Sith language on the dagger created... eons ago...? That was specifically designed to line up with the ruins of the 2nd Death Star that crashed 40 years ago to reveal the location of the holomap to where Palpatine retreated to after the destruction of the Death Star like a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, but 3P0 can't read the language 'cause it's forbidden. Except he can read the language, he just can't translate it???? But he totally can, he just needs a mind wipe.

In Star Wars, a farm boy gains possession of stolen Imperial plans. He then accompanies an old warrior wizard on a quest where he rescues a princess and blows up a super weapon with the help of Space Magic.

 

A very, very, simple story wherein events occur is not 'contrived'. It's called storytelling. Was Strider hanging out in the Prancing Pony contrived? Real big coincidence, that! We spend fifteen minutes with those droids before they meet Luke. They wandered the desert for presumably a long time, judging on their rough state of repair once reaching the Lars homestead. We didn't get a thirty second battle scene with the Tantive IV, smash cut to droids taking plans into pod, smash cut to imps not firing, smash cut to a stormtrooper holding up a little metal ring as he says "look, sir! Droids!" smash cut to R2D2 playing the message for this dude Luke whose house he just rolled straight into smash cut to Lars and Beru getting iced.

Reading some of the accusations of 'contrivances' and plot holes in the original films, my mental image becomes a cartoon of some asshole screaming "where did the 'gene replicator machines' come from? So much for your realistic science fiction story, Neal Stephenson. Should have saved the ink and left the moon in once piece you fucking hack!"

Which... I mean you can throw stones. I'm throwing stones right now. But criticizing the original movies is throwing pebbles at a tank. Stop! What are you even doing? Why do you want to excuse installments in the series that make you tear down the classics in order to defend them? And in such a disingenuous manner, besides. Harry Potter has massive plot holes in a fantastic story. The Star Wars Trilogy is not littered with plot holes and contrivances. It's filled with space magic and a Hero of a Thousand Faces. You aren't clever for pointing out how unlikely it is that Oedipus would just meet his dad on the way to Thebes. You're really not.

 

[polishgenius]

3 hours ago, Suzanna Stormborn said:

 

why do people on this thread keep saying C3PO’s humor/jokes were funny? 

He was not funny. He wasn’t funny in Episode II and he wasn’t funny in Episode IX. Can we please stop saying he was funny?!?

 

Threepio wasn't funny in any of the other films but he had almost all the best lines and moments in this, at least in the first half. 'Is this the afterlife? Are droids allowed here?' was the best line in the movie by miles. It was almost like everyone else was in a shitty Star Wars film but C3-PO was in Thor: Ragnarok.

The teeny droid that the evil bounty hunter dude with the dagger used to own was the best thing in the film though. He had an actual arc that made sense and was moving and uplifting.

[Ran]

He was definitely funny to me in this film. Anthony Daniels has terrific comic timing, and C-3PO has always been pretty funny to me (I can't speak to the prequels, I barely remember the plots of II and III, much less what secondary characters do). Most of the laughs came from him, or the one Babu Frik line where he introduces himself to the memory-wiped C-3PO.

D-O was cute. The design made me think of Lampy from The Brave Little Toaster, which was maybe not deliberate but no doubt heightend the cuteness for me.

For that matter, I enjoyed the battle on Exogol, although because of its more "crowded" nature it certainly isn't up there with RotJ or Rogue One. But it's better than TFA or TLJ.  More importantly than the staging of it, though, were the emotional beats of it, for me. It's where the catharsis really started to happen, as they cut (quite deftly) back and forth between Rey and Ben and the battle, and the tensions in it.

ETA: Kevin Smith has his review out. Long and occasionally funny and sometimes insightful, but also a bit emotional at times. I particularly like his observation around the midpoint 34 minute mark about Leia holding Han's medal and why it resonated with him: