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The Rise of Skywalker is possibly worse than any prior Star Wars “episode.” It ends a legendary franchise with a thud while denying this new trilogy its artistic reason for existence. It represents the cultural theft of Star Wars from today’s kids by today’s arrested-development-stricken adults. Star Wars was a franchise first and foremost for children, and the kids who grew up with Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and the MCU have embraced harsh truths and challenging narratives. Lucasfilm and Disney’s The Rise of Skywalker feels explicitly crafted for the “Rian Johnson ruined Star Wars!” and “George Lucas ruined my childhood!” demographics, right down to its near erasure of Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose Tico. It’s bad enough that adults no longer see grown-up movies in theaters, but now yesterday’s geeks who have taken over pop culture feel entitled to have the kid-friendly franchises aimed at them as well.

Ace Pace wrote: ↑2019-12-18 03:53pm Just came back from seeing it.

So lets get the important thing out of the way. The skywalker line is over in a total rollercoaster ride of a movie. Very few twists that really surprised me, but I had a lot of fun.

The bad
• Chewie’s non death was total fanservice. He could have died and nothing would have changed in the plot and the characters arc would be improved. Instead, he finishes the movie alone, nearly all his friends dead. I don’t understand why he sticks around.
• C-3PO non death. His sacrifice for his friends was ruined by R2D2 having a backup of his memories. WAT. Generally, R2D2 was totally a deus ex machina for that.
• Leia. Yes, she was needed for the plot, but I felt a bit creeped out by just how active she was in this movie. Not sure how they did the audio fakery but it was really good
The weird can be summed up by fan service. Total. Fan Service. You want something? It’s in there. Lando, yes. Han Solo, yes. Luke, yes. Fucking Ashoka was in there. I can’t think of a single thing fans wanted that didn’t go into the movie.

The good however was really good. The Rey/Kylo arc was done really well. Telegraphed but done well. Makes sense for Ben to step back when his mother died and makes sense for Rey to bring him back to life. I think there’s probably a lot to say there (queue the haters) but Reys fears of being alone make sense and Kylo being afraid of going back to his family makes sense.

And i’m happy Kylo is dead. The Skywalkers line is over and with it, the story of Star Wars.

Which brings to me to the movies biggest failing. It’s basically a re-roll of Return of the Jedi with some beats mixed up. There’s nothing really new in terms of story elements and the last last shot of Ray saying she is a Skywalker really throws away her “I’m a nobody” act. Generally her lineage is a total copout.

I still really enjoyed being in the theater and will probably see it again.

ray245 wrote: ↑2019-12-18 04:04pm
What do you think about the exposition dump? And some of the world-building elements?

Ace Pace wrote: ↑2019-12-18 04:17pm
The exposition dump being where Rey comes from or the Sith world? I'm not sure what you're referring to here.

The world building elements are interesting. There's basically a lot of throwbacks but to ignore those and just pick out the important ones.

Poe having a shifty background. This is interesting, he's not a great pilot because he's just amazing and in love with the Resistance, but because he came from the underworld and picked this path and committed to it. In a way, a cleaner Han Solo. I enjoyed it and wish it had more time on screen.

Haxx being a spy was wonderful. It showed First Order characters as being independent and having their own arc. His reasons for being a spy were amazing and very..realistic. "I want to see Kylo lose," is a very realistic motivator for a spy. Shame he got executed.

I'm not sure what other interesting world building happened. The Knights of Ren were discarded as quickly as they were introduced and it's not clear who were all those people in the Sith Chamber in the final scene. The huge mass of ships in the end has interesting political discussions possible around it but I'm not sure I'd count that as worldbuilding.

ray245 wrote: ↑2019-12-18 04:26pm

Ace Pace wrote: ↑2019-12-18 04:17pm
The exposition dump being where Rey comes from or the Sith world? I'm not sure what you're referring to here.

Basically all of it. How are they handled, whether it feels like an info-dump in one go, or if it's carefully disseminated in an organic-feeling way?

ray245 wrote: ↑2019-12-18 04:26pm

The world building elements are interesting. There's basically a lot of throwbacks but to ignore those and just pick out the important ones.

Poe having a shifty background. This is interesting, he's not a great pilot because he's just amazing and in love with the Resistance, but because he came from the underworld and picked this path and committed to it. In a way, a cleaner Han Solo. I enjoyed it and wish it had more time on screen.

Haxx being a spy was wonderful. It showed First Order characters as being independent and having their own arc. His reasons for being a spy were amazing and very..realistic. "I want to see Kylo lose," is a very realistic motivator for a spy. Shame he got executed.

I'm not sure what other interesting world building happened. The Knights of Ren were discarded as quickly as they were introduced and it's not clear who were all those people in the Sith Chamber in the final scene. The huge mass of ships in the end has interesting political discussions possible around it but I'm not sure I'd count that as worldbuilding.

Does the "world" or "galaxy" make sense as a whole? Do you feel like it's plausible to believe the story-universe can accommodate a plausible scenario where Palpatine didn't truly die and managed to build a secret fleet out of nowhere?

That was my big issue with old EU Dark Empire series, and I disliked it as a whole because it feels like bad world-building.

Ace Pace wrote: ↑2019-12-18 04:33pm
Mostly well. There weren't long bits of explaining too many things at once. Reys parentage was revealed properly, over time. But there wasn't a lot of exposition, which is good. At some point, Poe quips "we could do this all day" when characters start asking background questions.

Honestly, the entire fleet story doesn't really matter. Unlike ROTJ, the fleet battle could have been wiped out and very little would have changed in the story.

Making this yet another SW movie that doesn't match up to ROTJ space battle.

Ace Pace wrote: ↑2019-12-18 04:41pm I feel like I have to add, I totally understand what every critical review of this movie says. There's fan service, there's retconning of TLJ, and more bad things.

However, it was a movie that felt like the Star Wars 4 and 6 (no surprise there) and had me enjoying nearly every minute.

Vympel wrote: ↑2019-12-18 10:19pm Leading up to this I did a full Episode I - VIII rewatch (excluding Rogue One and Solo - not part of the saga). I didn't get any revelations, just a continued appreciation for everything I like about the movies, but goddamn I don't understand how Abrams could turn in something as simple yet effective as TFA and then turn in what sounds like a huge mess four years later.

Vympel wrote: ↑2019-12-18 10:19pm but goddamn I don't understand how Abrams could turn in something as simple yet effective as TFA and then turn in what sounds like a huge mess four years later.

Ace Pace wrote: ↑2019-12-18 04:41pm I feel like I have to add, I totally understand what every critical review of this movie says. There's fan service, there's retconning of TLJ, and more bad things.

However, it was a movie that felt like the Star Wars 4 and 6 (no surprise there) and had me enjoying nearly every minute.

Adam Reynolds wrote: ↑2019-12-19 12:16am It's simple, Abrams is the king of Ponzi storytelling. He is very good at setting up stories with interesting questions, he just has no idea how to answer them in a way that works. What made The Force Awakens so effective was that there were virtually no conclusive answers to anything, which meant that you could easily come up with your own ideas to justify whatever you wanted about the state of the galaxy, or questions like Rey's origins, or whatever else the movie itself failed to answer.

Mange wrote: ↑2019-12-19 12:36am The mess was done by Rian Johnson and his god-awful The Last Jedi. Abrams, who isn't a great storyteller himself, had to do damage control which slowed TROS down a bit. Not having a sense of where to go also did damage with Colin Trevorrow saying that he had no intention of bringing Palpatine back but that it was a late decision by Abrams. The OT had Lucas's creative vision. The ST was storytelling by people without creativity and understanding and by committee and suits.

Vympel wrote: ↑2019-12-19 08:01am What a desperate film. So desperate to be liked. So eager to please. So afraid to offend. There's a lot of stuff here that could've worked so much better if packaged in a better movie. But goddamn is it almost entirely cowardly. So much unnecessary fan servicing.

ray245 wrote: ↑2019-12-19 08:22am Fanboys are cowards. They do not want to be challenged and called out for all their faults as audience of a story, because they want a franchise that allows them to relive their childhood at all cost. A good producer should know better than to hire a fanboy to be a director of a Star Wars movie. It's not surprising that the person who Disney turned out to fix their off-shoot SW movies are NOT fanboys of the original Star Wars.

The people best placed to direct a Star Wars movie are people who might enjoy the original Star Wars movie, but those who aren't fanboys to the extend they lose their ability to be creative and competent at making a good film.

Disney right from the get-go, has been a bunch of creative cowards when it comes to Star Wars. You keep saying a big time studio won't be stupid enough to listen to a bunch of fans whinning on the Internet. ROS proved you wrong, because that's exactly what Disney is as a studio. They are so eager to please the rabid Internet fans that they will burn their own trilogy to the ground.

The vast majority of my criticism of the way Disney/Kennedy/Abrams handled Star Wars back in 2014/5 have been proved right. I said good directing of actors and well-written dialogue will not be enough to be a good Star Wars movies. You need a clear vision, be willing to take risk that might piss off the fanbase, an ability to do good world-building to do a good Star Wars movie.

If ROS isn't a Star Wars branded movie, it would have bombed at the box office very easily.

Vympel wrote: ↑2019-12-19 08:27am Well like I said, boo-boo the clown on the whining on the internet. But it's not those fans fault, its the dumbasses who wrote the movie so it seemed that way.

I don't agree that TFA isn't a good Star Wars movie - I still like it a lot and it had a lot of story-telling potential. It's not TFA's problem that TROS is bad - instead its apparent that all of TFA's good ideas came from Kasdan and not Abrams, who when left to his own devices turns in ... this mess.

ray245 wrote: ↑2019-12-19 08:46am

Vympel wrote: ↑2019-12-19 08:27am Well like I said, boo-boo the clown on the whining on the internet. But it's not those fans fault, its the dumbasses who wrote the movie so it seemed that way.

It's the fans fault (because they can't critique a movie for shit) and the cowards who think that listening to those idiots is a good idea. Whatever the faults and the weakness the prequels had, Lucas did not make the movies to please the fanbase. I respect directors who dared to do something different from what the fanbase wanted over a director who aims to give in to every single fanboys on the internet. This is why despite my issues with TLJ, I think Rian Johnson is a much better director than JJ Abrams, and respect him more so than anything else.

I've seen Rian Johnson's knives out, and it shows why he is a superior director to JJ Abrams easily.

I don't agree that TFA isn't a good Star Wars movie - I still like it a lot and it had a lot of story-telling potential. It's not TFA's problem that TROS is bad - instead its apparent that all of TFA's good ideas came from Kasdan and not Abrams, who when left to his own devices turns in ... this mess.

TFA superficially appears to be a good Star Wars movie, and that's the main problem with it. With the set-up of TFA, you're essentially stuck remaking ESB and ROTJ unless you want to drastically deviate course from it ( which was what Rian Johnson tried to do).

TFA is why TLJ had such a mixed reception, because it is difficult to make a good challenge to the traditional SW status quo in the middle film of a trilogy. You had to spent a good portion of your time resolving the cliff-hanger of TFA (Luke's story had to be dealt with) and you're limited by the set-up (Empire vs Rebels again!).

Kasdan is not as good of a writer in creating an interesting long-term story-telling as people might think.

I think the reason why people think TFA is good when it first came out has less to do with the actual quality of a film, but the set of emotions that people brought with them walking into the cinema. There are many people so desperate to be proven right over why the prequels suck, why a return to the OT will magically fix everything that they essentially ignored the deeper underlying problems with TFA.

Palpatine is brought back because JJ Abrams is a shit writer that literally couldn't see past Star Wars beyond a plucky underdog vs an empire sith lord wizard. Rian Johnson killed off Snoke because he realised how important it is to move the narrative of Star Wars beyond having yet another evil Sith emperor for the heroes to fight. He understood Star Wars as a franchise needs to evolve or it will die in the long run due to creative stagnation.

JJ Abrams is utterly incapable of creativity. That's why he's so reliant on his mystery box, because it's a good way to distract his audience from his weakness as a story-teller. He never cared about story-telling, all he cared about is making a bunch of cool-looking scene, and edit his movie to move at such a fast pace that you will not question the issues with his story-telling. It's now bloody clear that Abrams never had a long-term plan beyond remake the OT!

Does bringing Palpatine back make sense within the narrative of all 9 movies? Who cares! It will hype up the audience because the trailers will generate tons of views! Does bringing back the issue of Rey's parentage adds anything to the movie? Who cares! Because it will generate excitement amongst the fanbase once again!

JJ Abrams does not understand story-telling, period. The fact that he approved of the script written by Terrio is a clear sign he is a horrible judge of good storytelling and good script. I highly doubt he understood why people liked the OT to begin with. Remaking ROTJ is another clear sign he does not understand Star Wars to begin with.

Let this be a lesson of what happens when movie studios are too cowardly to do anything creative and tries to appease every single fanbase. It does not work.

Rant over.

P.S. I do find it hilarious that JJ Abrams also gave in to those how complaint about Rey being a Mary-Sue by essentially giving them an explanation they sort of wanted. Of course she is so powerful because she is the grand-daughter of Palpatine!

"“I think approaching any creative process with [making fandoms happy] would be a mistake that would lead to probably the exact opposite result,” Johnson told Radio.com. “Even my experience as a fan, you know if I’m coming into something, even if it’s something that I think I want, if I see exactly what I think I want on the screen, it’s like ‘oh, ok,’ it might make me smile and make me feel neutral about the thing and I won’t really think about it afterwards, but that’s not really going to satisfy me.”

The goal Johnson wants instead, from the perspective of both a creator and as an audience member, is to find his theories and beliefs about a piece of media to be confronted as much as they are affirmed.

“I want to be shocked, I want to be surprised, I want to be thrown off-guard, I want to have things recontextualized, I want to be challenged as a fan when I sit down in the theatre,” the director continued. “What I’m aiming for every time I sit down in a theatre is to have the experience with Empire Strikes Back, something that’s emotionally resonant and feels like it connects up and makes sense and really gets to the heart of what this thing is, and in a way that I never could have seen coming.”"

Vympel wrote: ↑2019-12-19 09:03am Yeah, as I've said many times, TLJ is a movie that even if you hate it - is a movie entirely uninterested in fan service, which TFA clearly had (but not nearly as obnoxious as in TROS).

One of the criticisms deployed against Johnson was an interview in 2003 where he talked about wanting to make controversial movies that 50% of people hated. His response to when he was asked about it, back in 2018:

"I’m not saying that I want to purposefully make people hate something I’ve done, or divide audiences. I’m saying that any art that’s worth a damn comes from a personal, passionate perspective. And that means that you will never get 100% of an audience on board with it."

And just last week, in an interview:

"“I think approaching any creative process with [making fandoms happy] would be a mistake that would lead to probably the exact opposite result,” Johnson told Radio.com. “Even my experience as a fan, you know if I’m coming into something, even if it’s something that I think I want, if I see exactly what I think I want on the screen, it’s like ‘oh, ok,’ it might make me smile and make me feel neutral about the thing and I won’t really think about it afterwards, but that’s not really going to satisfy me.”

The goal Johnson wants instead, from the perspective of both a creator and as an audience member, is to find his theories and beliefs about a piece of media to be confronted as much as they are affirmed.

“I want to be shocked, I want to be surprised, I want to be thrown off-guard, I want to have things recontextualized, I want to be challenged as a fan when I sit down in the theatre,” the director continued. “What I’m aiming for every time I sit down in a theatre is to have the experience with Empire Strikes Back, something that’s emotionally resonant and feels like it connects up and makes sense and really gets to the heart of what this thing is, and in a way that I never could have seen coming.”"

Who does that sound like?