Star Wars 9 : The Rise of Skywalker

[Draegan]

I just saw this and it was entertaining. Best part of the movie is reading khaldun lose his shit about a mediocre movie.

I'll forget about this in 2 weeks.

Ill be a fan of star wars again when wTching the mandalorian and if they ever put this franchise in the hands of someone with talent.

[Draegan]

The more I think about this trilogy, I think it's worse that the prequels.

The prequels were laughably bad from incompetent writing, directing, acting, everything. But the story was complete, as in they had an idea for 3 movies and they executed (however poorly).

The sequel trilogy was better produced, had better effects, better acting, better directing, better subplots here and there overall.

However the sequel had no planning what so ever. TFA was decent for a popcorn resurrection of the series. It wasn't serious at all, it paid homage and it didn't attempt to make any waves. It was the safest production ever. It created a place where you can really do something interesting, if they actually had good writers. TLJ totally shit all over the movie with a terrible plot, a terrible story, and terrible everything. I like some of the directions they TRIED to take (like with Luke) and the loss of the resistance and all that. But it was executed terribly. Then ROS was just basically patch work to wrap everything up. I mean it's JJ, however it's JJ trying to fix something you couldn't fix. So I can't blame him for everything.

What makes the sequel utterly revolting as a movie in this franchise is that it had ZERO thought behind hit. There was no planning, no direction and certainly no ambition to make something great. The reason why it's being rebelled against so much (deservingly so) is that the promise of a good film series was destroyed after Lucas destroyed it 20 years ago.

Both prequel and sequel trilogies have movies that you can completely ignore (Ep I and VIII). It's flabbergasting.

I mean in the sequel you had:

Snoke be irrelevent.
General Lux be a sniveling coward and also be the leader of the FO? And then a spy?
You had Ren go from apprentice to leader (that doesn't work) to redemption?

None of the characters were ever developed as a unit.

Ultimately, we were all expecting the competence of the Marvel Universe and got nothing close and that makes everyone angry.

The Rise of Skywalker was a  entertaining and fine B-grade movie with an A-grade budget and IP. Maybe Star Wars isn't A grade anymore, I dunno. Still makes money I guess. I feel like I didn't waste my money seeing it, but I'm glad it's done and I can move on and now I no longer have an expectations out of the Star Wars universe.

[Threash]

Maybe Star Wars isn't A grade anymore, I dunno.

Maybe it never was?  "entertaining and fine B-grade movie with an A-grade budget and IP" should be the definition of all of Star Wars.

[Draegan]

Maybe Star Wars isn't A grade anymore, I dunno.

Maybe it never was?  "entertaining and fine B-grade movie with an A-grade budget and IP" should be the definition of all of Star Wars.

If it wasn't for Lucas' wife, it probably would have been B grade and the second movie would never have been made. But it was an A grade movie from with the originals. They were always trying to chase that feeling and Lucas never go near it in the 90s. And JJ is basically a hack for the most part without original thought so all he did was try to copy.

The only thing that gives me hope, if there can be such a thing like hope with Star Wars, is the Mandolorian. Then the next best thing would be Kathleen Kennedy being fired for being grossly incompetent.

[jgsugden]

Finally saw this... This was really bad. 

Nothing earned.  All the 'drama' about friendship/family for people that have known each other for a few days ... and are demonstrably unfamiliar with each other.

Carrie Fisher was just wrong.  Nothing she said made sense.  If she were my general, I'd have staged a coup and put her under medical watch.  Noble thought, but Superman's mustache level of fail.

The storyline didn't make sense - and even worse they introduced, yet again, more technology so devastating that the entire universe is doomed.  A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away that we've never heard of because every civilized creature was clearly destroyed by the world destroying cannons that were all over the place.

And the Han Solo cameo - ugh. 

What makes it worse is that we see this after watching 8 weeks of Great Star Wars in the form of the Mandalorian. This was as bad as last Jedi.

This was a sad way to go out. 

[Draegan]

I just watched the red letter media bit on it.

I agree with everything they said. Very accurate.

[HaemishM]

And you will wonder forever because Leia's Jedi training in literally in one flashback scene that comes out of nowhere and tries to explain how she knew all this shit was going to happen so this whole thing was her playing the long game.

CLOWN.

SHOES.

[Abagadro]

The Leia force crap and Ford's cameo had to be part of the same mess. They clearly were going to have Fischer in that scene with Driver, but she wasn't available.  Rather than write around it they had Ford do it.

Looked like Ford wouldn't even let them cut his hair for it.   

[Goumindong]

And you will wonder forever because Leia's Jedi training in literally in one flashback scene that comes out of nowhere and tries to explain how she knew all this shit was going to happen so this whole thing was her playing the long game.

CLOWN.

SHOES.

I didnt like the scene but seeing the future is a well established force effect

I dont think Fords cameo was a result of Carrie dying. The scene reads right as it is. Its a direct repeat of TFA’s scene where Kylo kills Han. And if you paid close attention Rey stabs Kylo with his lightsaber in the same place he had stabbed Han. The uhh symbolism of the scene is that by Rey healing means Kylo could have always gone back.

Maybe they wrote around it real well but i dont think so, given the caliber of the rest of the writing around they did.

They sure didnt pay off that scene though (Kylo throws away his lightsaber! Syke doesnt matter he gets another one 2 scenes later)

[Cyrrex]

He threw off his symbolically evil bad red lightsaber with the cracked crystal and the external wiring that shot sparks and possibly short-circuited once a week.  The bigger problem was that he then took a shower, changed into his civvies and then stormed the castle ten minutes later, armed only with the power of his bare ass knuckles.

Anyway, I don't think any of this is worth the debate, because almost none of it holds up to serious scrutiny.  And besides, whatever my opinion of this movie, the Mandalorian is ten times better and far more worthy of discussion.  I am actually filled with optimism both about that series, and about the OB1 series that is coming.  With some of the same people involved and Ewan McGregor....that shit is going to be the tits.

[jgsugden]

He threw off his symbolically evil bad red lightsaber with the cracked crystal and the external wiring that shot sparks and possibly short-circuited once a week.  The bigger problem was that he then took a shower, changed into his civvies and then stormed the castle ten minutes later, armed only with the power of his bare ass knuckles.

All tie fighters come with an internal wash cycle.  What? You thought that the central chamber's similarity to a washing machine was a coincedence?

Anyway, I don't think any of this is worth the debate, because almost none of it holds up to serious scrutiny.  And besides, whatever my opinion of this movie, the Mandalorian is ten times better and far more worthy of discussion.  I am actually filled with optimism both about that series, and about the OB1 series that is coming.  With some of the same people involved and Ewan McGregor....that shit is going to be the tits.

We can only hope.

[Riggswolfe]

The difference between the sequel movies and the Mandalorian is that the Mandalorian has Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau planning it all out with a vision for what the season should be. For the sequel trilogy JJ laid out some plot threads in TFA then Kathleen Kennedy said "hey, you next 2 directors. Do whatever you want." So Rian Johnson shit all over the plot threads and decided to make a movie that was about a deconstruction of Star Wars rather than a middle part of a trilogy.

The people who mentioned the prequels at least having a vision are right though I disagree the prequels are better. They only have one good movie, I'd say this sequel trilogy has 1.5 good movies. (Good here meaning "entertaining Star Wars movie.) That said, the Last Jedi is so awful it retroactively made people yearn for the return of George Lucas and decide maybe the prequels weren't that bad after all.

[Cyrrex]

The broad strokes of the prequel trilogy were fine.  The terrible screenplay and the worse directing are to blame for almost all of its problems.

This trilogy is almost the exact opposite.  The execution of the plot was fairly competent on a scene by scene level.  But the connection of those scenes and the story on the whole is full of trouble.  In all three movies, but especially the last two.

On balance, I prefer this trilogy...because what is happening on screen in any given moment is well acted, well executed, and looks pretty good at the same time.  Even if it is fully of ridiculous stuff like hyperspacing your capital ship into another capital ship and expecting anyone within a trillion parsecs to actually survive it.

[Riggswolfe]

I agree more or less Cyrrex. They really needed a storyline set down. As much as people give JJ shit, I think if he'd directed all 3 movies it'd have been better in the long run as we'd have at least had a coherent vision for the trilogy.

I forgot to mention, the one thing the prequels did right was Ewan McGregor as Obi Wan. Somehow he rose above the shittiness of those movies and became a perfect Obi Wan.

[Samprimary]

The broad strokes of the prequel trilogy were fine.  The terrible screenplay and the worse directing are to blame for almost all of its problems.

This trilogy is almost the exact opposite.  The execution of the plot was fairly competent on a scene by scene level.  But the connection of those scenes and the story on the whole is full of trouble.  In all three movies, but especially the last two.

lol so they brought balance to the franchise

[Samprimary]

hey everyone get the gang together and we'll watch Star Wars 9: Wrap This Shit Up Somehow

Starring Rey Palpatine, Poe Dangerman, Finn Andjake, Kylo Ren and the stapled together mad libs footage of Carrie Fisher!

highlights include!

- pretend you knew what you were doing all along but the movie's basically a standalone!!
- kylo gets a head start on the gang by going off and kicking things off by finding the first macguffin and discovers PLANET EVIL (it is very evil™)
- emperor snoke turns out to be a vat grown meat puppet, wrapping that whole story up! you can thank us later!!
- emperor palpatine is not dead, he is just very very old and worked his hand to the bone with his new concept of DECENTRALIZED DEATH STARS
- he now has an army of seventy two spadjillion death star destroyers that can go destroy. right now. any minute. oh no!
- BUT they are not programmed to understand the direction "up" so as to give the heroes a chance to thwart galactic domination. they will wait for you. no rush
- Rey is attempting to connect to "ghost_Jedi" but cannot find a stable network resolution. If this issue does not resolve please contact your system administrator. error code 8x0347164
- She gets feisty and drops a tree on BB8 to foreshadow the dangers of putting too much sass in your force!
- rose tico is kept on standby to say "i'm rose tico and i am in this movie" every 30 minutes before being shuffled off to the Closet of Manchild Scorn!!!
- the KNIGHTS OF REN appear on Tatooine 3 to ask if this is where they show up to die unceremoniously, kylo ren says 'no not yet go away'!!!! so they go wait
- poe dangerman goes 'hold on im going to escape by creating worse canon issues than the holdo maneuver' and lightspeed skips across several CGI concept tests
- old guy from old movies is here. "hello new heroes!" he says, "catchphrase™" boom gottem in the feels
- the gang falls into space quicksand, which means finn can say something but doesn't, searching for macguffin 1 and find that there is a macguffin 2 in space snakehole
- director jj abrams decides he is willing to make bold challenging directorial acts of resolute finality and kills chewbacca
- editors note: chewbacca is not dead, we walked it back it's cool, relax
- C-3P0 is not allowed to explain macguffin 2 because it is written in the ancient cursed language of adobe flash and this has been firewalled off from his operating system
- fortunately one of the creatures from the "we like the moon" quizno's commercial is able to install a 0-day hax
- director jj abrams decides he is willing to make bold challenging directorial acts of resolute finality and C-3PO consents to have his core drive erased for the good of the mission
- editors note: C-3P0's memory is fine, we walked it back it's cool, relax
- the KNIGHTS OF REN appear on Hoth 2 to ask if this is where they show up to die unceremoniously, kylo ren says 'NOOO not yet go away!!!" so they go wait
- they have an 'admit 1, star destroyer' token so they scootle-doo on into one to re-recover macguffin 2
- they are saved by General Stinkface Space Rat, who was the insider all along. Stinkface doesn't like Kylo very much!!!
- General Unremarkable Tarkin Stand-In kills Stinkface in order to replace the antagonist that was even remarkable enough to remember
- the two previous fetch quests recover macguffin 2 and tells them that they can fetch another macguffin (3) on this fetch quest to lead them to the final ultimate fetch quest. it is on Bespin 1 so they go there
- macguffin 2 is a space protractor that points them to macguffin 3 in very specific arcane conditions. good, excellent
- rey fights evil naked mole rat rey to get macguffin 3, in order to drop it so that kylo can have it and break it and make a space fight happen
- carrie fisher runs out of surplus footage and dies to give rey the high ground of the force
- she stabs kylo so hard he sees his dad
- kylo has a REVELATION that he does not want to be bad anymore. he throws away his lightsaber and straight up immediately sets off to find a fight he will need a lightsaber for and say 'oh shit, i do not have a one (1) lightsaber.' this is called a redemption arc
- rey unpimps her ride to death on planet luke so that luke can come back and go 'no you should actually go fight the bad man' and she goes 'ok'
- luke uses the mysterious all-encompassing powers of the force to tell her she has macguffin 1 and can now bypass the other fetch quests im cryin now for real ok
- everyone goes to pew-pew the sith but i am mostly numb in my brain now there's too much noise i forget what really happens here but anyway everyone gets to the final boss level
- the good guys basically have to shoot all the bad guy ships in the dick, which destroys them. but there's way too much dick to shoot so things start going poorly
- Planet Evil has one single directional finder with the power of telling ships how to move away from a planet surface. General Unremarkable says he's going to remote in and hotspot it to the death fleet
- in exchange, the heroes bravely ride livestock onto the surface of the ship to take it out
- General Unremarkable looks at this situation for a literal single second and uses his two existing brain cells to say "wow! uh, ok. point the nose of the ship down or something so they all fall off"
- the crew of the ship go "Yes, General!" and tip them all off and the heroes all fall and die. The General's command staff toast to their powers of extremely simple problem solving, then go off and destroy the universe
- Emperor Palpatine is impressed with their chutzpah and rules the ashes of the universe forever, laughing basically non-stop for like a thousand years. trump 2020

epilogue: the ghost of anakin skywalker shows up on Tatooine 1 and says "holy fucking SHIT lady did you really just put my lightsaber in SAND. my disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined

[Khaldun]

 

[Draegan]

I need a few drinks to read that, but in a good way.

Also, something that Read Letter Media said was pretty spot on. JJ would have killed this trilogy if he only had directed it. But he had to go and fuck up and try to write it too.

[Draegan]

nm i read it

holy shit
your best work
 
trump2020

[jgsugden]

Sorry, Samprimary, but there is one critical flaw with your resolution.  They couldn't just tilt the ship... they had forgotten which direction was up, remember? They neded a device to tell the which direction was away from the planet.

[Khaldun]

That ship was the one which had the device. Which is why the space goats were on it or whatever. But it's cool, apparently space bombings are ridiculous and warrant people going on and on about how ridonkulous the movie is but it's totally fine when enemy people and their space goats are walking around on a ship trying to sabotage it who could be dusted off like fleas with one quick 45 degree shake back and forth.

[Phildo]

That ship was the one which had the device. Which is why the space goats were on it or whatever. But it's cool, apparently space bombings are ridiculous and warrant people going on and on about how ridonkulous the movie is but it's totally fine when enemy people and their space goats are walking around on a ship trying to sabotage it who could be dusted off like fleas with one quick 45 degree shake back and forth.

Por que no los dos?

[IainC]

Finally watched this last night. it was fucking stupid. Everything Samprimary said above is extremely on point. To me the overwhelming feeling I got from it was that it was a procession of unearned payoffs.
The Leia stuff was poignant because we, the audience, knew about Carrie Fisher. From the in-universe PoV it's just a random event that has no foreshadowing, story point, or meaning. She sends a bunch of people off on a mission and then dies for no reason. People are sad, sad music plays.
Rey Palpatine was something that was just a fuck you to RJ. Luke finding that Vader was his father also came out of left field but they spent a movie and a half building on that and resolving that conflict arc in both Luke and Vader. Rey just goes 'No, don't wanna' and Palpy is all 'Lol ok then, fuck you'.
C3-PO can translate the Sith runes but isn't allowed to say the words. But he knows where it is. Why not just say 'Ok, dude, sit in this chair and fly us to where we need to go'?
Palpatine's secret fleet was stupid. Thousands of planet-killing star destroyers that no-one knew about. Space-worthy and fully-crewed. Built on a secret planet that's not marked on star charts and appears to have no ship-building facilities (the Imperial star destroyers were apparently made in massive orbital dockyards in a system full of industrial planets). There would need to be billions of tons of construction materials and engineering shuttling into the planet every day.
The Sith dagger that has the precise profile of the Death Star wreckage if you stand in a very specific place. Which Rey does. When was that dagger made? Also, good job that the metal thing sittiing in super rough seas hasn't collapsed any further or eroded at all.
Ren's redemption all happens away from Rey, she doesn't see it. The last time she sees him before Palpatine's courtoom thing, he's still trying to get her over to the dark side. Then he turns up at her big fight and she's all 'so glad you're here, let's do this!'
The rescue fleet was just stupid. 'If we tell them, they will come.' There's nothing to back that up, we've seen no evidence of any kind of resistance outside of the movie characters, there's no build-up, no seeds being planted. Then, a giant armada of random (armed?) ships from all over the galaxy turns up at the same time to a secret planet that's not marked on charts, minutes after the resistance fleet gets there. And wthout the people who asked them to come, knowing about it.
Luke suddenly deciding that his lightsabre should be treated with respect despite the fact that he didn't give two shits about it in either of the previous two films - when Rey gives it to him in TLJ, he just tosses it over his shoulder.
Rey buries Luke and Leia's sabres on Tattooine. A place that has a strong connection for the audience but not to either of those two. Leia was only there briefly as Jabba's slave, Luke grew up there but literally spent his entire life up to that point trying to get off it.
Spring-loaded Stormtrooper-launchers made me laugh out loud in the theatre.
Burning Man planet getting exploded was the worst special effect I have seen in a big-budget movie. It was 1950s B-movie levels of terrible.
I did quite like the aesthetic at the beginning of the movie, and when they go to Space Burning Man. It looked like a live-action Moebius movie. After that though it went all over the place, half of it felt like Christopher Nolan set.

[HaemishM]

samprimary, you are the wind beneath my wings.

Shoot all the bad guy ships in the dick... I'm dying over here

[Samprimary]

Sorry, Samprimary, but there is one critical flaw with your resolution.  They couldn't just tilt the ship... they had forgotten which direction was up, remember? They neded a device to tell the which direction was away from the planet.

you slow your jets there padaweenie I didn't play 800 hours of elite dangerous to NOT know that axial tilt is objective reference only to itself absent any directional momentum relevant to proximal stellar phenomena

[Sir T]

[Cyrrex]

Samprimary, that was awesome.  Do the Mandalorian next.

[Riggswolfe]

So, apparently, #ReleaseTheJJCut is trending because of a reddit post. I have no idea if the post is BS or not. The one thing out of it that sounds entirely plausible to me is that Rise of Skywalker might have been sabotaged partially because JJ is going to WB and Disney wanted to tarnish his brand in case he was going to be doing work on DC which could be a threat to Marvel if it ever got crowd pleasing movies.

Who knows, if nothing else, it's an interesting post. Studio meddling wouldn't surprise me one bit for some of the stuff that was problematic for people.

https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/comments/eisnd8/heres_what_ive_been_told_from_a_source_that/

[Khaldun]

Hilarious. That film had Abrams' trademark bad moves all over it--it was as much a sequel to Star Trek Into Darkness as it was a Star Wars film in terms of the same kind of tone-deaf "fanservice", bad set-ups for major set pieces, dumb ideas about plot, etc.

This is our lives now: for the forseeable future, a certain kind of fan, confronted with the outcome of a studio and a director pandering to their expressed wishes, will always decide that the real problem is that there's a better movie that was made that a conspiracy is keeping them from seeing. The Venn overlap with people who believe that there was a pedophile ring in the basement of a Washington pizza parlor and that 9/11 was an inside job is pretty large, I would guess.

[Threash]

Yeah that sounds like ass. The force ghosts sound nice until you remember they'd have to ditch Ahsoka and Kanan, and probably all the other prequel Jedi also. The voices with everyone vs what? Hayden, Jackson and McGreggor ghosts?

[Riggswolfe]

Hilarious. That film had Abrams' trademark bad moves all over it--it was as much a sequel to Star Trek Into Darkness as it was a Star Wars film in terms of the same kind of tone-deaf "fanservice", bad set-ups for major set pieces, dumb ideas about plot, etc.

This is our lives now: for the forseeable future, a certain kind of fan, confronted with the outcome of a studio and a director pandering to their expressed wishes, will always decide that the real problem is that there's a better movie that was made that a conspiracy is keeping them from seeing. The Venn overlap with people who believe that there was a pedophile ring in the basement of a Washington pizza parlor and that 9/11 was an inside job is pretty large, I would guess.

JJ didn't write Into Darkness. You can lay that one at Lindledof's feet.

I enjoyed the movie but did feel there were some missed opportunities and was puzzled by how much Rose was sidelined. It just didn't feel like something JJ would do other than not figuring out a role for her in general. However, I could totally see Disney being like "she upset people, minimize her role!!!!!"

Yeah that sounds like ass. The force ghosts sound nice until you remember they'd have to ditch Ahsoka and Kanan, and probably all the other prequel Jedi also. The voices with everyone vs what? Hayden, Jackson and McGreggor ghosts?

I do feel like they should've had Hayden Christensen to be honest. You'd expect Anakin to be in that scene as more than a voice.

[Khaldun]

Abrams made all the meaningful choices on Into Darkness, I guarantee you.

[Velorath]

I'd also lay the blame for Into Darkness at the feet of co-writers Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman (also longtime Abrams collaborators) who have written such gems as Amazing Spider-man 2 and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Kurtzman also directed the The Mummy (2017).

[Khaldun]

I think Abrams does ok when he's riffing off a genre but not actually managing established IP--if you say to him, "Make a monster movie", he has a way of seeing how to do that differently but competently. When he's handed an established IP or when he gets boxed in by the accumulation of unresolved plot hooks in a longer-running version of IP he's played a role in making, he gets frantic and jumpy and he brings out the worst in a squad of frequent collaborators as well. About the only thing he stays good at is relatively tight editing of action and management of the FX, but even the tight editing is bad in that context because he's wholly incapable of slowing the action for a bit to let characters interact and develop connections or to give the action more tension and intensity when it gets rolling again.

Orci and Kurtzman are clearly lesser lights compared to Lindelof, who can do pretty well in some situations. There's a set of people in Hollywood where I don't really understand why they are frequently hired given that they've often played a role in fucking up studio hopes for the development of a particular property. Akiva Goldsman is another. Orci and Kurtzman I guess I understand in terms of the money they made for some really hacky shit stuff, and they seem reliable in terms of no drama, scripts in on time, etc., but there's a lot of failure in their ledger too.

[eldaec]

I enjoyed the movie but did feel there were some missed opportunities and was puzzled by how much Rose was sidelined. It just didn't feel like something JJ would do other than not figuring out a role for her in general. However, I could totally see Disney being like "she upset people, minimize her role!!!!!"

It doesn't sound like Disney to me. I think it is much more likely that the Falcon party started at Rey, Poe, Finn, Chewbacca, Rose, BB8, C3PO, R2D2 - then someone realised that is too many characters.

C3PO and chewbacca kept their places by "dying", and noone was going to write Rey accidentally killing Rose.