Star Wars 9 : The Rise of Skywalker

[Riggswolfe]

https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/23/21034833/star-wars-episode-9-rise-of-skywalker-box-office-first-weekend

TFA: $494M opening weekend
TLJ: $437M opening weekend
ROS: $373M opening weekend

I wonder how much of that is due to the mixed reaction the movie is getting and how much is fans legitimately going "Fuck this" after the Last Jedi. I wasn't one of the raving haters but TLJ was a factor in me skipping Solo (along with all the rumored issues of the movie). I imagine there are people who both disliked TLJ and have seen the bad reviews and are going "Meh, I'll watch it On Demand or something."

I'm not even going to go into the hysterical attempts to throw off everything in TLJ as ballast, and the equally hysterical attempts to reassure the incel fans that don't worry Star Wars is not woke. Giving Finn a black girlfriend, having the two of them lightly suggest a mutual connection to a slave trade, and then having Lando Calrissan lightly suggest that there's a black planet out there that they might be from is the worst of it, but not the only.

What? I mean...what? I get legitimate issues with the movie but this is just...really, really, really stretching. There was never a hint she was his girlfriend. They bonded over a shared past of being Stormtroopers. There wasn't a single exchange between them that suggested any romance at all. The "slave trade" is about the First Order snatching kids to make them into Stormtroopers. Something that was hinted at in the Force Awakens as well. It's why Finn didn't even have a name until Poe gave him one. As for Lando Calrissian suggesting there was a black planet I just can't. That's an utterly ridiculous reading of their exchange that went something like "Where are you from?" "Planet X, you?" "Dunno." "Well, maybe we'll find you a place to call home."

Nobody who claims they didn't like TLJ for its plot structure and for introducing new tech/etc could imaginably like this movie any better. If you hated that, you have to hate this ten times over, because it's ten times more incoherent and full of WTFuckery in storytelling and characterization terms.

Rise of Skywalker definitely has some eye rolling moments but trying to defend TLJs plot is just laugh out loud funny. Finn and Poe were wasted for an entire movie.  Rey Kylo and Luke had some good moments but Rian insisted on ruining them by not understanding he was working on the middle part of a trilogy and because he felt a need to subvert expectations but didn't really have a rhyme or reason to do it.

[Khaldun]

having Lando Calrissan lightly suggest that there's a black planet out there that they might be from

 

If this is a real thing that happened

Fucking lol

Jesus Christ star wars

People who've seen it can tell me if I'm exaggerating it, but:

Finn meets a black lady who is like: oh, I'm a slave who revolted too and I always had a feeling I wasn't meant to be a stormtrooper, and so too my pals. (who are not all black, mind you)
He and black lady are like: yeah, we have a feeling--it's kind of like the Force, but you know, not?
They fight together and do vague PG-13 safe affection eyes at each other.
Then she says at the end to Lando Oh I don't know where I'm really from, where are you from? (As if she says that to all the people she meets, which she doesn't: she lives on the planet next to the Ewoks with a bunch of other traitors to the First Order)
He says Oh I'm from this planet, let me see if I can help you with where you're from.

Three black characters and they're all tied together over the film, with a clear hint that Lando knows something/is something in relation to the other two. Fuck that shit. Over on "The Mandalorian", Carl Weathers is just another fucking human giving out orders to bounty hunters, as it should be in a galaxy far far away.

[Abagadro]

I thought Lando was just trying to fuck her because.....Lando.

[Riggswolfe]

I thought Lando was just trying to fuck her because.....Lando.

That's a better reading than Khaldun's, that's for sure. "Hey baby, come on my ship and I'll take you to find a new home. Oh, do you like silk bed sheets? Because I have silk bed sheets."

[HaemishM]

There really is no defense of just about anything you said about Rise of Skywalker. It was layers upon layers of fuckstupid flailing from one fan wank idea to the next. That they basically relegated Rose to window dressing about as important as the big nosed blonde lady or Wedge Antilles was even more stupid, and was probably done simply because the incel crowd fucking hated her.

It doesn't make TLJ's problems any better, mind you - it just compounds them. It proves that nobody involved with the movies since Rogue One has clue one how to make a good movie franchise. Thanks to us, though, they'll happily fuck off to their golden parachutes.

[Abagadro]

Why the fuck was Dominic Monaghan in this movie?

[HaemishM]

I kept wondering the same thing.

[Riggswolfe]

Why the fuck was Dominic Monaghan in this movie?

I assumed it was because he was in Lost and JJ was involved in that.

[01101010]

having Lando Calrissan lightly suggest that there's a black planet out there that they might be from

 

Read this and the first thing that popped into my head:

[Khaldun]

Look, Abrams was practically putting Kelly Marie Tran's head on the trophy wall for toxic fans--it's the only thing Rian Johnson has noted publically about the film. Abrams is certainly aware that the old joke about Lando Calrissian is that he was the only black guy in Star Wars because there was only one black planet--and I know I'm not imagining that they pointedly decide that the new black character has got to have a new black potential love interest whose connection to him is that she *also* was kidnapped and trained to serve an evil empire. Think about it, guys: I'm not imagining things here any more than it was imagining things to hear the Trade Federation goofballs sounding like Charlie Chan movies back in The Phantom Menace. Except that Abrams is a more self-aware (and vastly more cynical) film-maker than Lucas, so I don't think he could just accidentally do something like that.

There's the pure weirdness of trying to shoehorn new characters in the film who either do nothing (Monaghan) or who are essentially NPC quest givers who might as well have question marks over their heads. There's the dumbness of hinting that Richard E. Grant is somebody important when he seems to just be a guy who must have been an ensign back on the old imperial fleet. There's the complete dumbness of the Knights of Ren running around with Kylo Ren just so Abrams can say "SEE? SEE! I put them in the movie! They're real!"

There is probably the equivalent of the no-Jar Jar cut that would just be the material with Kylo Ren and Rey that wouldn't be half-bad though I think it's harder here because there aren't parallel plots so much. Though even there there's a lot of missing chances to do resonant, interesting deep cuts on Star Wars lore that I guarantee Dave Filoni would not have passed up. Rey and Ben/Ren are the best things in the movie and in the sequels generally.
There is so much hackery, so many bad intentions, in this film. There is so much that makes absolutely no sense in plot terms or in terms of established SW canon/lore. Christ, after all the effort to cleverly retcon WHY the Death Star had one weakness and nearly bankrupted the Empire (twice) to build,
And since they are doubtless going to make more movies after this, just consider stuff like Force teleporting in future stories. Not that distance matters at all any more in SW, considering that the entire film happens within 24 hours,
Let's not forget a healthy chunk of stupid-mcguffinism plot involving C-3PO
How about  

It is a garbage movie.

[Hoax]

Well at least Star Wars is delivering its usual dose of fucking retarded posts.

Like the idea that a franchise that makes this kind of money is pandering to some vocal sub minority that exists only for the very-very-online... Jesus regain some sanity and perspective. If the movie is bad or tone deaf or insultingly stupid its because JJ Abrams is a twat mongoloid, these movies are reeling from how shit each one is and the result as been to triple down on the focus group and executive second guessing, that unlike MCU this doesn't have someone with vision and leadership at the helm, etc. etc. Its not because they thought making incels happy would earn that extra half to 1.5 billion they are shooting for. The fuck are you even smoking.

The box office numbers are funny to me. TFA was such an uninspiring rehash that it hurt TLJ's numbers. TLJ was such a huge piece of shit that its going to hurt this one's numbers. None of these movies ever generated any real positive word of mouth. I've never heard anyone suggest this is great star wars or its as good as the originals or anything like that who was a normal human being. Its all this shit:

For a certain type of fan, I don't think it's about enjoying the actual thing, it's about winning some kind of personal culture war

[Khaldun]

I think you're profoundly wrong if you think they don't care about the online conversation over the last film. I guarantee you the suits have been involved directly in some of the decisions you see on the screen in this film and that some of them are very much signals intended to reassure one group of fans.

[eldaec]

I liked this more than I thought I would.

The dialog is... bad.
The big space fight was no return of the jedi.
People dying and then not being dead two seconds later was a real problem.
I absolutely hate the Rey reveal but didn't stop my enjoyment because it was irrelevant after her conflict had been shown far more effectively earlier in the film.

But it was fun. Definitely better than force awakens. At several points the sense of just rolling from one crisis to another made me think  what they've made here is Indiana Jones the Star Wars film. But this is what JJA does. The wife who is a fairly normal person also thought it was good.

They made a cavalry charge on a space ship work, so there's that.

Rey and Kylo/Ben were both great, and Richard E Grant single handedly saved the first order.

Why the fuck was Dominic Monaghan in this movie?

He wasn't really. He was a background character who said background character dialog because someone had to. I get that the way Rose was treated sucks balls but don't understand why people keep bringing up a glorified extra as a point of comparison.

[Khaldun]

Because the movie is overstuffed with pointless shit like introducing new pointless characters, or pausing to give Chewbacca the medal he never got in Episode IV, etc.

This essay lays out a lot of really good thinking about why this is a really bad movie on multiple levels: https://medium.com/@nettlefish/the-rise-of-skywalker-memorabilia-without-memory-a-misunderstanding-of-hope-8b4976f41df1

[HaemishM]

I think you're profoundly wrong if you think they don't care about the online conversation over the last film. I guarantee you the suits have been involved directly in some of the decisions you see on the screen in this film and that some of them are very much signals intended to reassure one group of fans.

This is true. It was stupid, and it made the movie even more confused and stupid as a result, but there are CLEAR markers in this movie that the incel Internet rage actually did affect story choices. Why they would choose to listen to it, I have no idea. Probably because TLJ didn't make as much as TFA and then Solo was a giant steaming dud at the box office despite being a serviceable but unremarkable and forgettable movie.

[calapine]

But Khaldun, just because incels hated TLJ for the wrong reasons doesn't mean it didn't really, really suck.

[Threash]

Because the movie is overstuffed with pointless shit like introducing new pointless characters, or pausing to give Chewbacca the medal he never got in Episode IV, etc.

He wasn't a character, he was an extra that you just happened to know.

[Khaldun]

Not gonna go round on TLJ again, but there were plenty of people who liked it a lot, and I'm one of them.

I cannot imagine liking this one a lot. I can imagine people liking a few of the set pieces or liking the characters or liking a spare idea or two floating around the script, but even the most generous viewer in the world would have to concede it's a goddamn narrative mess at best. I cannot muster anything even remotely like that charitable spirit.

[Riggswolfe]

I think you're profoundly wrong if you think they don't care about the online conversation over the last film. I guarantee you the suits have been involved directly in some of the decisions you see on the screen in this film and that some of them are very much signals intended to reassure one group of fans.

This is true. It was stupid, and it made the movie even more confused and stupid as a result, but there are CLEAR markers in this movie that the incel Internet rage actually did affect story choices. Why they would choose to listen to it, I have no idea. Probably because TLJ didn't make as much as TFA and then Solo was a giant steaming dud at the box office despite being a serviceable but unremarkable and forgettable movie.

*looks pointedly at the same-sex kiss at the end of the movie* Yeah...pretty sure this movie wasn't made to appease the Incel crowd. I think Rose being sidelined boils down to the writers didn't know what to do with her character. She's not a combat character. She's a tech. I guess they could've had her save the day by hot wiring the com tower to crash all the Star Destroyers or something but they didn't.  Trying to turn it into some kind of "incels hated her, quick, keep off screen as much as possible!" is about as pants on head stupid as Khaldun's ongoing obsession with the African Americans in this movie and trying to turn their interactions into uhhh...I'm not even sure really what his point is.

Worst case scenario Re: Rose. JJ was pouting about the way Rian discarded plot ideas left and right and wrote a movie that left little to follow up on for the third movie so sidelined her out of spite. That presumes, of course, that the other writers on the movie felt the same as him and that he is that petty which I don't think he is.

[Hoax]

I think you're profoundly wrong if you think they don't care about the online conversation over the last film. I guarantee you the suits have been involved directly in some of the decisions you see on the screen in this film and that some of them are very much signals intended to reassure one group of fans.

This is true. It was stupid, and it made the movie even more confused and stupid as a result, but there are CLEAR markers in this movie that the incel Internet rage actually did affect story choices. Why they would choose to listen to it, I have no idea. Probably because TLJ didn't make as much as TFA and then Solo was a giant steaming dud at the box office despite being a serviceable but unremarkable and forgettable movie.

fucking. retarded.

billions of $$$.

the internet is so much bigger than the tiny shithole part you happen to be aware of because you give a fuck enough to fight this stupidass online culture war.

i'm american. i speak english. i'm online every day. i don't use facebook. i do use twitter. i'm remotely-remotely aware of the entire incel/mra/gamergate nonsense. ITS NOT A REAL THING FOR REAL PEOPLE. it doesn't move the needle in the real world. jesus christ stop falling for the places that have you as an audience clickbait feeding you this dumbass shit as if its real and important. the planet is huge. Disney wants all of them to watch. if you think that the incels versus Rose is a real thing on a planetary scale i cannot comprehend what a absolute fucking retard you are.

if you don't think that, then huge writing/plotting decisions were not made in this billions $$$$$ enterprise just to appease those people.

fucking hell

this is as pathetic as the whole Star Wars would be good if it wasn't for the conspiracy to appease the left that came after movie #2. both sides of this tiny unimportant to anyone who isn't a frontline true believer warrior slapfight are dumb as fuck. both movies sucked because the whole thing is so weighted down and run by idiots and nobody has the balls or leadership to grab hold and even attempt a good movie and if Rian Johnsson was doing that then he's just such a fucklord incompetent that it didn't work out.

[Velorath]

I just did a youtube search on Star Wars The Last Jedi. 2nd result is "Why Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a Complete Cinematic Failure" with just close to 8.5 million views. I'm pretty sure Disney is aware of Internet backlash against their movies. I'm reasonably sure they have multiple people employed whose jobs are largely devoted to looking at online reactions, and compiling it in various ways. That's not to say that they made story decisions specifically designed to appeal these specific groups of people, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that online reaction likely played a part in going back to Abrams and moving away from TLJ.

As far as "ITS NOT A REAL THING FOR REAL PEOPLE" there are a good number of people I've personally never heard of who are out there making millions of dollars on youtube or other social media. That kid who reviews toys has over 20 million followers. I don't know a single one of them but apparently they're out there. It's because the Internet is so big that I'm not going to just outright dismiss a segment of it as not being significant enough to "move the needle in the real world". It would be comforting to think that I'm one of the "real people" and that everything else that's not firmly on my radar is just fringe bullshit that nobody pays attention to, but that's increasingly not the case.

[Khaldun]

Guys, if nothing else, Abrams very clearly set out to make a movie with a checklist of "things Rian Johnson did in the second movie that I need to cancel out". It reminded me of how John Byrne would get a new comic book assignment and set out programmatically to cancel out everything the last couple of writers had done with the characters--not just make his own stories, that would come later. First, bury everything the last guy did. Maybe he just did that out of personal distaste for Johnson's film. Who knows. It's also pretty fucking clear that Disney corporate had no real plan for these films overall--you don't get into a situation where you make one movie, then shift notably in the next movie, then let the third movie cancel out everything in the middle movie.

[Trippy]

Maybe he just did that out of personal distaste for Johnson's film. Who knows.

Or maybe Abrams did it cause Johnson did it to his film.

[eldaec]

My suspicion is that this didn't have a proper writer spending time on it at any point and so the project just sort of went wherever it went till it ran out of time and something had to be filmed.

The incel pandering is not something a single person in a large corporation could or would ever have said out loud, but it is plainly there.

Lack of a real writer trying to do a particular thing with the movie meant it bent easily to cultural influence and made it very risk averse. But nobody was trying to 'undo' the last film or any such nonsense.

Was still fun.

[Velorath]

It didn’t have a proper writer, period. In addition to Abrams writing this time, his credited screenplay co-writer was the guy who co-wrote the screenplays for Batman v Superman, and Justice League because some people get an infinite number of big chances.

[eldaec]

And that has been the exact problem with the two JJA star wars films since the day Micheal Arndt left episode 7.

But it was still fun for me in the same way GoT season 8 was fun.

This was JJA doing what JJA does and operating entirely within his limitations.

[HaemishM]

Disney wants all of them to watch. if you think that the incels versus Rose is a real thing on a planetary scale i cannot comprehend what a absolute fucking retard you are.

if you don't think that, then huge writing/plotting decisions were not made in this billions $$$$$ enterprise just to appease those people.

You ALMOST had the idea surrounded, but then you fucked it.

Watch the movie (well, not really because it's not worth it). The problem isn't that they were trying to please the incels - they problem was clearly they were trying to appease EVERYONE. ALL OF THEM AT THE SAME TIME. It's just one of the reasons the movie is an utter wreck. There's same sex kissing, there's the sidelining of Rose, there's the weird hints at romantic connections between like 5 different people none of which is carried off. The black planet thing that Khaldun is alluding to is something that could CERTAINLY be inferred from what's on screen (and I certainly inferred it) because none of it was given even the slightest bit of resolution or thought enough to complete a full fucking sentence, much less make a statement. Neckbeard Star Wars fans were pandered to with the return of Palpatine without any fucking consideration for how stupid the whole thing would be. Giant fuckstupid space battles with no rhyme or reason or flow because MORE SPACE BATTLES. Luke's X-Wing. Switchblade lightsaber. DOUBLE LIGHTSABERS! Teleporting physical objects through the Force. Hereditary Force powers. The moisture farm. And the list goes on and on.

It's all the "what do we call you? Oh, you're by yourself? YOUR NAME IS SOLO!" kind of shit from Solo only without even the barest skeleton of a sensible plot.

I'm not saying the whole movie was made to suck up to incels, I'm saying the whole movie was made to try to appease the entire loudmouth Internet wailing banshee crowd AND make it spectacle enough to get everyone else's money as well. It wasn't a movie for a specific audience, it was a movie for EVERY AUDIENCE EVER PLEASE GOD GIVE US ALL YOUR MONEY AND STOP CRITICIZING US.

[HaemishM]

Because Goddamnit Ryan is funny.

[Threash]

There was a clear attempt to undo a lot of what TLJ did, this is obviously going to look like attempting to please the incels because TLJ triggered the fuck out of them. That doesn't mean that was their intention, it was more of a side effect.

[Khaldun]

JJA left the next guy nowhere to go after TFA except to reprise ESB, because TFA is just a re-hash of ANH. The idea that one could have loyally continued the story as JJA left it in TFA is silly on the face of it, because loyally continuing would have meant doing dinner theater Star Wars re-enactments.

[Abagadro]

[Hoax]

I mean JJA didn't force TLJ to suck ass. Rey, Kylo, Finn and Poe could have been the skeleton of any number of SW movies.

TFA WAS WORSE. In no way did JJA serve up some vision that just needed to be dunked home. But that in no fucking way excuses the myriad of incredibly lame shit that was TLJ. Nobody forced that retarded Rose's sister opening, the slow space chase bullshit, the entire purple hair idiot, the fucking hyperspace kamikaze shit, Rose in general, fucking casinogate, Poe trolling the goddamn battleship captain with a prank call......  none of that has anything to do with JJA's wank. It was just some new fuckhead's bad movie making wank.

Fucking Star Wars. Why is everyone so hellbent on making up excuses for why they suck when they suck? Solo was a far superior first movie of a trilogy than TFA. It wasn't good but that it could have become something good is easy enough for me to imagine, I thought Dany would be the big weakness but she was ok, hell young Han wasn't the worst just the origin story was fucking lame and origin story prequels ARE FUCKING OMEGA LAME. TFA could have been redeemed if someone talented had taken the characters it invented and gone somewhere cool with them. It didn't happen. At all.

Rogue One. good.
Lots of Phantom Menace. Good enough.
Mandalorian. Fantastic.
Clone Wars. Watchable but its much more a kids cartoon than an adults cartoon imo.
Solo. Not great. A lame origin movie but I was not hating the thought of seeing the next one.

TFA and TLJ? Absolutely gutter trash. Irredeemable piles of shit. I cannot take anyone seriously who tries to claim those are legit fun decent movies. Right up there with Attack of the Clones I'm not even going to try to rank which of those 3 piles is the worst or best, that's foolish.

Star Wars is like Gundam. The basic idea is gangbusters, warrior-monk's with caster abilities and laser swords that can deflect laser-bullets back at people + space opera + steampunk'ish tech level mishmashes sure. Serve it up. Love it. But a lot of the time they make bad Star Wars just like they make bad Gundam. Its just how it is. Let it happen and stop making it such a miserable fuckfest defending this shit when's its clearly shit.

[Threash]

Nah.

[Samwise]

Because Goddamnit Ryan is funny.

MAKE THEM KISS.

 

[Abagadro]

Heh, "potentially both."