Spoilers Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - Grading & Discussion

You think that Anakin was the only one he took to the Opera?

 

Yeah, I get that same feeling. Just give it time. They'll figure it out.

 

Palpatine literally exploded in ROTJ, then the Death Star exploded, and what remained would have violently crash-landed.

 

There's no way Palpatine's body was recoverable after what happened in the end of ROTJ. There shouldn't have been anything there to patch up.

TROS Palpatine must have been a clone, with his "katra" implanted into the new body via force magic or something.

But that's not what bothered me about Palpatine in this movie. It was his lines, which were over the top and almost comical at times, and the fact that he appeared in the story without any kind of previous setup. All that stuff happened off screen and they just shoved his name into the opening crawl, and that was it.

This was seriously some of the worst, most contrived piece of storytelling ever seen in Star Wars. After having slept on it I honestly like it even less than last night.

 

They sort of imply he might be a clone then say “eh who knows how he’s alive, the Sith can do some weird shit” and leave it right there. That’s all the explanation it needed. I mean, it wasn’t until the prequels that we even found out his name. Star Wars has historically never relied on detailed exposition. That’s the kind of crap the EU did.

 

i wouldn’t go as far as you with the “worst piece of storytelling” criticism, but I definitely agree that simply reintroducing him via opening scrawl was lazy. What happened to “show, don’t tell”? After 2 films of setting up the First Order and to leave them on the brink of domination, with our heroes all but wiped out at the end of TLJ, to just bring back the last 2 trilogies’ big bad like that was just... I don’t even know what I’d call it.

 

The name Palpatine first appeared in the novelization of ROTJ back in the eighties, if I'm not mistaken. Lucas then adopted it for TPM. I don't think the name Sheev was ever mentioned on screen, though.

And yet, there was so much of [undetailed] exposition in TROS. The movie broke the "show, don't tell" rule more than the other two sequel movies combined.

 

If it didn’t happen in one of the films, it didn’t happen.

 

Is it true that the Star Destroyers are all equipped with Death Star lasers? lol. What an embarrassing franchise.

 

Well, it's done, and what an incredibly bizarre experience the trilogy has been. IMO we went from derivative fun with TFA to original but bad with TLJ and ended up with a strange and terrible mix of the two with this final outing.

I feel like whether you love or hate these movies it’s hard not to look at whole trilogy as a bit of a mess. I mean, I don’t like The Hobbit movies either, but they were at least consistent in their badness. Feel like the sequel trilogy has been all over the place.

It almost seemed like each movie was made as an apology for the previous one.

 

It happened in Lucas' head, which is close enough. As opposed to all this First Order bullshit that had nothing to do with how he imagined the post-ROTJ era.

That's just typical JJ.

Giving up.

 

Yes. And there's like a million of them.

 

Jaw-dropping piece of shit. Staggeringly scattershot, poorly written and boring. It was a slog to get through.

Grade: D

Either the worst SW movie ever or at best tied for worst.

 

I assumed as much given it was Ian's face without makeup we were seeing (until he regenerated). Actually, that's an interesting one right there. Why - after sapping the life energy from the Rey/Ben dyad - would his face deform back to what it looked like after his confrontation with Windu?

Actually, let's just table that one for now...

 

So those little furry dudes on Endor aren't named Ewoks? And Maul survived TPM's bifurcation without explanation?

 

... but enough about Rogue One

 

I had the suspicion that might be the case. There was some clapping at the end of the film when I watched it, and I don't remember there being any when I watched The Last Jedi. Granted, there was also some laughter when

Spoiler

Ben Solo died too.

This film is far from perfect, but I can't fault J.J. Abrams for trying to please as many fans as he could,

Spoiler

or for wanting to return to his ideas. Rian Johnson tossed his ideas out, and so he returned the favor, to a large extent, IMO, with The Rise of Skywalker.

It's just the film had so much to cover. It might have worked better as a three-hour film, or really as a two-part film. I sort of wish they had dropped a "Part I" right under the title as a surprise to the audience, and then put Part II out in about 6 months. The stuffed, rushed pace reminded me of Revenge of the Sith, though I think Revenge of the Sith came together better than The Rise of Skywalker did and was an overall stronger concluding chapter.

As it stands, Rise of Skywalker is the only sequel film I actually look forward to watching again.

 

To me, I wish that hadn't been a fake out, or cheat. I thought when Rey believed she had killed him that it was a powerfully emotional moment and I wish we had gotten to see that guilt, regret, shame, and anger fester inside her. That would've turned her away from seeking Leia's counsel or she might feel she was a danger to her friends. It could've been played where she isolated herself, which could've played into the film better than what they did to get her to run off. I also feel the Threepio memory wipe was also another cheat. The film didn't have enough consequences. The main characters who died were no surprise in the film and the other deaths were not characters that had played a big part in the saga (though I haven't read much of any of the comics or novels they might have been in). I see some of these deaths, fake outs, and resurrections as Abrams once again wanting to please everyone, and having his cake and eating it too.

 

Maul's resurrection was covered in The Clone Wars cartoon and one of the comics (though I think that was one of the Dark Horse comic stories that was decanonized once Disney took over).

 

I enjoyed Rey's personal journey, and a lot of the visuals. I felt like too much stuff was packed into one story, like ROTS, and some things were kind of over the top. I like that it had some aspects reminiscent of Dark Empire. Episode VIII should have had some hint of Palpatine's presence. With him just showing up out of the blue and turning out to be behind everything the whole time, this kind of ends up being the "Spectre" of the Star Wars franchise.

Nonetheless, I found it quite entertaining.

Kor