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

Grade the movie...


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Very true! :) Even I will admit too many fiddly details can cause more problems; too much minutiae can lead to bigger continuity violations for the same reason. But the other side of the argument also has the same constraint: Having, for example, technology in prequels that weren't in shows that the prequel is shoehorned into... that's a flip side of the argument because there's zero common sense applied to that as well. It's also a bear to sit and wade through x episodes to see if the technology is given a proper write-out or if it's dropped. It's so much easier to not think into detail into sequels - like "Oh, TNG doesn't have 'transwarp'? Oh, they probably took some of the schematics from the Excelsior and introduced them into the next class starship." and, voila, issue resolved. Prequels are an entirely different beast, and in some cases it's just a sheer lack of common sense to put in anything shiny and new without a cogent long-term plan. Sorta like how the Sequel Trilogy turned out, as if it had anything built up from the start (which it really didn't, but it's easier to say "Oh the new order got built up and here it is, so here's Han and nostalgia" as opposed to showing its buildup (even I-III showed a buildup to what IV started, amazing considering even IV was a retcon by 1980!)

I guess the difference is, before "story groups" and corporations exploiting canon as a way to sell their wares, fans would simply make things line up in their heads. Leading to spirited discussion and creativity among fandom.

Now? We constantly get people who are like zombies, whose only contributions to discussions are "the story group says!!!" or some variation of it.
 
Yeah I'm occasionally (read: frequently) kind of a dick about it but I really thought The Last Jedi was that good. That was when I realised that what I got out of Star Wars and what a lot of fans got out of Star Wars were two entirely different things.

Having, in the last month, watched all nine of the saga films, I have to agree. It emboldened my feelings on TLJ after starting to question them in discussions here over the past few months. I don't fault anyone for their opinions on Star Wars. I know mine certainly aren't shared by all. But as always, if we all agreed on everything all the time, this would be a really boring place.
 
Now? We constantly get people who are like zombies, whose only contributions to discussions are "the story group says!!!" or some variation of it.

Agreed. I have the same problem these days with a lot of Star Trek fans who used to be all about attempting to rectify continuity errors. Now, its just "NOT CANNON!!!!!1one!!!1!!!!"
 
I saw it.
I gave it a B.
I enjoyed it.
I have several issues with the story.
Was it horrible, no.
Was it the best of the franchise, no.
It could have been better but it could have been much much worse.
 
As far as the an X-Wing piece being part of Luke's hut, I never noticed it to begin with. :guffaw:

I remember reading something about it when TLJ came out, but its a detail that would have gone right past me had I not. Still, who cares if it was a retcon or if Ghost Luke fixed it? Red Five flew again. Isn't that all that matters? As Star Wars fans, we argue about some pretty silly things... but come on.
 
I don't think I've kept it a secret that I was initially less pleased with The Force Awakens than I wanted to be given my level of investment in Star Wars, and so I came out of The Last Jedi very satisfied that Rian Johnson had done things that JJ and Lawrence Kasdan had not and leaned into elements of the franchise that speak to why I connect with it while also shining a light on nuance that was indeed present in TFA but not as overtly as it could have been, and I came out of The Rise of Skywalker with the same sense of satisfaction and a conviction that JJ and Chris Terrio had not only made TRoS a great film in its own right, but created a phenomenal ending to the Episodic films as a whole and given the Sequel Trilogy the arc-line that some people had complained about the previous two films lacking.

That sense of satisfaction with TRoS is why I've ranked it above The Last Jedi as my favorite film and why I cannot wait to own all 9 movies and experience them in story order again and again.
 
I don't think I've kept it a secret that I was initially less pleased with The Force Awakens than I wanted to be given my level of investment in Star Wars, and so I came out of The Last Jedi very satisfied that Rian Johnson had done things that JJ and Lawrence Kasdan had not and leaned into elements of the franchise that speak to why I connect with it while also shining a light on nuance that was indeed present in TFA but not as overtly as it could have been, and I came out of The Rise of Skywalker with the same sense of satisfaction and a conviction that JJ and Chris Terrio had not only made TRoS a great film in its own right, but created a phenomenal ending to the Episodic films as a whole and given the Sequel Trilogy the arc-line that some people had complained about the previous two films lacking.

That sense of satisfaction with TRoS is why I've ranked it above The Last Jedi as my favorite film and why I cannot wait to own all 9 movies and experience them in story order again and again.

I wish I could share your love of TRoS, but while enjoyable, I find it very middle of the road. I hope time and my opinion will be kinder on it, but while there are some excellent moments, what I find as an over-the-top and ineffective villain, a lack of real stakes for the characters (Chewie's "death" and Threepio's "sacrifice" being completely negated, one moments after the event occurs) and a rushed pace really don't do the film any justice for me personally.

(You'll note all the *I* words as I state that this is MY opinion.)
 
...a lack of real stakes for the characters (Chewie's "death" and Threepio's "sacrifice" being completely negated, one moments after the event occurs) and a rushed pace really don't do the film any justice for me personally.

I imagine these are characters they'll want around for the Sequel Sequel Trilogy down the road. Possible Abrams wanted to kill them permanently, and Disney said no.
 
^ The Episodic films are finished.

People who believe otherwise are just being cynical, IMO, and buying into the notion that the only value Star Wars has is as a money-making machine.
 
I imagine these are characters they'll want around for the Sequel Sequel Trilogy down the road. Possible Abrams wanted to kill them permanently, and Disney said no.

Oh, I get it. But as Tony Daniels isn’t getting any younger, perhaps the voice changes when the memory wipe comes through and don’t return the memory. Make the sacrifice actually mean something that Threepio saves the day. But at a cost.

As for Chewie, I don’t have a problem with the idea of him getting captured. I didn’t want him to die and I’m glad he didn’t. In fact, two of the best moments in the movie are his reaction to Leia’s passing and getting the medal at the end. My issue is how it was handled. Either don’t show him three seconds after “killing him” or simply don’t do the fakeout and have him need to be rescued. As Rey’s use of force lightning was needed for the Palpatine connection, have the first realization that he’s alive be when she feels him on Ren’s Destroyer.

It’s just little things that would make everything so much better.
 
But lots of people say, among other things, that she isn't one.

Johnson made no mess. He was trying to fix the mess, (many-)uninteresting mystery box cliches, and lame paint-by-numbers flick Abrams put in. Indeed, there was no way it could be fixed. But never mind previous articles, here's one that's another jaw-dropper:

I think the vast majority of fandom disagrees, and I don't believe it's a small but vocal group. Star Wars took hits at the box office in backlash, and this movie is feeling those effects. For what it's worth, I agree that TFA wasn't that great either. Ultimately, it was a soft remake of Episode IV, and while they made a great movie inot a good movie, and it was an improvement over Jar Jar, all TFA did was undo the original trilogy and set up for this latest movie, which put us right back to where we were after ROTJ.

I can't defend TFA. But TLJ was a turd. All three movies were different forms of turd.

No, it's Force on Steroids and Crack since so many new powers (not all mentioned in the de-canonized books and comics) that started to stretch credibility, particularly in TLJ. If they're even more rampantly used in TRoS...

The Woke Force was the worst of them all. I can be ok with introducing new Force powers, though this movie really stretched it. What is a problem is that why didn't the better Jedi have them?

And people still say this movie is better than TLJ? Wow.

Just understand that when I say this movie was better than TLJ, I don't mean to imply that this movie was good. I only think that this movie at least attempted to fix some of the terrible problems, but Woke Star Wars sucks.

Not really. Especially as TLJ was the movie that set the stage for anyone becoming Force sensitive or a Force user...

I would argue that A New Hope did that when they introduced it. It was only TPM that veered from it a bit. But Finn was showing a little more.


It's not "woke" in its current euphemistic state, it's simply lame scripting. Other franchises and movies have had strong female characters without these plot problems. Doesn't matter what the gender is if the scripting for said character is uneven or bad. And now I'm going to go watch Alien and Aliens. Ripley, believe it or not, was a strong character - decades before the claim of "no strong female characters" existed fad took off. But it makes sense; millennials and gen-Z just won't watch older shows because they're not in stereo or color or 3D or have lush special effects or whatever.

Maybe my definition of woke is different than yours. Strong females have existed long before the term woke existed. Here we see not just a strong female lead, but that she's stronger than every character that ever existed, and notably, all the white males. When writers weaken white males to make their woman strong, and behind the scenes wear shirts like "the Force is female," that's when it gets woke. The perfect example of a strong female lead done right is Wonder Woman. At least in the first movie. You didn't see Steve Trevor as a weak man. Was she more powerful? Of course, but Steve was not some wimp. In Justice League, they had Superman getting the better of her at one point. Did that make her look weak? Not one bit. It showed the writers were more secure in her strength. Ripley is another good example.

You can tell when a character is a strong female character or a character that exists so the writers can feel woke. Rey is clearly the latter. Wonder Woman/Ripley/Xena are the former.

The sequel trilogy should NOT have been a woke remake of the original trilogy.
 
We heard that in 1983.
We heard that in 2005.
You’re right that we’re being cynical, but it’s not like we don’t have precedent.

You're trying to equate different scenarios to create a precedent to justify cynicism that isn't warranted.

This movie was specifically designed to close the "Trilogy of Trilogies" that George Lucas had designs on doing off-and-on for years and years, and it shows.

Believing that Lucasfilm is going to negate that is, at this point, being cynical for the sake of being cynical.

Why exactly do you think Disney bought the franchise? It wasn't a charitable contribution...

The Star Wars franchise is more than just the Episodic (Skywalker Saga) films, and bringing them to a definitive conclusion - which this movie did - in no way harms the franchise's future as a generator of revenue.
 
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