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

I meant Revenge of the Sith. Happens to everyone *frantically triple checks I typed ROTS*.

 

Posting positive praise for things seems to be more difficult than positing negative.

 

Well, maybe a few years ago, but there now seems to be a huge demand for YouTube videos telling people how great the prequels are. I suppose that's in part in reaction to Red Letter Media's Plinkett reviews and the legion of imitators who followed.

 

I like Revenge of the Sith, but much of the acting was pretty wooden. Lucas definitely lost whatever touch he had by that point.

 

I agree, although I don't mind it as much with Vader since that was very much the culmination of Luke's story. I hesitate to mention this since I'm sure someone will show up to tell me how everything has been planned out since 1934, but my biggest criticism was just how jumbled together it felt. Nothing original there, but that's how I felt. It was everything I disliked about TFA and much of what I disliked in TLJ jammed into one.

 

I see the regular suspects pulling in plenty of views.

 

The Plinkett review was disgusting at the time, and its embarrassing that it was imitated.

 

Love the Plinkett reviews. Why didn't you like them?

 

The humor doesn't appeal to me.

 

Upcoming competition for this weekend..

I don't think any of those movies are going to have much effect on fans who waited to avoid the crowds or are going for their second or third viewing. We'll see. I'm very curious what that second weekend dip will be.

 

What touch? I never felt he could work with actors that well at all. He wants to paint a pretty picture, and visually speaking he can tell a story. But many of the cast from the PT have complained that all he did was tell them to say their lines. He'd make everything look pretty later on. Even in ANH you can tell that the acting is not nearly as good as in Empire. While we know from many of the actors he worked with that they can really perform!

 

The "nostalgia" theory purposely ignores objective facts of what impact the OT had on audiences of all ages in its time (far beyond its revolutionary production, but successfully bringing back a form of storytelling & characters long thought to be old fashioned at the time, etc.), and why its legacy continued the decades to follow. It further proves the belief that in many film series that either run too long, or are restarted, the new editions are either out of the hands of those who put the series on the map as a breakthrough, and the motives (key) have very little in common with those that inspired the original work. Even in examples where some original BTS individuals are involved, (e.g., The Godfather Part III, Terminator: Dark Fate), it was inevitable that grinding out yet more versions of a series with a story that was long served and/or concluded ages before usually led to critical and/or in some cases, financial failure. Nostalgia is no explanation to drape over the innumerable movie goers who found the new versions partially or completely failed productions.

Then by that realization, it strongly argues that there is not much of a point in digging up old series to produce what (one can assume) its makers knew would fall short of the standards of the originals, or worse, other than being yet another attempt to milk one of their IPs until its bone dry, leaving an unwanted legacy. The Star Wars sequels fall into this category like few other film series extensions.

"Anti-SJW people" is indeed a habitually abused Boogeyman label, thanks to certain people who think they're in a mob environment where such a cheap mischaracterization moves beyond what might be legitimate actors in that debate, to being hurled at just about anyone who "dares" to analyze a work for themselves. Its a weak attempt at abusing/silencing what they do not want to read/hear, yet they never exercise the option to simply ignore posts.

 

Very true. I enjoyed Christensen in Jumper, I heard he did one or two very good performances after Star Wars and even in both AotC and RotS he showed that he can act. It's just, Lucas isn't a dialogue writer and can't direct people well. So, when you get hammy dialogue without proper direction, no one knows what to do.

 

It ignores nothing. The movies are what they are. They were cultural events of the time. I can't deny that for a moment. But how old were you when you first saw Star Wars? How many times did you watch them as a kid? Did you play with the toys? Did you read the books? Did you think about Star Wars all the time? From the ages of 4-8, that was extremely true for me. I built these movies so much in my mind that despite them being cultural events, when a 19 year old Campe98 saw The Phantom Menace for the first time, I had unbelievably high expectations. They were not met. Same for the other two prequels. Sometime in between 2005 and 2015, I reevaluated all six of the films and realized what these movies are. They are timeless, wonderful, crowd-pleasing, but flawed stories. They are still tales I want to share with my son. But the moment you think too hard about them and look at them critically, they all really fall apart. Is the Rebellion a group of freedom fighters or terrorists? How does Luke Skywalker, who in the course of the first movie, loses the people who raised him, his mentor and his best friend actually manage to function? What did it accomplish when Obi-Wan and Yoda lied to Luke? How did Obi-Wan not know about "the other?" Why did the Empire build another expensive Death Star when the first one failed so spectacularly? What exactly was Luke's plan going into Jabba's because it didn't really make a lot of sense? But asking these critical questions is simply part of fandom. We're on a Star Trek board. Until recently, Star Trek fans have been making continuity errors and plot holes work since 1966. Its just part of the fun. Maybe all of this doesn't hold true for you, but I'm sure it holds true for some in this forum.

I think the motives are still the same. Filmmaking is still a business. George and Disney both wanted to make money. Perhaps the endgame is different in that while Disney wants to raise its stock prices, George wanted to improve film. But the financial motive is still there. And with Star Wars, people keep coming back for more. In its first week, The Rise of Skywalker is continuing to bring in crowds at the box office. Yesterday, it pulled in $30.7 million domestically, a paltry 4% drop from Christmas Day, and by the end of the weekend is expected to start outpacing The Last Jedi, a movie according to some ruined Star Wars for them. It has already made over a half a billion dollars globally at the box office. But, it hasn't been reviewed well, despite relatively positive audience reaction. It does have a pretty low (for Star Wars) B+ CinemaScore. Me? I enjoyed the movie even if it has flaws. Still, the idea that nostalgia and wanting to know how the story that people started watching decades ago ends doesn't play a part in this movie's success is naive at best.

 

I had an identical reaction the three times I've seen it. On my DVD, I didn't make it to the theater for that one, but that's beside the point.

Solo was a fine movie.

 

Very well put, at least from my point of view. It amazes me how nitpicky fans have become when similar things can be found in the OT. Especially regarding the making money. I am truly surprised by the outcry towards Disney making money with theme parks and merchandising when Lucas did the exact same thing. It's a discontinuity that I struggle to wrap my mind around.

 

He didn't have a plan. Just trust in his friends.. which was a theme of the film. His ONLY plan was to find a way to get all his friends into the palace. He didn't know what kind of (or how mamy) guards Jabba had, what they layout was, what he'd be facing. Maybe he did not know what Jabba even looked like. He knew he and his friends would be bale to improvise, but they had to get inside first.

 

Seems like he had a plan by that line. Regardless, its a minor point to my post.

 

no.. but he did have an ace in the hole... something about R2-D2