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

Remember, too, that a lot of Han's dialog was stuff he said to Kylo just before his death, plus his famous one-liner, which I guess was an in-universe funny story in the Solo/Organa household.

"Don't take advice from your father on women."

"I'm great with women! Was! Was great with women!"

"Really? Han, tell your son what you said, seconds before you were going to shipped off to be murdered by Jabba the Hutt, the first time I told you I loved you."

"Well, there was a lot going on..."

"Han..."

"...'I know.' You said the same thing to me the first time I said I loved you!"

"When I did it, it was cute."

 

TROS just dropped below The Phantom Menace at Rotten Tomatoes.

 

They're not entirely wrong, sad to say.

 

Maybe, but I long ago stopped paying attention to the opinions of hardcore fans.

 

So you've, what, signed up to a Trekkie message board to NOT read other fans' opinions?

And we were talking RT here, not fans.

 

That one is a little fishy. It's been dead stuck at 86% since the first votes came in, which is unheard of. IMDB score oscillated quite a bit until it settled at 6.9. Doesn't mean that it's rigged, but I've never seen anything like it.

What they do care is cinemascore. The actual consumer polling.

 

Yes, that's one of the reasons consumer satisfaction is being surveyed.

 

Having just watched both that is slightly annoying. TPM is visual spectacle, but short on characterization. TROS get me interested in each character moment.

I may be in the minority but I genuinely enjoyed all the characters in TROS, while TPM left me cold of what was going to happen.

 

Well my girlfriend finally recovered enough from her back surgery to allow us to go see this movie, so my thoughts are probably things that has been discussed ad nauseam by now, but I will share them anyway.

The editing of this movie was awkward. Each scene was very short, and didn't flow correctly into the next scene. It felt either like a cheap movie, or a movie that got chopped up.

Also, the visuals looked very much like 35mm (lots of grain) - checked, and indeed movie was shot on film. That would be great for the retro aspect, except the movie was cut in such a modern way (quick cuts, moving cameras, etc..) that all the visual nostalgia was destroyed for me.

I HATED what they did with Carrie Fisher's role. They were obviously reusing dialogue, and it came off as if she was saying random shit. It was AWFUL and I am absolutely shocked that people liked it. This was also a matter of me knowing too much - it might not have bothered me as much if I didn't know how they got that "performance".

The CG of young Luke and Leia looked very... CG.

The visuals of the whole movie just felt uninspiring. I feel like we saw better in the prequels.

The story - I don't usually complain about storytelling decisions by movie writers because it's their story not mine. Having said that I would offer some tweaks -

Chewbacca staying dead would have offered a far more interesting emotional arc for Ray. Also, the way it was filmed makes it seems like a script rewrite resurrected him.

C3Po's memory wipe was a scene for the trailers. It should have been one of the most emotional moments of the movie, but then Poe mentioned the R2 backups and... moment ruined. JJ said he was taking some risks with the movie, so take a risk and actually kill someone popular instead of just teasing it.

The final battle sucked. All the fights sucked.

Finn wanted to tell Rey that he loved her, but decided not to and then never did at all because she loved Kylo? Well that would have worked if one of them died, but they both made it and now they have a whole life ahead of them. Will he keep it to himself forever?

Just like in TLJ, Finn decided on a foolish suicide mission. In TLJ Rose stopped him. In ROS she didn't bother... I took it as JJ not agreeing with Johnson about the futility of the "noble sacrifice".

Overall, I think the movie could have been improved with a longer cut that would fix the insane pacing. It probably would have been more coherent had Carrie Fisher's life not been tragically cut short, and I realize that this was fully out of their control. Would it have been tasteless to edit TLJ to have her die when spaced? I am on the fence. We would have lost the scene with Chewbacca dropping to his knees which was the best emotional cue in ROS too. And if you're going with retro designs, I would have preferred a more retro style of filming. No fast cuts and mobile cameras.

If just the technical stuff was improved, the movie would be a 7/10 for me, but as it stands it's a 6. As for the story itself, I think it would be harder to fix with small tweaks than TPM was, but if that's the story the writers wanted to tell us, they have every right.

 

I think that was the longest post I've ever written on this board...

 

I’ll rephrase that.

What I get out of Star Wars and what the fans get out of Star Wars seem to be two entirely different things. Like I said further back in the thread, the reasons I like TLJ are the same reasons a lot of fans absolutely can’t stand it.

 

So I finally saw this. It was kinda bad. In a frustrating way. There were so many good and awesome things, but the overall product just didn't work. The actors are amazing and the characters are engaging. And there were many great scenes and some plot threads that really worked, and worked better than I could have imagined. For example redemption of Kylo Ren was something I really didn't want to see and didn't believe could be done believably, yet they managed to pull it off! But sadly the overall plot was an incoherent mess. The silly fetch quests in the first half the film were utter waste of precious run time. Find a macguffin that tells you location of second macguffin which tells you the location of the place you actually need to get. Oh and then lets add one more pitstop because you need to decipher the info from the first macguffin! (And why on earth would that knife even exist?) That half of the film could have been condensed greatly, leaving time for more important things. Many things seemed so rushed. For example introducing other stormtroper defectors was great, and could have been important for Finn's story; but they really didn't have time to do much with it.

And then we're getting to the really terrible stuff. Palpatine is alive... somehow! And he has a secret fleet of star destroyers... which all all as powerful as a death star! Oh, and he is Rey's granddad! Also, he was Snoke too, or something. Utterly embarrassing. This is like the worst sort of expanded universe trash. Oh, and that redemption of Ren I said I liked; it worked, except they managed to sour that powerful story in the end with that kiss. Eww. It really didn't need to be that sort of a relationship and it really cheapened the arc. And speaking of ruining good things, the bit I hated the most was destroying the powerful message of the Last Jedi. Rey really, really shouldn't have been related to anyone important. It was amazing to see that no, you actually don't need to have magical übermensch blood to be a powerful force using protagonist! So this film ruined the best thing in the trilogy, and the revelation fell completely flat; it really didn't have any dramatic weight, and was completely unnecessary for the plot.

All that being said. If they really wanted the story to be about the secret princess Rey Palpatine and shadowy undead Emperor manipulating things, I guess that could have worked as a story... if it was planned from the get, go and the whole trilogy was built around that. But it wasn't so the whole thing was an idiotic asspull. And this really is my biggest amazement. How the fuck any of that was not planned from the get go? Disney spends billions to get the film rights, manages to convince the cast of the original films to return to their iconic roles, and spends who knows how much money making and marketing these films. But the story? Bah, who needs planning or outlines? We can just make it up as we go along! What could go wrong?

Also, I'm so done with Abrams. The only firm with a even remotely coherent plot he has ever managed to make was basically a remake of another film. So yeah, not spending any money to see his films ever again.

And looking back at this trilogy, I just feel sad about all the wasted potential. With a bit more foreplanning it could have been the best thing ever. All the elements were there, except the story... It seems that these days many producers seem to have forgotten that a good story is the key. I had very similar feelings about Star Trek Discovery.

Oh well.

 

A billion is big to me, but it is taking long to make $ and just had a big dropoff. "Disappointment" is being used freely by industry analysts.

Word of mouth was not good. There was no must-see killer moment ("I am your father" moment) imho. I read a great analysis: Last movie's "you're-a-nobody": now that was a twist. Also Luke being a curmudgeon.

"Rey's a Palpatine"? Ho hum. She doesn't know him, never fought him. Who cares? Just bringing back some creepy-looking bad guy. Very disappointing. And the GREAT Anakin arc, where Darth sacrifices himself to chuck the emperor down a pit in ROTJ? Invalidated. For nothing. Dude actually lived. This movie kinda crapped all over the drama and import of the whole OT, when you think of it, didn't it?

Oh, and "anybody can be a hero"? Any ragamuffin scavenger? A broom boy? Even, dare I say . . . I? Nope. Gotta be from certain families. Maybe JJ's making a commentary on only the elites having any power these days . . .

Nah . . .

 

I wonder if "crap all over the Anakin" thing made the rounds when the books came out?

Because that's what audiences have told them that's what they want. They don't want story-they want spectacle.

Personally, I loved the story of the ST but I'll freely admit it could have been better. But, the same could be said of the OT and the PT-defintely the PT.

 

The old EU clone idea would have explained everything and made the movie better. It may have been silly 20 years ago but now in the Disney Era it would have solved the screenwriters' problems of how to bring back Sidious/Palpatine and have it at least make sense.

 

I can’t speak for Star Wars fandom, but I thought resurrecting the Emperor was a stupid idea in the 90s as well as today.

 

Well, I guess that's part of why I have zero objection to it. I figured he was a clone and his body was deteriorating still from the cloning process. Rey or Ben afforded a more stable host.

Here's the difference-thinking it is a "stupid idea" is different than "ruined Anakin's arc" attitude that is being displayed regarding the films. Not that I ever expect fandom to be consistent in their outcries but it amuses me to know end that the same fandom that demands the Legends EU be restored complains when stuff from that EU is used...