Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker - anyone care?

So this final part of the new trilogy came out a few days ago and I was wondering if anyone here really cares all that much? I'd say I'm a "big" Star Wars fan in that I enjoy the world and character and most of the movies but unlike some of our more lore-entrenched moderators I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of the ships and timelines etc. Back in my high school days I read a few of the better books like the Thrawn Trilogy but nothing serious.

That said - just to get it out of the way - I'm of the mind that the Last Jedi was not very good while I thought Force Awakens while safe did setup some interesting pathways to further explore (which the Last Jedi subsequently abandons completely). Now I'm not of those folks that sent Rian Johnson hate mail and death threats. I simply didn't think it was a well written Star Wars film. A lot of it seemed goofy and even by SW standards unrealistic.

So going into Rise of Skywalker lets say my expectations were low. Then after reading a few reviews that basically said it was the worst thing in the world those expectations fell even lower. So maybe going in with the mindset that this movie will be awful helped me actually enjoy it to a certain degree.

It's.. fine.

Like as far as action movies go that have lightsabers and some of my favorite space ships and sounds, it does a good job at delivering that. The saber duels in this one are pretty great. There are plenty of cool shots of iconic Star Wars spacecraft doing cool space maneuvers. Technically JJ Abrams is a very competent director that is able to put together an exciting story with cool setpieces that moves forward at a clip.

As far as the story goes? Well it's all over the place. Much like Johnson ignored JJ's stuff to make his own movie it seems like JJ is just picking up where he left off at the Force Awakens finale. There are even a few bits of story that get twisted back from what Johnson set them to be. It is very much an "everything and the kitchen sink" type of film. Almost every possible call back and bit of fan service is called into play here. The moment you even stop to think slightly about the actual premise of how this story works it all starts to fall through your fingers.

I kind of feel bad for John Boyega. I recently rewatched some early interviews with him before TFA even premiered and they had him hold lightsabers and all this stuff. The audience and I think him to a smaller degree, thought he was gonna be THE GUY. Turns out Finn is a pretty much underdeveloped character that never really comes into his own except for being one half of the Poe/Finn amalgamation of Han Solo. Rey continues to grow in power and skill exponentially to the point where you wonder if there is anything she can't do. She is a great mechanic, a great pilot, a master sword fighter, incredibly athletic and a prodigy with the force. It's hard to follow her struggles when she is more powerful than the most powerful jedi we've seen in Star Wars period and the movie is only halfway done. Poor Kelly Marie Tran gets absolutely relegated into the background. I feel bad for her as well as she is included in all these late night group interviews and she is barely in the movie. The inclusion of Leia is incredibly distracting and obvious in every scene she is in. Each time the camera pans from one over the should perspective to another. Each time she says some very broad thing to which people in turn reply very broadly. They should have just cut it and let her pass in the second film.

Worst of all.

The most heinous crime.

I think @zombiepie will be distraught to learn that the Star Destroyers in this film, outfitted with modern technology, feature the X shaped exterior tractor beams unique to the ISD-I model.

I would say I am (or was) a Star Wars fan. Only watched the movies and played some games, but I appreciated them as well as I appreciate the lore and the universe around it.

So, as for The Rise of Skywalker, I couldn't care less about it. I will still watch it when it comes out on some streaming service, mostly out of curiosity. I think this is the first time I didn't had any problems reading spoilers and seeing leaked pictures of a movie I will watch, because of this morbid curiosity to see how much of a trainwreck this could be.

I thought The Force Awakens was average, a clear copy of A New Hope but with some new interesting elements that had potential and made me curious to see where the story would go in the next movies. But then The Last Jedi came out and I lost all my hope for this new trilogy. I guess the only good things I could say about TLJ is the cinematography looked good and some actors tried their best to work with what they were given. But that's it. The fiasco of TLJ combined with the extremely weak Solo and the uninteresting Rogue One made me care less and less about Star Wars. The Mandalorian has been the only thing that got me back in.

I completely agree with pretty much all of what you've said, specially about Finn. The marketing definitely made it feel like he would be the big hero of the story and, even though by end of the first movie it was obvious the main hero was Rey, I felt like Finn still had a ton of potential and the concept of a storm trooper turning sides was super interesting on it's own and was also perfect for the story of a main character. It's a shame how they wasted such a good idea, not to mention how John Boyega is an great actor who they could've used for much more (same with Oscar Isaac, another great actor completely underutilized).

Personally I think they should've used Finn as the main character, a storm trooper turned good guy, and they could've even have made him a Jedi or force-sensible person by saying it was the force that made him realize he was doing bad things or something like that. Rey should've been an Han-type, a strong character with as much presence as the main hero, skilled in driving and mechanics, dragged to do shady business as a means to survive in the world she was abandoned on. Poe should've been the Leia, a person with leadership and military skills, part of the rebellion, who doesn't take no for an answer. I know, this idea would also be somewhat copied from the original movies, but I feel like at least it would work better than whatever we got.

(also, I don't want to get super political, but I wonder if the reason they didn't make Boyega as the lead of the trilogy was because Disney wanted to appeal to the Chinese market but usually the Chinese audience don't react well to movies with african-americans as the hero, so they moved him to a secondary character that they could easily reduce on posters an so on...)

Saw it Saturday morning and just about fell asleep. Only partially because I woke up way too early for a movie. It's a baffling mess of nonsense plotting, saccharine redemption arcs, and nostalgia wallowing that ultimately just makes me happy this trilogy is over.

Honestly, I'm not sure where you go with Star Wars at this point. If it were me, I'd take it back a few thousand years and get into the Sith vs Jedi conflict at a weird metaphysical level, but there's not a chance in hell Disney is going to do something like that.

I thought The Last Jedi, while flawed, was an exponentially more interesting film, and I will forever be disappointed that the toxic reaction to that film resulted in...this.

Not that I'm surprised. Given the over the top outrage there was almost no chance they wouldn't backpeddle anything interesting that movie did, rather than build off it and iron out its flaws, but it still bums me out.

At this point I feel like The Star Wars franchise is a lost cause. At least as far as major motion pictures go. The movies are obligated to be too big and expensive blockbusters for studio execs to take risks, and the fanbase is too volatile and toxic to let them. At best we'll just get more stuff like The Force Awakens. Just enough of a mediocre rehash of old ideas that everyone walks away thinking "I guess it was okay."

I'll add on to the "it was fine" brigade. It was an enjoyable movie that was pure fanservice for the original trilogy just like The Force Awakens was.

I liked The Last Jedi a lot and I am pissed that the massive backlash led to this puff piece and torpedo'd the Rian Johnson trilogy but it is probably for the best.

Finn and Rose (Vietnamese descent, for those wondering) being non-entities with their entire plot from TLJ being forgotten is some pretty shitty levels of marketing but that is the world we live in and I am sure there was similar stuff in the past.

All complaints aside: Am I the only one who couldn't tell if Lando was hitting on the lady stormtrooper or adopting her? Billy Dee is awesome.

ROS was probably the better Star Wars film than TLJ but it was the much worse film. But there were probably maybe two, two and a half, good movies worth of content in the Star Wars movieverse anyway.

I still have not seen it, because I live in a country where Star Wars just isn't that big of a deal (honestly, thank god), but I will at some point.

I personally really enjoyed The Last Jedi, with my biggest problems with it coming from the fact that they teased really changing the status quo and then pulled up at the last minute and tried to make it another Star Wars movie. I will echo the disdain that others have with how the ABSURD reaction to that movie got us what sounds like a fine, milquetoast Star Wars movie (which, I'm sure a lot of people want, so whatever).

More than anything, I feel like I am more fascinated by the observation that Jeff Bakalar had which was basically...Star Wars maybe has only ever been "okay" at best? It feels very accurate to me.

Given what occurred in TLJ, this was the best ending we could reasonably expect. Lots of fan service, though, just like in TFA; c'mon, JJ. Palpatine was a weird choice--they should have had hints throughout the trilogy. It was better than either previous movie. I liked it, but I definitely have a lot of problems with it.

When Rey and Ben kissed I said, "OH GODDAMNIT," loudly because fuck that. The Reylos are never gonna shut up now.

Kylo never even found out about Hux being the spy. What a useless storyline.

They utterly removed any emotional weight from the C-3PO thing. Him making the choice to sacrifice his memory was incredible for a droid, then it meant nothing.

When Palpatine did that Force lightning thing into the air, I thought, "This is just anime now." Like WTF.

Also, the whole "thousand generations live in you now" thing is apparently literal, and all these Jedi are with her. So she's basically the characters from Dune that have ancestor memories? That was weird. Rey is a Skywalker and also the Kwisatz Haderach.

Leia just literally lying down to die was absolutely terrible. Bringing a "memory" of Han back was cheap as hell. This movie had so much fan service, it fan-serviced it's own predecessor. Seriously.

As is my tradition with Star Wars, I will see it in theater one more time so I can formulate more thoughts on it.

(For context: I despised TLJ, not because of what it did, but because of what it said and then didn't do. That movie ended up being elitist as fuck.)

If Disney learns anything from this, it should be that a trilogy ought to be more planned out than this clearly was.

@gundato: Between Jannah's character feeling incredibly tacked on, the "did we just become best friends!?" Stepbrothers moment with Finn, Lando offering to help her find her family, and John Boyega's recent comments he has no interest in tv work, I think it's safe to say that was their attempt to plant seeds for yet another Disney+ show.

I think Rise of Skywalker worked in a "mediocre action blockbuster" kind of way, in that it was never boring, and had some neat bits along the way.

The most damning thing about it, though, is that a day after watching I've lost all care for it. When asked why I didn't like the movie, I told my brother "it wasn't well made."

No invested debate. No asterisks. RoS has realised for me that this whole trilogy has severely maimed Star Wars with a quiet stutter. And maybe I don't care?

You joke, but I noticed that when the first trailer dropped and one of the scenes in the trailer was this:

Regardless, here are some interesting things you might not know about this movie:

• This movie heavily borrows, albeit still makes large enough changes to, the Dark Empire comic book series from the 1990s.
• Kylo Ren's story arc is such a copy paste of Jacen Solo from the old Expanded Universe that it hurts.
• Darth Revan has been added to the Star Wars Visual Encyclopedia as a result of this movie, therefore, DARTH REVAN IS OFFICIALLY CANON!

@bladeofcreation: This is pretty funny, when I heard that Palatine came back the whole thing sounded like Children of Dune/Dune Messiah and that they needed to find a way to bring back their own Baron Harkonnen. At least His "return" was built into the story and was way better telegraphed.

Thought it was fantastic and easily the best Star Wars movie since Return of the Jedi.

The biggest thing about this movie to me is that the catharsis is totally ruined by the second film. There were a hell of a lot of things at the end of that RoS that would have felt very comforting and correct in a big budget blockbuster kind of way had they had ANY forshadowing in the second film. I could easily see a version of that film that has both Rey and Kylo have a crisis of faith, much moreso than was eluded to in those few scenes. Doubling down on the link between them, both of them finding out about Palpatine in that throne room. The betrayal and anger from Kylo and the self doubt and anquish of Rey would have been a hell of a cliffhanger for the second movie. Then you can basically do the same thing this last one did with Rey hiding what she knows and trying to run from it, while Kylo has the same arc basically, but there's at least some motivation! Palpatine killed his grandfather...yadayada.

I honestly think you could very easily edit together three, two-hour movies from what has been released that makes a hell of a lot more sense in restrospect. Kylo's arc is fine, as is Rey's and even their joint arc, its just a matter of pacing. None of it felt earned because they had to reboot or revitalize everything. Force Awakens and Last Jedi are so divergent that this film feels like they had to make a final movie for two trilogies where the middle flick doesn't exist for either.

I may end up doing the editing as a passion project just to see how it feels. There's a lot of camera shots that are just weird and I will take any excuse I need to scrub porgs from this realm. Anyway, I liked a lot about Rise of Skywalker and really disliked quite a bit as well. But there is more there that's good than bad, which is a step up from last time, I guess.

PS- That kiss was lame.

Thought it was ok at best and mostly forgettable. Better luck next time, I suppose?

I don’t care.

I think this new trilogy went from bland, safe, and boring into a full-blown train-wreck with the first two films. No interest in putting myself through any more of that.

Just to say something nice about the film:

I actually really liked when Rey said her last name was SKywalker. Weird making out with a douchebag aside, it felt like a fitting end for her arc. She started completely alone in the world and spent the first and second movie (and parts of the third...) looking for belonging and family. She had to deal with the fact that she was heir to the Godwin's Law equivalent of the ABY era and became stronger for it. And when asked about who she is, she chose her adopted family and felt comfortable enough to acknowledge that.

I wouldn't say it was completely earned, but it got pretty close.

Admittedly, a good part of that is probably because I have been saying "oh god fucking damn it" since "Rise of Skywalker" was announced and "Rey is a nobody" was getting retconned. Low bar, but I liked it.

cool internet thing is to say F star wars and this is lame but i love this shit. I've loved the sequel trilogy and this movie ruled. Saw it Thursday night and been thinking about it ever since. Loved the story, the action was great, the resolution was great, and I'm excited to see a lot more with these characters in the future in some form. I think the baggage around this movie has severely hampered the movie itself which is absolutely fine and far from the worst star wars movie.

I think the entire trilogy was an example of having 100% the wrong directors in 100% the wrong order.

On the one hand, you have J.J. Abrams, who is very good at fast-paced shooty-shooty stuff, but who also rushes to get to those parts to the extent that his movies tend to be very badly paced. He's also never had an original idea enter his brain.

Case in point, The Force Awakens. A movie that is essentially a rehash of A New Hope, but still managed to establish some broadly likable characters in Rey and Finn. In the hands of a better director they could have been really great additions to the universe, but because it's J.J. Abrams, he never gives them time to breathe. Instead, he was in a big hurry to get to the Han and Chewie Fan Service Hour and blow a bunch of stuff up, so Rey and Finn never really get a chance to develop as characters.

Then you move to Rian Johnson, who has original ideas, but who also has a pathological need to express those ideas in the most pretentious, look-at-me, up-its-own-asshole film-school deconstructionist ways possible. Now, I'd argue that a big-budget picture in a franchise as massive as Star Wars maybe isn't the place for that kind of thing. However, you're going to that you put that movie at the beginning of the trilogy to signal just how much on a break you intend this new cycle to be. What you don't do is put it in the middle, because it's virtually guaranteed to be completely dissonant with whatever come before or after it. And as it turns out, that exactly what happened with The Last Jedi, a movie so tonally different it felt like it took place in a completely different universe.

Which brings us to The Rise of Skywalker. Given the narrative problems the second movie creates, the solution to that problem is, if anything, to steer into that skid and just keep going in that direction. Unfortunately, they went back to J.J. Abrams, who, as we have already established, is allergic to original ideas. Which means that instead of engaging with any of the second movie's themes, he runs screaming from them as fast as he can as far away as he can. And since he has zero creativity and doesn't know what to do otherwise, he just took the detritus from the last 40 years worth of Star Wars material and vomited it into a movie, hoping that base nostalgia would get people to like it.

@zombiepie: Holy shit, Revan is canon? Maybe we can actually get some new canon Old (like, really old) Republic stuff? I know that The Old Republic MMO is ongoing (and in fact I reinstalled it last night), but that of course was never canon.

I admit I've never really been sure how far back canon (both old and especially new) regarding the Sith goes. I'm pretty sure it doesn't go back any further than Darth Bane around 1,000 BBY. One thing that's never made clear is exactly how much the galaxy at large knows about the Sith.

I never read Dark Empire, because I always thought the idea of a reincarnated Palpatine was dumb, even when I was a kid who didn't know how to critically think about media.

@zombiepie: I actually wasn’t joking. After your Fallen Order thread I specifically looked up the trailer to check out the tops of the Star Destroyers and chuckled when I saw they were using the “old” design.

It felt like movie had no plot. You could just jump to the last scene and it would work as well as it did with 1h45min filler before that.

@charlie_victor_bravo: I felt that way about the last Star Wars movie, too.

Most of that movie was an all-for-naught mission that really didn’t change anyone or anything.

While that was going on, a ship out of gas couldn’t be caught in a befuddling low speed chase, for some reason.

@charlie_victor_bravo: they needed the thing to get to the place

I suppose it's not officially canon anymore, but in the EU the Sith are thousands of years older than that. Considering there was a big Sith-Jedi war, the galaxy would have to have known about them at the time.

So the Revan thing is just the name of a legion and the implication that Palps named them all after famous Sith?

Ignoring that possibly being a bit of fanservice along the lines of Stephen Strange being on the list of targets in Winter Soldier: Keep in mind that just because a character exists doesn't mean it is the same character. I think Thrawn recently (order years) got a book and showed up on one of the shows but that doesn't mean he is the same badass blue fucker from the old EU.

That being said: TOR is apparently still going so maybe Revan has been canon the entire time? Or did that just get grandfathered in/forgotten about during the big shakeup and still count as Legends even though it is actively being contributed to?

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As for the complaints about ROS and TLJ being shaggy dog stories: No shit, of course they are. So were ESB and ROTJ.

ESB starts with everyone frantically escaping Vader on Hoth, going on a merry chase, and getting captured by Vader on Bespin. Luke was better for having trained with Yoda for a few hours but would things have been meaningfully different if the Falcon hadn't taken off from Hoth? Seriously, what the hell is the timeline of ESB? Because it really does seem like we saw ALL of Luke's interactions with Yoda on screen.

Same with ROTJ/ROS. Most of the Battle of Endor seemed kind of pointless since Vader chucking Palps into the reactor seemed to do a good job of blowing up the Death Star on its own.

Sometimes the journey is the adventure.

@gundato: It's been said ESB takes place over several weeks.

Vader tossing what we thought was Palpatine down the reactor shaft blew him up, Lando and Co. secured the damaging shot.

The big question now is, given we learned a clone Snoke was used as a puppet by Palpatine, does that mean the reason he survived a perceived death in RotJ is because the Emperor we saw was also a clone? Was the real Palpatine actually overseeing the construction of the Final Order fleet at the time? The existence of a wayfinder in the Death Star's throne room points to that being a strong possibility.

@shiftygism: Been years (decades?) since I read the old EU/wookiepedia (so long that I don't even remember if I read the book) but my understanding is that Palps jumps from body to body through Sith Magic. So Vader totally punted the real Palps but he hopped into a clone as he died. I forget if it ends when they kill all the Palp clones in his magic base or if whatever Jedi did it (was it Luke or Jacen?) force magic'd Palpatine's soul to death.

And should probably look it up/watch it again, but I could have sworn Palpatine exploded in that reactor. I know Lando and fish guy fired a shot at the reactor too though. Still, point stands that it was the same "the Jedi will assassinate Palpatine while the space peoples will blow shit up" model

I literally just got home from the theater and I really liked it. I am in the despise The Last Jedi camp, FWIW.

I might say Rogue One is still my favorite out of the Disney movies though. Jedis have a superhero problem where they constantly need to show them being more and more powerful. This is not a Star Wars problem, this is a problem with all media with super powered beings. I really appreciated the smaller scope and more grounded nature of Rogue One.

I enjoyed this recent stuff. Looking forward to more Star Wars stuff down the line.

- Force Awakens was as good as a soft reboot could be, and I'll still watch it every few years.

- Rogue One reminded me of Halo: Reach and had the best battle scene in any SW movie, so I like that one a lot.

- The Last Jedi was weird, but despite some strange choices and the casino side quest it's ok.

- Solo was a dumb movie that was still fun to watch. It had its issues like every one of these movies, but it has its own flavor and I'm glad it felt like a smaller story instead of a grand epic.

- Rise of Skywalker, I basically shut off my brain and took it all in. I liked it, even with some baffling story choices and a disappointing final battle. I was ready for this to outdo Return of the Jedi's space battle, at the very least. I went from not really investing in these characters to being kind of sad that this is the "last" one with them.

The new trilogy feels slapdash. Like an epilogue and not a cultural milestone or anything, but they're well made and pretty good. The only thing the prequels beat it in is world-building and a clear sense of purpose (we knew they were about Anakin's journey). But I'm glad these movies exist and there's some truly awesome stuff coming out of this universe. The mainline movies make it feel smaller since everyone's related, but that's focused on one aspect of a pretty rich universe that I absolutely want to see more of.

I will continue to watch this stuff.

Turns out that a movie written by the dudes that did book of henry and batman v superman is a big mess

@frytup: Oh, I know! That was my favorite era of Star Wars since I read Tales of the Jedi in the mid-90s. The first RPGs I ever finished were the KoTOR games! One of the things in both the EU and the new, official canon was that the Empire went to great lengths to either collect or destroy any historical artifacts related to the Jedi. I don't think it's ever really made clear in SW stories how much people remember.

There's also the thing where these stories are THOUSANDS of years old. It's hard not to have that fade into legend, even for a society that keeps historical records. This is also a thing I'm interested in personally; how long does it take a real historical fact to become legend?

@bladeofcreation: Most adults think floppy disks are "save icons". I am vaguely aware of what a betamax looked like (single spindle vhs?) whereas VHSes are comedically old technology to pull out in a sitcom. I've met folk who have no idea who Harrison god damned Ford is of all people.

Similarly, how many people remember when America loved Afghanistan and were outright supporting the Taliban? I would say that one of the most fun things to do is to show people Rambo 3 (?) but that would require them to even know what Rambo is.

It does not at all take long for fact to become legend and the recurring theme of Han/Luke (and Rey?) forgetting the Jedi just a generation later is not at all inconceivable.

@csl316: Nothing can beat that space battle from Rogue One - that is top notch spaceship-doing-cool-stuff Star Wars goodness right there.

@humanity: In my first viewing, I didn't even expect a battle. Just some spy stuff as a team snuck around looking for blueprints. So it caught me off guard, it was huge and ridiculous, and didn't make sense to be on such a grand scale... but fuck it, it's cool shit and had just enough small character moments to make me feel invested.

One of the funnier Star Wars movie inconsistencies is how the Jedi went from being the chief law enforcers and principal military strategists of the Republic to figures of barely-remembered legend in the space of 20 years.

marvel frantically re-cutting Black Widow and trying to remove the fallout 76 tie-in

@humanity Whelp... they retconned using the ISD Class-I ship models in Rise of Skywalker. Apparently, Palpatine designed an entirely new ship model that looked exactly like the ISD-I, but this one is calls the "Xyston Class."

I'm not joking.

The problem with Last Jedi was not that it subverted everything and was different, its that in the last act of the movie it course corrected itself back to a classic good vs evil star wars ending that essentially concluded the trilogy one movie early.

It abandoned all of the plot hooks set up by the Force Awakened and in turn didn't establish any of its own.

What if Rey and Kylo joined forces at the end of the Last Jedi and fucked off to parts unknown, leaving all their friends hanging in the balance? What if the "good guys" have no force people on their side. IDK, I'm not a writer but what I do know is that there were no plot hooks left at the end of Last Jedi to the point where this third movie is basically stand alone. With a NEW villain set up only in the opening crawl.

The ONLY thing that draws a viewer in to this third chapter is simply that its starwars. Lucky for them that's a pretty huge draw.

IDK I think on a galactic scale most people never would have met a Jedi or seen one in action idk. 20 years is super short but it is conceivable that under the thumb of horrific oppression the outer rim planets wouldn't really have much reason to believe in them. Planets outside of the coreworlds are essentially third world cesspools of slavery and terror, probably uneducated masses of impoverished people.

@zombiepie: interesting that the entire cargo bay is taken up by the canon which means that these destroyers technically don’t carry any tie fighters onboard.

It's been clear for years that The Rise of Skywalker was going to trade on beats of nostalgia. Call me an impressionable sheep, but I found it to be a totally serviceable rollercoaster ride nonetheless.

Taken critically, it's a near-three hour experience with a lot of obvious problems. But I think it has highlights, too. It's a stunning visual feat. The chemistry between Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, and Daisy Ridley is great. And despite seeing it coming from miles away and several movies past, I still pretty much loved the Ben Solo turn, and I really, really wish they'd kept him alive.

There are lots of points that had me questioning not only the film's internal logic but also the greater established logic of the Star Wars canon. It's a very flawed script. And that's not even mentioning that the final confrontation doesn't land with any of the oomph it should have, probably a function of the way things were shoehorned into place to make this machine work.

Yet, all flaws significant and minor aside, I came away feeling some level of okay about it. Honestly, my prevailing thought was, "You know, if this had been multiple movies, this actually might've worked." It's just so much crammed so feverishly into a final, desperate attempt to knot the bowtie.

I don't know. People are either going to apologize for it or rip it to shreds. It's somewhere in the middle. Not among the best Star Wars films, certainly not among the worst.

@inevpatoria: Yah agreed. I wouldn't necessarily apologize for it but it's not the best. As you said, if you just want some cool Star Wars beats then it has a lot of that. If anything Rise of Skywalker has me questioning just had good a lot of the previous movies really were. Like the plot here definitely has a ton of holes in it.. but so did the originals. Nostalgia is a hell of a thing.

Well, finally saw this one. I liked it quite a bit! Definitely more than I thought I would based on the initial noises coming from Twitter etc. The sheer spectacle, the sound design, the characters - all were solid. The only thing that was sorta subpar was the overall plot.

Sporadic thoughts (spoilers obviously.) The bad:

- Dumb to bring back Palpatine. There was virtually no explanation behind this. The dude died, new villain please. At this point he could just show up again in another movie and no one would bat an eye. Is he like Ganon?

- Did not need to have Rey be related to Palpatine. Why is everyone related to everyone else in Star Wars? It's a bit too similar to the "Luke, I am your father" that's been parodied a billion times.

- Leia's lines here were very weird and awkward. It's very clearly cut material filmed from the previous movies, as everything she says is very vague and could apply to almost any situation. Felt almost like the standard joke of re-editing celebrities' voices to have a conversation with someone who obviously never spoke with them. Nearly comical.

- Man, Billy Dee Williams sure seemed like someone's hungover uncle. He seemed like he had no reason to be in this movie other than to please the fans.

- I laughed out loud when Rey and Kylo had a tug-of-war on a freighter. At least they didn't shoot differently colored magic beams that collided.

- The idea of the "dark side" still doesn't make much sense to me. Why would Palpatine even think Rey would be tempted by this? She never showed any signs of wanting to hold vast power or conquer galaxies or whatever. The only reason she'd be tempted is by some magic corrupting power, which is pretty boring from a story perspective. If I found out my grandfather was Stalin or someone and offered me his empire, I'd be like "...What? No. Why?" Especially if I'd been fighting on the other side for years.

- The climactic battle with Palpatine didn't make a lot of sense to me. First he wants to be killed, and Rey refuses... and then they have a fight and kill him. Well, what was the thematic point of the whole "I don't kill the bad guy because I'm good" idea just five minutes earlier? I guess you could argue she didn't really kill him, just deflected his own force lightning back on himself... but I really don't see how that makes a difference. Rey should have just killed him immediately and then just not taken the throne. The good guys here don't seem to have a problem killing loads of random storm troopers, so I don't see why killing the most evil thing in the universe is such a bad idea.

The good:

- I really like these characters, and they have a great dynamic in this movie. Snappy, fun dialogue that's miles ahead of anything in the prequels (although that's a low bar.) Finn and Poe especially have good chemistry in their bickering.

- The visuals, sound design and editing were amazing. Really kinetic camera work that puts you in the midst of the action while still making very clear what was happening.

- I admit to smiling ear to ear at the reappearances of things from the original trilogy, like Luke's X-wing, or at triumphant moments like when Kylo Ren tossed his lightsaber into the sea. (although really, was that a smart move? Like, just using a red lightsaber doesn't mean you have to be evil... right?)

- The plot, though corny, was very straightforward and tight, with no silly side-adventures like the casino scene in TLJ or Han's monster fight from Awakens. There weren't any scenes that felt out of place to me.

Overall, I liked this a lot, despite some corniness. Not sure where I'd place it compared to the original trilogy, but definitely better than anything from the prequels.

I think the worst thing I can say about it is that it's just fucking boring.

I almost fell asleep because nothing really happened.

I've been watching Star Wars for almost 30 years, and this new one just kinda...didn't do anything.

I will admit, the part where Rey put the saber behind her back was a real ??? moment, but it was really cool too. A lot of the lines were cheesy as shit though, and the part where they all rode out on goats, or when they showed the Ewoks for no reason REALLY took me out of the immersion.

I understand why kids like it, sure. But for an adult, it's just...so void of anything substantial

This is exactly right, and, hilariously, something basically none of the feedback has been willing to mention. This movie's events are tightly strung together. People have been quick to handwave the plot away because of the pace or because of the, and I'm using others' vernacular here, "fetch quest" nature of the story.

But at no point did we ever get straight-up distracted from our characters getting from objective A to objective B. This is a movie with shit to do and it is relentless in its pursuit to do that shit.

A few days have gone by since seeing it and I actually think it's warmed on me. I genuinely love the Kylo/Rey arc from this trilogy. It's the best thing this trilogy has and I think it's the note Rise of the Skywalker hits most confidently. Don't get me wrong, I think there's a lot here that, were I a more ardent Star Wars fanatic, I'd probably be really pissed about. And there's a lot here that I thought was kind of convenient in a hackneyed and rushed sort of way. But I think it nails the emotion of the sequel trilogy. And at this point, that's not nothing.

God damn this movie sucked. Thankfully I can basically just ignore it and enjoy TFA and TLJ comfortably. A shame these characters won't be used anywhere else but hey what can you do.

Now to wait for the god awful spin offs that'll be made.

I think this movie is hilariously poor. They keep introducing new characters, but don't have anything for them to do! A new First Order General is introduced and tasked with leading their fleet, but no characters from the previous films have any interaction with him at all! Then there are two characters who's only function seem to be to dispel the Poe and Finn are gay meme. Then Kylo Ren just seems to disappear from the movie for an hour for seemingly no reason! The storytelling in this film is pure madness.

It just seemed so mashed together and incongruent that it seems like they had literally no plan of how it was going to go when they stepped into the editing bay. Now, I know I'm being too hard on this movie, but I just find it fascinating how this thing came out in the state its in. Definitely want to see a documentary or at least the original pitch for this thing.

@rejizzle: it’s very easy to see how this came to be: no cohesion or roadmap for a new trilogy. It seems insane that Disney would launch a brand new official Star Wars trilogy that links up the movies from 1977 and there was no clear direction. Like have different directors and writers sure, but at least have some very skeletal outline of A to B to C. Snoke is introduced as a big new villain; Snoke gets completely dismissed; Snoke gets brought back only to show he was not important in the first place - like what is going on here??? They turned an entire planet into a Deathstar - ok cool this is some nostalgia stuff but it paved the way for some really cool dogfighting scenes with X Wings and Tie fighters. Then last movie comes about and now a single Star Destroy can blow up an entire planet?

Weirdly enough J.J. did alright with Star Trek. There were diminishing returns and the last one was pretty weak but overall he managed to string these same characters across all the movies and even introduce some growth for each of them. Yet Star Wars is such an absolute failure in writing across the board.

Like I still enjoyed most of these movies because I’m one of those people that saw SW as a child and it was magical. So I carry a bit of that magic with me to this day despite knowing better. Tie Fighters and Star Destroyers automatically put a smile on my face as do lightsabers. The sounds and visuals all tug at deeply rooted nostalgia strings. But man did they really fuck up on creating an interesting story and introducing meaningful characters into the fold. The prequels weren’t great but at least we got a really solid Obi-Wan out of them. There is not a single well developed or interesting character from this new trilogy. In the case of Last Jedi they even retroactively made some of those originals characters worse.

@humanity: I guess, but I think there's a good movie to be made after Last Jedi. The dynamic between unhinged nihilist Kylo Ren and greedy fascist Admiral Hux could have made some interesting discord in the First Order and led to the rebels getting back to guerrilla tactics to beat the disorganized evil, but instead we got a lame spy subplot that is resolved as soon the second it becomes relevant and two new villains with no real ties to the established characters.

But now I'm just backseat writing. It's an accomplishment to create any feature length film of any quality, so whatever.

@rejizzle: Oh definitely. There were plenty of great directions they could have gone in. The entire “Knights of Ren” thing could have been explored and given a really interesting deep dive on the more occult side of the force. We could have seen maybe a different side of the rebellion other than scruffy rebels working out of hangers on remote moons. Films are hard, but Star Wars I like many other movies get a nearly unlimited budget and from what we’ve seen a lot of leeway in storytelling. Movies made under much worse conditions have managed to fair better so I just can’t really excuse them in this regard.