Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker *****SPOILER THREAD*****

[Lord_Zed]

This film is all over the place, I'm not sure what to think, It had some good moments, but I found it hard to care or invest in anything.

My initial thoughts are that Rise of Skywalker is a better 'Star wars film' than Last Jedi, but Last Jedi is a better 'film' than Rise of Skywalker.

[klystron]

I really enjoyed it and was pretty happy with how it wrapped up. I'm satisfied, but none of it was surprising - Rey being a Palpatine was a heavily discussed theory the opening week of TFA; and I was always pretty sure Snoke was a puppet.
For my mind, the issue with the sequel trilogy was the off-track TLJ. Now I'm not a TLJ hater, but I think some of the Rise of Skywalker story could have been told in the second movie. Or at least had its foundations laid. Instead (and this is my only real gripe) Ep9 feels like it had to do too much of heavy lifting. But having said that, I guess there are some parallels here between ESB and TLJ in this regard. Anyways....

Can't wait to watch it a second time!
Always knew that bloody staff would end up as something significant.

[VERT]

Totally loved it. Fan since 77 and it was a good ending for the saga. Ticked all my boxes. With two awesome cameos to boot.

[Miss Kitty Fantastico]

The dysfunctional planning between TFA and TLJ really showed - I liked both films plenty on their own merits, but you could practically see the duct tape where their leftovers had been jammed back together. If it could be done in a spirit of affectionate mischief rather than malice, this'd make an excellent MST3K episode just for the sheer opportunity for snark in how many cracks there were in the plot.

But still, in the end I was satisfied. I didn't expect that - I expected to be entertained, because you can trust JJ for that, but wrangling the well-meaning mess of the sequels into a finale that, for all its flaws, made my little saw-Jedi-at-6 heart feel good about the journey coming to an end at last... that's not a bad result.

[Tha_Phantom]

Saw it last night. Overall I felt it was a good ending to the saga, but definitely not without its flaws.

Some things that bugged me:
Hux betraying the first/final order and dying was random.
Lando felt like forced and unecessary fan pandering. Didn't hurt the movie, but didn't really help it.
Rose was a waste and what happened to her relationship with Finn?
What was Finn going to say to Rey?!
The chemistry between the three leads was barely there. I guess in part that's because we've only seen two of the three together at any one time until the last scene of TLJ.

Can't really critisize Leia scenes as they only had limited material to work with. It is what it is.
Rey being a Palpatine literally made me facepalm in the theatre, but I grew to accept it over the course of the movie and it does tie with bringing Palpatine back.

My biggest issue with this movie was the writing and editing of the first half. Very choppy and things just happened way too conveniently. There was very little build up to the issues that came up and then overcoming them. From the second half onward it seemed to flow a lot better.

Now for the positive:
I really, really liked the ending. It felt like proper closure to the saga.
Reylo is a thing! I totally called it and was happy with the way it was done. There was build up to this in TLJ and I'm glad JJ carried through with it.
I was glad to see Kylo turn to the light and his scene with Han echoing that in TFA, but with a positive outcome this time, was really good.
So glad Rey finally got her own lightsaber. I'm not even sure why there was a need to have the Skywalker lightsaber play such a prominent role in this trilogy after it disappeared in ESB.

I'll be seeing it again on Saturday and I may like it more the second time, but my current view is it deserves a 7/10. Overall I enjoyed it, but it is a bit of a roller-coaster the way it is now. I do think a directors cut would benefit the film immensely.

[i_amtrunks]

I have many conflicting thoughts about this movie. There were some amazing parts, Ridley and Driver were fantastic and I love McDiarmid as Palpatine, but I think that is where the problems begin. The complete lack of planning these movies shows as the big original trilogy bad appears off screen and we don?t get a single ?normal citizen? reaction. The fact he has a thousand star destroyer class ships with planet busting weaponry??? Who made them? Where did the materials come from? Who is manning and running these stupid ships that cannot even fly up???? I can accept that Palpatine survived the Death Star explosion or is a clone, but how did he get all those resources and people to the sith planet? (once again showing Dooku to be the only sith happy to not live or mostly hang out in a creepy cave/temple) it just reeks of poor planning and like many of my thoughts of this film, makes no sense. also if Sheev was so private and the sith have a rule of two, who the hell were all those creatures watching him get publicly murdered??!

The whole Chewie fake out irked me, then the whole rehash of enter the command ship to rescue just was a waste of time and made no sense. Hux was wasted but was also really irritating and barely More than an evil caricature anyway. At least there wasn?t a trash compactor, but I was expecting it as another piece of useless fan service.

The knights of ren did less than snokes guards (skipping the whole Snoke thing for now, that?s another massive cluster of stupidity). Either make them force sensitive pseudo sith or at least decent fighters. Personally I would?ve liked them to be loyal to Kylo/Ben at the end and fight palpatine or at least his guards who were also way worse than snokes guards!

Also going to skip all the wasted characters new and old, the forced time period to act and the fact that no one slept for 16 straight hours, or who destroyed those massive sith star destroyers across the universe, most of it comes down to lazy writing, just like force healing, which makes sense as a power the force could be manipulated with, but it needs a drawback to explain why we hadn?t seen it until yesterday in the mandalorian.
I?m also going to skip my thoughts on Mcguffins leading to Mcguffins.

Overall I like many parts of this film and some of the fan service was excellent. Sadly even more parts made no sense, even for a space opera western, some decisions and subplots were just garbage nonsense and there was altogether far too many winks, nods and circle jerking off fans who complained about the far superior last Jedi.

It?s a mess made by the producers and writers not planning ahead. You shouldn?t have to watch a half dozen television series, read twenty book series and comics to make a big Star Wars style movie make sense or to fill in plot chasms.

I want to like this movie more and rate it higher, but everytime I starts thinking about it, the more issues I find I have with it. It needs major work to be good, some of that is because of the fan service, some from the lack of planning, some from nonsical character decisions and the rest is from trying to pretend the last Jedi didn?t happen because loud whingers and trolls got upset by something different. (Last Jedi isn?t great either but at least it tried to be different and add to the series rather than just replay a greatest hits).

[drifand]

This movie gets a just 7/10 for me. I scored TLJ 6.5 by my memory and later I hated it scoring it less <which yes its unfair but thats after analysing further thoughts.

I already had this concept after TLJ how the movie was going to be saved and it was by introducing a super villain. Why?
It was an obvious collision course after Rian Basically ended the saga to begin with by
1. Killing Snoke > the problem I saw was there was no way Kylo was going to kill Rey in this episode, (there wasn't enough hate and rather they had a thing a moment)
2. Luke died > Techinically Rian had used all the juice of the main plot characters. If Leia had died because Kylo refused to listen to his mum, the story would have been way different.
This was the issue I had in TLJ, IMO no mother would have chicken out and ask her brother to confront her son. No way in any real life situation.
So basically this episode had no serious villain if the emperor doesnt come back into play.
My prediction was that Rey scarified herself to bring Ben back and that was the ending, but this was reverse and I am okay with it.

I guess a lot of fans are arguing about the Rey Skywalker issue. and here is where I felt they could have done better. A few things can be done or said like /ben saying I give you my life my blood, hence Rey becoming a partial skywalker or something within those lines. but yes I know people have a problem with the carrying of the name.

You can tell JJ disapproved Rians take on Rose and Finn as basically there was no more chemistry. The throwing away of light saber was basically a spit onto Rian's take as it specifically stated that it was to be respected. Say it as you will but is kinda obvious.

I have NO issues with Leia's parts, given the situation I say it was even lucky they got that far.
Hux being the spy didn't really sold it to me as the build up of him to betray is very minimal, felt they should have either build on this
Poh didn't feel like a moron such a BIG difference! Finn definitely was better in this episode.

Han solo coming back to give his son the final encouragement was on point. They had to turn Kylo back to Ben somehow and this was a good way to do it.

Lando, I agree didn't do much, basically was put in it to just fill gaps of where is he from Force awakens and TLJ.

IMO JJ did what he could to add enough emotions to the movie. This story has a story to tell unlike how TLJ is and was. I can strike off TLJ and I still enjoy this movie because TLJ had anything moving forward story wise, it concluded rather than give the audience anything to look forward to.

The trilogy as a whole unfortunately is a let down, and it was seriously flawed by TLJ.

For those who were wondering, the book will explain more how the Emperor was able to escape for the ROTJ thrown down by Darth Vader by doing a worm hole porter which drain his power.

There are things I don't like and things I do like. However, and ultimately it did not make me HATE Star Wars and this is a KEY point. One has to realise if you keep finding flaws and plot holes you will start to not enjoy the movie, I have to say though, there wasn't any part in the movie where I went hmm...ur...like I did in TLJ.

The main winner? Mandalorian . why? Baby Yoda sells. Yes simple as it is, people are just liking it. It brought the fandom back together.

A serious lesson here is don't Wing it. Make sure the story is stick and solid from A B and C.

[SharkyMcShark]

I'm impressed, though unfortunately not surprised, that you spent more time talking about The Last Jedi and Rian Johnson than this film in your post.