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

[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.

[drifand]

I like to recap my thought from my previous episode coming into this one. I had no intention to impress you by far.
Is my opinion, you dont have to kiss my review. I am not looking for praises or anything, is nice to see how selfish you can be.

[SharkyMcShark]

I like to recap my thought from my previous episode coming into this one. I had no intention to impress you by far.
Is my opinion, you dont have to kiss my review. I am not looking for praises or anything, is nice to see how selfish you can be.

Ita a public forum. If you dont want anyone to see or comment on your posts perhaps try a diary or journal?

[Tha_Phantom]

So I watched it again today and I liked the movie a lot more on my second viewing, and a friend who had similar criticisms to mine also agreed they liked it more. In fact, a lot of my earlier criticisms just feel like nitpicks now. I still would like to see a longer cut at some point, but as it is the movie is satisfying.

[GoktimusPrime]

My thoughts about The Rise of Skywalker
(and I haven't read the rest of this thread yet as I'm trying not to allow other people's thoughts to dilute mine; I'll come back and read this thread properly later)

PROS

• The Sith Fleet. That thing is freaking amazing, and logically, makes way more sense than any Death Star or Starkiller Base. Really. Death Stars and Starkillers are no where near as practical as a fleet. The problem with a battle station is that you've put all your eggs in one basket. Even in The Last Jedi, the Last Order fleet was pretty damn menacing! Compare the Yamato (the largest and most powerful battleship ever made) vs the British Navy. The British never built a single ship as powerful as the Yamato or even the Musashi, but despite all that might it still failed to win WWII for Japan. Yet the fact that the British built a lot of ships - the fact that they had a massive fleet - was a key part in allowing them to conquer the world (and the reason why the English language has become the global lingua franca). The Brits built a stupid number of boats. A killer planet is an even dumber idea because it can only target a planet that it has perfect alignment with... so you literally need to wait for the stars to line up before you can fire your stupid weapon. It's not even mobile like a Star Destroyer. But the Last Order Fleet has the best of both worlds being an actual fleet and each equipped with a planet busting cannon. Effectively each ship was a Death Star. And as a fleet you can scatter them. This made it all the more important for the Resistance to ground this fleet before they can successfully take off; it really raised the stakes and made the big end battle more exciting.

• Incredible visuals and great music.

• It's a fun swash-buckling adventure, similar to the spirit of the original Star Wars. This is the first time that we've seen Rey, Finn and Poe all together and they work pretty well.

• No real wasted scenes or pointless character arcs as we saw in The Last Jedi (re: Canto Bite/casino scene, Finn & Rose's meaningless adventure)

• The way that they cut unused scenes shot with Leia from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi and attempting to weave it into the narrative of this movie was done pretty well. Having to work around Carrier Fisher's untimely passing would not have been easy.

• Lots of neat Easter Eggs. Anyone else notice that Anthony Daniels^Denis Lawson (Wedge Antilles) appeared as a Rebel pilot manning the gun of the Millennium Falcon? The Emperor's Sith temple reminds me of the one seen in Rebels (where Vader fought Ahsoka). The Wayfinders remind me of Sith Holocrons.

• Ben Solo's end was quite suitable. It would've been awkward if he'd survived, really. His ending allowed him to be redeemed and gave him that noble sacrifice, much like what Anakin Skywalker did for Luke

• I liked the ending where Rey gives herself the name of Skywalker. This not only ties into her rejection of her Palpatine birthright, but also plays into the film's themes of Belonging and Identity (and the Search for Personal Identity). I also like how the ghosts of the twins looked on with their approval/blessing.

• Lightsabres! I like how I could hear hissing sounds as water was hitting the lightsabre blades during the fight atop the ruins in the waves. That's one thing that's bugged me before about the appearances of lightsabres either in the rain or underwater in previous Star Wars movies and TV episodes. These are burning hot blades... why wouldn't they be constantly reacting with water that touches them? I also liked how we finally got to see Leia's lightsabre, and how she used the twins' lightsabres in defeating her grandpappy.

• Speaking of which, I also really liked seeing the scene where Luke is training Leia! Finally! The digital de-aged faces on the stunt doubles also looked convincing. They've come a long way since Rogue One.

• I like how they discovered more defected ex-Stormtroopers; and also at the end where Jannah says that she doesn't know where she's from (reminding the audience about the long term cost of these Stormtroopers who were abducted as infants). And it was touching for Lando to say that he'd help Jannah find her roots.

• How cool was Dio? I didn't think I was gonna like this little hairdryer droid. Poor little dude has survived some serious abuse.

CONS

• The first act was too much. There was just too much exposition packed into it. It's part of the film's damage control (more on that later) and yeah... overwhelming. They would've been better off emulating the pace of the first act in Return of the Jedi; in that film several years have passed since the end of The Empire Strikes Back, but much of that exposition was told through simple things.
  e.g. Luke having a new costume and lightsabre and calling himself a Jedi Knight with better skills shows that, yeah, he's not the same rookie who had his butt handed back to him by Vader on Bespin. This was told matter-of-factly in part of telling the story rather than having the story need to explicitly give us this information. Less is more.

• Multiple MacGuffin Quests. This is the Wayfinder that locates the Sith Lord who commands the fleet that contains the ship that broadcasts the signal that deploys the fleet that blows up the planets that the goodies are defending with the help of the spy who works for the baddies who captured Chewbacca who carries the knife that holds the language that requires a hacker who can hack the droid who can translate the words that helps the heroes to defeat the Emperor who was manipulating Kylo who remembers he's Ben who is love with Rey who also loves Ben who saves her life who saved the galaxy which contains the house that Jack built! <phew>

• DAMAGE CONTROL! (and a lack of a singular vision)
  I think this is the cause behind much of this movies' woes. You have the two conflicting visions of JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson and... it's not working. *sigh* Compare and contrast this with the MCU where you have many different directors working on movies over an 11 year period that worked so much better, because Kevin Feige managed to keep them united under his singular over-arcing vision. Sure, individual directors were still given independent creativity, but they were all working to service the greater good that was the MCU story engine. I feel that Kathleen Kennedy could have been more disciplined with the directors... and this was only a trilogy, not a googology. Rian Johnson changed a lot of things, then JJ Abrams had to undo some of those changes while running with other changes while dealing with Princess Leia... plus Abrams wasn't given any additional time to work all this in -- DUDE! But I'm in two minds about the changes (see "Other" thoughts below)

• Rather convenient that Palpatine survived the fall to the Death Star reactor. Seems that great falls don't kill anyone in Star Wars. Not Darth Maul. Not Boba Fett. Not Palpatine. I bet that Mace Windu's probably still alive somewhere with a pair of mechanical arms

• Why is Finn Force sensitive now? He wasn't before.

• Did the Resistance run out of helmets?

OTHER (things that I'm not sure are pros or cons; or maybe both)

• Rey's background. This is part of the Damage Control that Abrams brought in. A Force Awakens hinted that Rey's parents might've been special, but then The Last Jedi confirmed that they were nobodies who sold her to repay debts or something. No wait, she's the freaking Emperor's granddaughter. Whaaaaa? I personally liked the idea that her parents really were noone special, but on the other hand being Palpy's granddaughter sorta explains why she's a Mary Sue. It's not a great explanation, but it's an explanation. The reason why I think it's an imperfect explanation is because it still doesn't explain why she's already highly skilled in the Force without any training. Even though Anakin Skywalker was created by Darth Plagueis and Sidious and was the most powerful Jedi with off-the-charts Midichlorians outnumbering that of Yoda's -- he still couldn't use Jedi weapons or powers without training. The only reason that he could pilot the Naboo fighter was because of his history in pod racing, and even then he was crashing and fumbling his way. Luke never used a lightsabre in A New Hope (beyond training on the Falcon) and he was able to get the Proton Torpedoes into the exhaust port with spiritual guidance from Obi-Wan Kenobi. Even in The Empire Strikes Back Obi-Wan appeared to Luke telling him to go find Yoda to complete his training. So the fact that they made Rey so over-powered did make the "nobody parents" story a bit weird. It still would've been possible to find another explanation as to why Rey is so powerful without making her the daughter of an already known powerful Force wielder, but yeah... this was the easy way. Which leads me to...

• SAFE. This is a very safe and low-risk Star Wars movie. Rey's background? Make her the Emperor's daughter. Easy fix. Kylo Ren's resolution? He turns to the Light Side. There you go. Chewbacca's death? Just kidding. Threepio's memory wipe. Kidding again. What did you expect, a consequential war?? Rose's character arc? Better not give her one. I get that she and Finn were useless characters in The Last Jedi, but that doesn't mean that she has to continue being useless. Jar Jar Binks was useless in The Phantom Menace, but they made him useful in Attack of the Clones! And Rose's romance with Finn? Forget that! I think that this was done deliberately after the backlash from The Last Jedi where a lot of people got angry about having their expectations subverted, so now they've swung to the opposite of extreme and are just giving fans what they want. The Dark Side loses, Light Side wins. I was hoping that Rey and Ben would become Grey Jedi - achieving a balance between the Light and Dark Sides. Nope! Light wins, Dark loses. Expectations defended! On one hand I blame the fans who cry when they tried to do new things, but on the other hand I blame Rian Johnson for going overboard with subverting expectations and making Disney more risk adverse. And movie studios are risk adverse by nature The same thing happened with Solo -- different directors made the movie muddled, but play it safe and make it conservative - don't subvert expectations. There you go.

• So uh... Han Solo... Force hallucination, right? He wasn't a Force ghost as he lacked that blue hued ethereal glow.

OVERALL
It felt like they didn't try to make a Star Wars movies that fans would like but rather a movie that fans won't hate. And I think part of that is due to the very toxic and verbal nature of the fandom -- it's as if the fans have scared Disney into passive submission so that they don't dare take any risks. But as they say, nothing ventured nothing gained. This movie didn't soar to new heights nor did it sink to new lows... it was just okay. It's as if Disney's saying, "Here's a Star Wars movie. Please don't hate us." It's a Star Wars movie that's trying to survive but not thrive. Look at what happened to Rose. After the stupid fan reaction to Kelly Marie Tran, it seems that they're too scared to do anything with her character. I think that it should have been her with Finn on that Star Destroyer deck trying to destroy the broadcast transmitter instead of Jannah.

Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker is a fine movie. Nothing mind blowing, but it's fine.

[Bidoofdude]

Finn being somewhat able to use a lightsaber efficiently could be a small contribution to the notion of him being force-sensitive. Has there even been an instance of a force-user that is straight up just not a lot but only a little force-sensitive?

[drifand]

I think I heard Bobba Fett didn't die either. < I could be wrong
According to the Novelisation the Emperor used all his energy when being thrown down to the reactor to create a wormhole to teleport but at the same time drained up almost his entire life, hence you got the draining the life of Rey and Ben scene to regain his strength.

I actually felt they went into Youtube and took out all the main hate about what fans didn't like, consolidate and analyse, and then hand pick what they wanted to fix to please the fans. There were a lot of fans wanting to see Rey as Palpatine's daughter as speculation. The main issue was they needed a super villain to come into play without us asking who the heck is that! It was bad enough with speculation of Snoke and it needed some closure.

Technically, I was a bit surprised I didn't mind the movie, I thought it was going to be quite bad after the previous episode.

I felt the Han Solo part was required, it needed that emotional push to totally make Ben understand what he has done and what he has to do going forward. Yes its not a force ghost, just a basic conscious in Ben's mind that his dad spoke to him.

Finn being force sensitive was unnecessary, I don't think it contributed imo.

I think the part when Chewie is still in grief over Leia's death could have been done up better. I dont know how to describe but felt insensitive or something , like he just got up and continued.