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LTTP: Rise of Skywalker OPEN SPOILERS

I really dislike going to theaters so I've been waiting for this to release on digital and I finally watched it the other day. I think its a fairly thematically competent final act to a trilogy that doesnt really exist. I'll just break down what I mean as briefly as possible

Kylo Ren's character with a disposition towards the light side but trying to be dark and Rey having a disposition to the dark side but trying to be light and all the complications and conflicts that would arise from this as well as the struggle of agency v. "destiny" is a pretty great foundation for a trilogy. Especially for this trilogy since it carries all the burden of the previous movies that constantly deal with prophecy, "chosen ones", balancing the force, etc etc. In terms of broad strokes, I think its solid.

The issue really comes up with the films themselves where its obvious that it was never really quite planned out this way and shoehorned into the 3rd movie. Yes, you can find threads of this in all 3 movies regarding Kylo Ren but Rey being revealed as a Palpatine and the addition of Palpatine himself really feels thrown in there to drive home the duality aspect.

As for Palpatine himself, I really think it would have been better if they scaled down the movie and maybe have Palpatine appear as a force ghost at some point instead of him being actually alive. It seems that he was added in along with his universe ending fleet and millions of loyal crew members (best kept secret in the universe??) just so they could have some kind of huge epic spectacle battle at the end.

Other than that, the movie is kinda messy, especially the first half where they seem to just rush through so much stuff (Palpatine, somehow has returned! McGuffin hunt,etc). I think the absence of Leia is really painful. It make sense that she would have trained with Luke and I think some Yoda-style mentoring scenes could have been really cool and a bit of a breather from the frantic pace of the rest of the movie. I could go on and on and on.

TL;DR: Its ok but could have been great if they set out to tell this story from the beginning of the trilogy.
 

TrainedRage

Banned
It was shit. Just bought it the other day and watched it for the first time.

It was like bang crash, cut to a new planet explosion, cut to a new planet lasers, cut to another planet small dialogue, cut to here cut to this place oh now back here. Oh and we need to randomly go here too!!

Now you are a good guy, and grandpa is dead. Also the entire galaxy showed up to help destroy the empire cuz...... Lando duh.

Fucking awful trash fire.
 

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
I saw it for the first time the other day and I can see why hardcore Star Wars fans hated it. But I’m not a Star Wars die hard fan. I’m very casual and to me it was just a dumb decent sci-fi flick. Nothing special about it, nothing terrible about it. Which is why I guess Star Wars fans hated it because they expect greatness from the series.
 
It was shit. Just bought it the other day and watched it for the first time.

It was like bang crash, cut to a new planet explosion, cut to a new planet lasers, cut to another planet small dialogue, cut to here cut to this place oh now back here. Oh and we need to randomly go here too!!

Now you are a good guy, and grandpa is dead. Also the entire galaxy showed up to help destroy the empire cuz...... Lando duh.

Fucking awful trash fire.


Did you plow your boss yet!?

Yeah I agree with you on a lot of it. The themes are pretty good but how they move around those themes feels like a kid on Ritalin. There are a lot of scenes that I absolutely hated. The hyperspace skipping being one of them (they literally tell you how dangerous it is in the first movie but because Poe has to be good at something he can just do it and jump straight into what appears to be a cloud city complete with death pillars everywhere with zero issues)

EDIT: I really hate how modern movies always feel like they need to "up the ante" until they just feel like cartoons.
 
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teezzy

Banned
The only Star Wars movie I'm sort of lukewarm on was Rogue One. Too cold with joyless characters for my liking. Rise of Skywalker was enjoyable, but nothing great.

Best two flicks in the franchise are still Empire and Last Jedi imho. Both excelled in their willingness to take risks. I wish Rise of Skywalker had done that instead of catering to filthy Last Jedi haters.
 
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teezzy

Banned
EDIT: I really hate how modern movies always feel like they need to "up the ante" until they just feel like cartoons.

Film is my favorite medium, and the abundance of overpolished turds out there is disheartening. They really lost the human element on all this modern blockbuster fluff; I miss the tangibility of older movies.

The good stuff is still out there, but you gotta dig real deep to get to it. Bless the hearts of dudes like Harmony Korine and Nicolas W. Refn for keeping the spirit alive. Scorsese said it best when he compared the MCU to theme park rides or whatever, sadly that goes well beyond Marvel movies.
 

Fbh

Member
It was pretty terrible.
Felt like some mid tier Marvel movie with a Star Wars skin.


The only good thing to come out of this shit show are the force heal memes:
563.gif
 

Grinchy

Banned
I like how they're just in some cave with some giant snake thing. The snake has an injury on the inside of its coil that can't be seen from where everyone is standing.

But Rey somehow senses this injury and also somehow just senses that she has the ability to heal it and somehow senses that the snake won't attack while she climbs over its coil to get to the injured side. And all of that was just rammed up our viewing asses because they had to introduce the fact that force healing is a thing now...just because it's a thing now.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
rewatching this, for the first time in non-potato cam, it was actually pretty decent. as a live action cartoon it is great. dumb as a brick but decent spectacle. at least it is super colorful and full of space fantasy stuff constantly thrown at you. TLJ as a bottle episode really drained the life out of it all, the most boring and real world non-fantasy entry of all. this one leans in all the way on the fantasy and i like that. IMO it is the best looking of the ST films. as far as Palpatine coming back, I'm glad Ian got a chance to play around one more time.
 
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888

Member
Movie was ass. From the crawl talking about a Shadow Emperor or something. I was like WTF.

So from what I see about the Disney Trilogy is everyone dies from expending too much energy.

Luke dies using all his energy.
Leia dies using all her energy, tho I was asleep for this part, going off my Wife's retelling of it.
Rey dies of expending all of her energy.
Ben dies of expending all of his energy to resurrect Rey.
Emperor dies of his own energy being redirected to him.

Unless I watched something totally different that was what I got from it.
 

Dazrael

Member
The Last Jedi took risks? Bwahaha

After watching TROS again I felt that, while a daft notion, the film did at least explain what the force healing was all about. It was exclusively unique to Rey and Kylo as they were a dyad. Even Palpatine mentions a connection that only comes along in generations, hence he was able to heal himself. It was their power, not a common Jedi power. Silly yeah but it was explained.

The light speed skipping I didn’t mind either because even though it was a thing it was frowned upon as being pretty much impossibility and luck based, not something you could do all the time. Unlike light speed ramming which given the amount of exact co-ordinates needed would work every time. If it takes a lot of calculations to avoid objects then surely it could take as many to collide with them. That’s why the “one in a million” remark for the Holdo Manoeuvre irked me.

I also wondered why it took Kylo that long to realise that Rey was in his quarters when she smashed Vader’s helmet...she was holding the dagger that could only be in his quarters the entire time. The visor in his helmet must have fogged up.

At the end the day it was an enjoyable film. A bad Star Wars film with shitty writing and worse editing but fun nonetheless.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
oh yeah but the whole ST has been anime from day one. i mean, what is Rose if not a 1:1 anime fangirl character?

funny thing on rewatch is, JJ pretty much addressed all of Rian's "developments". like the part where the Emperor shoots lightning at all of the ships, that is an homage JJ was trying to do to the light speed effects glory shot. there is also a bit where Rey and Ben take on the red guards from ROTJ, itself a reference to Rian's throne room scene.

kind of amazed they have released zero deleted scenes from this. it sounds like there might be another half a movie worth of material they shot for it. truly, any hope it had of being a coherent thoughtful movie was murdered by the deadline.
 

teezzy

Banned
The Last Jedi took risks? Bwahaha

Absolutely. The cold and distant portrayal of Luke alone had fans in an uproar. Made the character so much more interesting rather than Rey finding Luke and him just Superman-ing his way through the flick.

Cinematography was some of the best in the series, and that throne room scene may be my favorite Star Wars fight ever. Same goes for the intimate conversation between Luke and Yoda. Great moments, all of them.

Also the movie was just weird dude, from those tripped out Rey scenes to this...

giphy.webp


I loved Last Jedi. Even all the Casino heist stuff with Del Toro was fantastic. I really hope this film is more appreciated as time goes on. It's easily the most interesting of the Disney trilogy.
 

Werewolf Jones

Gold Member
The throne room fight is just them swaying light sabers around fighting off red guards who somehow managed to get away with using Bloodborne trick weapons and didn't get sued.
 
Dual Of The Fates is the real episode IX. It solidifies a purpose for the trilogy, expands on the themes of TLJ instead of ignoring them, and on top of immaculate world building brings everyone's arc (even Finn's!) to a satisfying conclusion.

Then Carrie Fisher died and we got the nonsense fanfiction that is TROS instead.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
Absolutely. The cold and distant portrayal of Luke alone had fans in an uproar. Made the character so much more interesting rather than Rey finding Luke and him just Superman-ing his way through the flick.

Cinematography was some of the best in the series, and that throne room scene may be my favorite Star Wars fight ever. Same goes for the intimate conversation between Luke and Yoda. Great moments, all of them.

Also the movie was just weird dude, from those tripped out Rey scenes to this...

giphy.webp


I loved Last Jedi. Even all the Casino heist stuff with Del Toro was fantastic. I really hope this film is more appreciated as time goes on. It's easily the most interesting of the Disney trilogy.
the movie was berift of ideas. new aliens, new robots, new planets, all of these were lowest effort possible. most of the movie is large chunks of Empire, Jedi, and A New Hope, cut together and out of sequence. it is hardly original and is as much as retread as TFA was.

i would not mind a turn of Luke as a villain. that was almost expected. remember that people were still hyped even though they hinted "It's time for the Jedi to end". what I had a problem with was there was nothing there. you learned nothing. his lessons and criticism about the PT Jedi was just message board stuff. not intresting lore. it added nothing.

visually, the island was uninteresting as well. they spend nearly half the movie on this island off the coast of Ireland. it's a beautiful place but it just looks like a regular Earth island. the sky looks the same. it's kind of overcast. there are no crazy colors or weird geography to indicate is a fantastical other world. it looks realistic. this is not why i watch pulp fantasy movies.

the strawman of superman Luke is absurd. Luke has never done any of what you claim people want, yet they love him just the same. Luke utterly failed at both training with Yoda and saving his friends in Empire and yet that is people's favorite movie. this strawman does not exist.

the fact is Rian could have come up with any number of stories. you act like there are two possibilities, Rians, and this strawman Superman Luke. there is literally and infinity of possibilities for the story following TFA. perhaps Luke is trapped on the island by some dark side magic, and he and Rey explore some spooky hidden catacombs with undead Sith cultists. perhaps the Knights of Ren track him down by following Rey and Kylo Ren and Snoke are teaming up to locate the planet, the film climaxing with a mutli generational Sith-Jedi duel. perhaps 5 minutes into the movie, Rey starts noticing something is up with Luke, she tries to murder him, and it reveals that this Luke was really a Sith Witch, who escapes into caverns beneath the planet. again, there are literally millions of ideas and more.

Rian instead went with someone who spends most of their time complaining. complaining that they failed, and also complaining that their elders failed as well. Luke complains to Rey. Holdo complains to Poe. Rose complains to Finn. this is not compelling sci fi fantasy. this is not entertaining viewing, even. it is annoying. this is Twitter commentary masquerading as a movie.

Luke was basically Rian's mouthpiece to say extremely stupid things like equating the Jedi and Sith as moral equals. it is this full adoption of Moral Relativism which killed the franchise. it has nothing to do with Superman Luke. the worst thing is that Rian made Luke into the first suicide casualty of The Force. don't use The Force, kids, or you might die. this is a first in the series, a series where Yoda explained how "size matters not", yet apparently the Force is now tied to physical effort. this huge lore mistake Rian made, along with the teleportation of matter, paved the way for the lightsaber passing stuff in RoS. IMO they should have pushed it further but apparently you can't have character do crazy cool feats of magic because that's fanservice.

the funny thing about mocking people who thought Luke would save the day is, this is exactly what Leia was hoping for throughout TFA. Rian is almost mocking that hope. "Luke Skywalker has vanished!" were the first words, she had sent out Poe to search for Luke, Rey getting that map to Luke was of utmost importance. so to say "LOL you thought Luke would be a hero?" is kind of spitting in Leia's face. which doesn't make any sense. why would you undercut the hopes and dreams of the most beloved, dearly departed character in the series? kind of shocking how they decided to not go with a softer, less mocking tone, but hey, they fucked up, and it cost them billions.

the sea cow is a funny Family Guy style gag. funny the first time. when i learned how much it cost to make and transport, when the film is so berift of dramatic scenery or pulp sci fi fantasy art design, i rolled my eyes. this is why the producers love Rian, he does things cheap, he doesn't make giant sets or complicated things w his movie. it's mostly a bottle episode. the Jedi tree (whatever the hell that is??) looks like a Game of Thrones set. like a TV show. im sorry, Rian was not interested in creating a world, in growing the universe. there is nothing there. it makes rewatching this pointless. SW was always about delivering new sci fi stuff. not wasting 2 1/2 hours of your time with deconstructionist pablum. having him direct the second film was a HUGE miscalculation. next time they need to hire someone with ideas and an imagination.
 
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Ixiah

Banned
Id rather would have watched Uwe Boll direct all 3 Movies, at least i could laugh at them.
7, ESPECIALLY 8 and 9 Storys felt like they would get laughed out the Door if someone submitted them to a SW fanfiction Forum.
Unbelievable that writers got paid to write this Shit.
 
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The Last Jedi took risks? Bwahaha

After watching TROS again I felt that, while a daft notion, the film did at least explain what the force healing was all about. It was exclusively unique to Rey and Kylo as they were a dyad. Even Palpatine mentions a connection that only comes along in generations, hence he was able to heal himself. It was their power, not a common Jedi power. Silly yeah but it was explained.

The light speed skipping I didn’t mind either because even though it was a thing it was frowned upon as being pretty much impossibility and luck based, not something you could do all the time. Unlike light speed ramming which given the amount of exact co-ordinates needed would work every time. If it takes a lot of calculations to avoid objects then surely it could take as many to collide with them. That’s why the “one in a million” remark for the Holdo Manoeuvre irked me.

I also wondered why it took Kylo that long to realise that Rey was in his quarters when she smashed Vader’s helmet...she was holding the dagger that could only be in his quarters the entire time. The visor in his helmet must have fogged up.

At the end the day it was an enjoyable film. A bad Star Wars film with shitty writing and worse editing but fun nonetheless.
The Last Jedi was like an edgy meme that everyone ultimately just finds cringey.
 

Dazrael

Member
I loved Last Jedi. Even all the Casino heist stuff with Del Toro was fantastic. I really hope this film is more appreciated as time goes on. It's easily the most interesting of the Disney trilogy.

You are probably the only person I’ve heard of that likes the Canto Bight stuff. I thought it was universally reviled, even by fans of the film.

TLJ made promises to take risks but ultimately fell back on time worn tropes that go nowhere. I’ll admit that I intrigued about where elements of the story were going: Luke’s abandonment of the Jedi, Kylo Ren offering his hand to Rey to create something new out of the ashes of the Jedi and the Sith, Rey being no one. I felt like something new was going to happen...but none of these threads go anywhere.

Luke is just portrayed as a miserable defeatist who doesn’t even travel to face Ren, he just FaceTime’s him and then makes a witty quip about “seeing him around” and then dies! His turn of heroism felt hollow and was meant to usher in Rey to really save the day.

Rey turns down Ren and he just descends back into being a pantomime villain. The scene in the AT-AT when he doesn’t want them to stop firing on “Luke”....”he’s behind yooooou” *sigh* Johnson had a chance at making a real change to the status quo of the Force but threw it away for panto giggles.

Rey being no-one was just an attempt at misdirection rather than subversion. It, along with other story choices, left the film with nowhere to go. It ended with a whimper. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

It’s awesome if you like the film, it is a beautifully shot film I agree, but it’s hardly a classic I’m afraid. It made me hate the characters I’d grown to like in The Force Awakens. And that is insane if you think about it. So if JJ deserves kudos for anything about TROS it’s that he made me like the characters again. And I guess that is good enough for me.
 

Fbh

Member
"I have all the Sith inside me."

Pulls out second lightsaber.

"And I have all the Jedi inside me."

Then proceeds to push back his lightning blast by duel wielding.

Actual Japanese cartoon garbage in the worst way possible.

As I said, mid tier Marvel Movie.

The entire thing was a 2 hours long, action packed fetch quest filled with mostly bad "comedic" dialog, some cheap drama and a final fight worthy of "random lesser known Marvel character origin story that we have to introduce before the next avengers" instead of, you know, the supposedly final chapter of a 40+ years old saga.
 

Airola

Member
Absolutely. The cold and distant portrayal of Luke alone had fans in an uproar. Made the character so much more interesting rather than Rey finding Luke and him just Superman-ing his way through the flick.

Cinematography was some of the best in the series, and that throne room scene may be my favorite Star Wars fight ever. Same goes for the intimate conversation between Luke and Yoda. Great moments, all of them.

Also the movie was just weird dude, from those tripped out Rey scenes to this...

giphy.webp


I loved Last Jedi. Even all the Casino heist stuff with Del Toro was fantastic. I really hope this film is more appreciated as time goes on. It's easily the most interesting of the Disney trilogy.

It's clearly the most memorable of the new movies (including Rogue One and Solo). Some hate it, some don't, but it still has more scenes that I still actually can remember than any of the other new ones.
 
It was shit. Just bought it the other day and watched it for the first time.

It was like bang crash, cut to a new planet explosion, cut to a new planet lasers, cut to another planet small dialogue, cut to here cut to this place oh now back here. Oh and we need to randomly go here too!!

Now you are a good guy, and grandpa is dead. Also the entire galaxy showed up to help destroy the empire cuz...... Lando duh.

Fucking awful trash fire.

Why would you buy a movie you have never seen?
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
watched the full documentary last night. it was really good! loved all the BTS OT stuff. that crazy lady in charge of stunts was pretty awesome to watch.

man it seems like Daisy really didn't like Episode 8. at one point she mentions how she is glad the "Rey & Kylo" stuff from 8 was ignored and they went back to the TFA relationship. pretty sure she is anti Reylo
 

Trogdor1123

Gold Member
Wife and I just watched it... It is actually awful. Makes little sense and really disappoints.

The acting wasn't that bad actually, the story made no sense though. At all. God it's bad
 
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