Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker had its premiere last night at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood. Non-Spoiler reviews and Twitter mentions are trickling out and they're overwhelmingly positive.
I'll be seeing the film Thursday night, 6:30pm PST but I'm not sure if I'll have time to post because we're traveling for the holidays, leaving at 4am the next morning. If I can't post Thursday evening, I'll get to it at some point over the weekend, maybe after I've seen it a second time.
It's a Spoiler thread but let's try to keep the real spoilery stuff in the Spoiler Tags through the weekend, just so we don't ruin the movie for someone that accidentally clicks on the thread.
Originally Posted by Frazod:
From everything I've read and heard it doesn't suck as much as the last one. At least that's a step in the right direction.
Originally Posted by Prison Bitch:
So Palpatine’s sith followers were all blown up in the arena along with him, therefore there are none left now to “Freddy Kruger” him ad infinitum?
I didn’t think they were actual people when I watch it. I thought it was more like the souls of previous Sith. [Reply]
Can any Star Wars nerd out there tell me if there was anything to one of those First Order officer grunts I forgot the name of who basically became the bigwig general on the main star destroyer? He said to the emperor something like, "I will serve you like I always have in the past." So is he some random fucking callback character from the OT who was in one scene for 5 seconds that I'm supposed to care about? [Reply]
1. All the people in the sith arena are all the dead sith. People weren't just sitting around. It was empty until Palpatine got into her dome.
2. There weren't that many people there. Those star destroyers didn't have massive crews like the originals did, and there were a few people there taking care of palpatine, but yeah, I get it, the people are a problem.
3. I don't have a problem with force healing. She was obviously reading the instructions - which a room full of men (Jedi council) would never do :-). And it makes sense that there wouldn't be a ton of study of the original documents when the Jedi got into galaxy managing. I mean hell, how much do current leaders read the Federalist papers or anything like that? Have any of you guys in business ever read the bylaws at work? I can buy it.
My thoughts about the movie:
It was pretty ham fisted and some aspects were certainly ridiculous, but let's be real here, a lot of the originals, especially ANH were goddamned ridiculous. There is as lot of stuff that doesn't work for me, but quite a bit does. Just like TLJ, I think it's a lot better than people give it credit for.
IMO everything went to shit when JJ remade ANH with TFA, lockstep. If you remember, there was a lot of pushback on that, becuase, "cut the shit, that's just ANH." So then they thought they had to go a different way with TLJ, which, IMO (and virtually no one elses), really worked for me. They tried all the shit that Star Wars has been and it failed, so they needed to go a different way - which makes sense given the pushback to TFA. But everybody hated that so they had to change course AGAIN to make this one. Anyone that has paid attention in the last decade or so has known that chasing social media fickleness is an exercise in futility.
I like TLJ a lot better than than ROS and I wish they wouldn't have went out of their way to retcon a lot of this stuff, but the whole trilogy is pretty much a visionless mess.
I have no problem with anything having to do with Fisher. It was noticable, but that's just a tough spot. No problem on my end.
I didn't really have a ton of trouble with the aspects of the movie other than Palpatine. I wish they would have done something different. Hell, the Snoke that was cut in half being an Astral projection would have been better. I think the movie suffers from the same problem the Nolan Batman trilogy did. At that point in the story there had to be a BIG bad, and it just didn't really fit in the story. Nolan made it work better than JJ did, but more a more coherent plan should have been made up front.
I really liked the Ben arc, them erasing the scar on his face after Rey dusted his ass and brought him back was a really good touch. I didn't really like Driver much at all up to this point, but I think this movie did the most with his character and generally made the most sense.
I didn't hate the Fin and Poe arcs as much as most, even if they were rushed. I think that was eventually Poe's story, which Rian Johnson kind of fucked up, but Leia had to smack him around some to learn how to lead. Fin is the Han Solo type, where he's a guy that gets things done, but not a general or anything.
I like the burying of the skywalker sabers in the sand. I understand that is getting panned in a lot of places, but I liked it. It kind of beat you over the head that we're putting this story to bed, but it might have been kind of necessary given how much they bring everyone back. I haven't done any looking into what the yellow sabet means, but I'm thinking it means a balanced approach, not light only or dark only, but a balance that the original Jedi stuff used to talk about. That would put an end to the light/dark battle, and allow the studio to go different directions with future properties.
This is a pretty good watch.
Apparently the Lucas Film Story group, which keeps track of all the shit Star Wars is and is not was used in this film, which explains a bunch of fuck ups.
Given what this dude says it seems ham fisted because they ham fisted the shit out of it. Which makes me wonder, WTF they were doing pushing it out that hard if you can't even bring in the Lucas Film Story group? Seems like real bad decision making on the studio part, but maybe they were just thinking that it was going to get destroyed on Social Media because people are so emotionally vested in the original storyline that they weren't going to be happy with anything, so they just said fuck it put it out.
All in all, I think it was OK, not paradigm changing but certainly not a bad film, or the worst thing ever, which a lot of people are putting out. I think it is really easy in the era of Social Media to sensationalize EVERYTHING. So there is no way that anyone that requires likes to make money will say, "it had problems but I had a good time." So it's easy to get bombarded by negativity by social media personalities trying to one up their sensationalized hate and let that skew our judgement. [Reply]
The whole concept of all the Sith in Palpatine and all the Jedi in Rey is flawed. Sith don't help other Sith by nature. They were always at each other's throats and teamed up to further their own goals. So the only way those entities in the stands were Sith is if Palpatine subjugated them to power himself up. And they wouldn't be chanting and dancing either.
On to the Jedi. Jedi are taught to have little to no attachments to others. They have to keep their emotions in check. No favoritism or partiality and yet all these previous Jedi go to Rey from where? Where have they been this whole time? If you can call on all previous Jedi for help then how do any Jedi lose? It's asinine tbh. [Reply]
I think it’s more so that the sith/Jedi are both dying breeds. According to these movies(and I could be wrong), Rey, Kyle/Ben, and Palpatine were the last ones left. I think that’s why all the former Jedi were in Reys corner, because she’s all that was left.
Originally Posted by Setsuna:
The whole concept of all the Sith in Palpatine and all the Jedi in Rey is flawed. Sith don't help other Sith by nature. They were always at each other's throats and teamed up to further their own goals. So the only way those entities in the stands were Sith is if Palpatine subjugated them to power himself up. And they wouldn't be chanting and dancing either.
On to the Jedi. Jedi are taught to have little to no attachments to others. They have to keep their emotions in check. No favoritism or partiality and yet all these previous Jedi go to Rey from where? Where have they been this whole time? If you can call on all previous Jedi for help then how do any Jedi lose? It's asinine tbh.
The take I was hoping they’d take is that the Sith always survive into a new body and that’s the reason there are two. When the time comes the second Sith serves as a body for their master which is a single entity that takes different bodies/entities thru time. The whole legacy approach is very Dark Empire but I always liked it. Made no sense why the Emperor was actually there in Darth Sidious form. [Reply]
Well shit, I actually really enjoyed it. Far better than I expected; it was better than Force Awakens, and exponentially better than the abortion that was Last Jedi. Sure, it was lame and silly in parts, and inconsistent with the earlier movies, but that's to be expected.
And mainly there were no heavy-handed, offensive political overtones in this one. [Reply]