I liked it on its own merits. I certainly had fun watching it. But I hated it for how it tried its hardest to retcon everything about Last Jedi. It's apparent that Abrams wanted to make a trilogy and stuffed two movies of ideas into this one.

Palpatine as a third movie villain is bad. Would have worked if introduced in the second movie. Instead, second movie set up Kylo as antagonist who had his chance to turn and didn't - him and the First Order were what the first two movies built towards and we got basically nothing from the First Order, and Kylo Ren was turned into a diamond in the rough deuteragonist.

Even down to the details, it wants to undo everything TLJ ever did. "Hey, that's really cool that Luke used an s-foil off the X-wing as his hut's door. Oop here's the X-wing with all four s-foils, nvm."

Edit: I'll write more after waking up, this is disjointed and bleh. Having someone open and close a trilogy with someone else doing the middle act was always going to be unfair to the middle movie, which I greatly enjoyed. Gotta sit and stew on it and type at a computer when I'm back at it tomorrow rather than on my phone in bed.

Morning, and yeah, I'm gonna see it another couple times to live with it before trying tk set my thoughts in cement. I'm going to say that I don't think Kylo earned his redemption and I *know* he didn't earn a kiss from the one he abused so heavily through the saga. The rest, I'm upset that it's not the movie I wanted, and J need to work past that myself.

Yeah, I'll probably come around on the redemption. That's one of those things where it's not the movie I wanted, but I'll get over it.

Better version - he heals her, she wakes up, sees him. They smile. Then he dies. She cries, kisses his forehead; as she does, he fades away.

*pokes head in*

*decides to keep powder dry*

*pulls head out*

My bad.

"older General" ?!

Mate, that's Richard E. Grant!

Regan, sorry, I was a dick up there. Should have just nicely pointed out that you missed it. I had gone through a break up not 10 minutes earlier and needed to clear my mind by getting on a forum and talking about Star Wars and was an asshole instead. I'm sorry dude.

This movie and TLJ are polar opposites for me. I absolutely love the themes that TLJ raised and explored, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. It's nonsensical at times and, besides Kylo/Rey/Luke/Yoda for a second, the remaining 90% of the movie is completely unsatisfying and is just sort of pointless.

This movie, on the other hand, is...well, thematically and as a story, as everyone said it's a mess. But it's a *glorious* mess. This one fits in the same bucket as Solo for me: it's damn stupid, but man is it fun. A satisfying end to the Star Wars saga it is most definitely *not,* but in many ways this movie gave me much of what I missed from the other two:

-The gang felt like a gang. It's an ensemble film, and IMO that is integral to "feeling like Star Wars." This one got that right.
-It's fast-paced, perhaps to a fault, but I really appreciated that this film had *energy.*
-The Emperor and all that makes absolutely zero goddamn sense, but in a batshit-crazy EU kind of way. The whole movie felt like "fuck it, let's go for it," and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't smiling like an idiot when Palpatine Force-lightning'd an entire fleet of ships out of the sky. Like, WHAT. It's so over the top and fucking stupid that I kind of love it.
-Speaking EU-type stuff, a lot of the imagery is just...again, stupid as fuck and not at all explained and doesn't really matter, but a lot of the imagery is fucking awesome. I have no idea who was in that absurdly giant Rebel fleet, but damn it was a fun dogfight. The Emperor being hooked up to some...mechanical arm...life support thing...with mangled skin and smoky blind eyes...surrounded by tens of thousands of black hooded figures who are apparently loads of Sith we've never heard about...all stupid, all completely unnecessary, and all fucking awesome.
-Billy Dee Williams seems literally unable to act at this point, but he seemed real happy to be there, so that's cool I guess.
-Babu Frink FTW. Easily one of my favorite characters in all of Star Wars in that "tiny side character a la Salacious Crumb echelon."

It occurs to me that this isn't so much an ending to the story so much as it is a coked-up celebration of the whole saga that you'll probably regret in the morning, and it'll all be a blur, but you'll probably be sure that you enjoyed yourself somewhat, even if you maybe regret it.

So, TLJ is a nutritious meal that doesn't taste very good as it goes down. TROS is pure candy. Less and less satisfying the more I think about it, and very probably the worst of the three sequel films, but also very probably the most *enjoyable.* It's like Transformers as Star Wars.

I enjoyed the movie a whole bunch. It’s a big ol’ space adventure that strings together a bunch of set pieces with some character drama in between, and to me, that’s how you do a Star Wars. I feel like people who didn’t enjoy it don’t have their expectations properly calibrated for the fantasy romp whose target demographic includes under 10 year olds.

I felt like it tied in to The Last Jedi in enough ways that the whole trilogy does feel like a single story, albeit one with a few rough gear shifts. Really, that’s an issue that should’ve been fixed in 2012 by making a more solid outline for the trilogy, and not the fault of any individual film or director.

Favourite throwaway moment was the muppet-looking hand puppet that was Lando’s driver, shouting ‘okay!’ with all the exuberance of a golden retriever puppy chasing a ball.

So, I saw The Rise of Skywalker twice on opening day. The first time around, I really did not like it. I wouldn't say I particularly hated the film or anything, it just didn't do anything for me. For the entire movie, I felt nothing. I had to go back for a second time to either see if I was wrong in the first place or make my peace with it. And well...I kinda liked it?

Don't get me wrong, I still don't love it. If I were to rank them all, it would probably come in at dead last. But after just letting go of all the baggage, I was able to just relax and take the film for what it is - a (clunky) big, sprawling, space opera. But unlike The Last Jedi, where the more I thought about it, the more I appreciated it - The Rise of Skywalker just doesn't have that lasting effect.

I feel like I have so much to say about this film, and at the same time - I really don't want to, the internet has enough negativity out there. I started typing this post with the intent of laying out all my thoughts about TROS - but fuck that. I know people who didn't like TLJ so much that it has consumed them, and almost become tied to their identity. Fuck. That.

"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny".

I'm not gonna pretend that I don't have any problems with this movie, I do - a whole bunch of 'em (and Faldor has the chat logs to prove it), but to paraphrase a quote from the last film, I don't want to fight what I hate. I want to cherish what I love.

Like Babu Frik. Babu Frik is awesome.

The Star Wars saga has meant so much to me throughout pretty much my entire life. It's just a shame that this saga went out, not with a bang - but with a whimper.

Now that's an opinion I can get behind. I haven't kept up with these here Star Wars, but I enjoyed listening to Jonathan Mann follow up his infinitely catchy Baby Yoda song with this:

Just got back from an IMAX3D showing.  Wow.   Loved the sound and the music.  The score is doing so much work.  It's JJ, and I've read this thread so I know the whole thing is basically gibberish, but I literally can't remember what just happened, and the parts I do remember don't make a lot of sense.  Gonna hafta see it a couple more time before I can figure out what just happened.

Last edited by Beeg (2019-12-23 18:23:28)