Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - The Saga Ends (maybe) - SPOILERS

giant_anteater said:
Saw the film last night. To keep it spoiler free - it’s purely a sequel to Force Awakens. Other than the deaths of Snoke and Luke the events of Last Jedi have little to no impact on the film.

The biggest problem this trilogy has had is that there has clearly been no planning or forethought. I’m admittedly a massive Star Wars apologist, and enjoy all the films in their own right, including this one; but it doesn’t work as a finale. Say whatever you like about George Lucas and the prequels, but at least those films had a through line. A beginning point and an end point. George knew what he was doing whereas Kathleen Kennedy and they ‘story group’ seem to have just made all this up as they go along.
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Doesn't surprise me that they ignored TLJ, and that explains why many TLJ fans online are now blaming the "racist/sexist toxic TLJ haters" for forcing Disney to make a sequel which "ruins" TLJ...

It's already been admitted by several people involved in Lucasfilm that this trilogy was made without any plan of where it was going. Along with Rian throwing out JJ's plot points moving from TFA to TLJ, it's even come out that Rian wrote TLJ before TFA was even finished and that Rian never redrafted his script. Most movies go through multiple redrafts before being finalized, but Rian can be quoted in an interview as refusing to use anything other than his first draft. As for Kathleen Kennedy, her entire motivation behind making SW movies is simply "sell toys, people will buy anything SW". It's even been reported that she simply tells the directors to "do whatever you want" and doesn't even check in on the progress until late in the game. This is reportedly the reason why both Rogue One and Solo were either half-reshot, or entirely reshot with the directors of both being fired halfway through production and replaced. She told them to do what they wanted, they did it, she never checked in on their progress until the movie's were already filmed, and then didn't like their direction so fired and replaced them. It's horribly sloppy management.

People say SW is doing great regardless of the "toxic fandom" (The Fandom Menace I think is what they call them?) but look at where we're at. Solo lost money at the box office due to Kennedy's reshoots, all of the announced non-episodic films have either been cancelled or shifted to Disney+ series, SW merchandise is selling well below expectations, the Galaxy's Edge amusement park attendance well below expectations, and now this. Disney bought Lucasfilm for $4billion, not to mention all of the costs associated with making all of these properties along with all of those unsold Rose Tico dolls. People like to claim that they've already made their money back, but factually they have not and they are increasingly unlikely to. Five years ago, hell even three years ago it'd be insane to say but Disney buying SW was a bad investment and they need to course correct big time if they want the franchise to keep the longevity it spent three decades establishing.

~Thylo
 
ThylacineAlive said:
Doesn't surprise me that they ignored TLJ, and that explains why many TLJ fans online are now blaming the "racist/sexist toxic TLJ haters" for forcing Disney to make a sequel which "ruins" TLJ...

It's already been admitted by several people involved in Lucasfilm that this trilogy was made without any plan of where it was going. Along with Rian throwing out JJ's plot points moving from TFA to TLJ, it's even come out that Rian wrote TLJ before TFA was even finished and that Rian never redrafted his script. Most movies go through multiple redrafts before being finalized, but Rian can be quoted in an interview as refusing to use anything other than his first draft. As for Kathleen Kennedy, her entire motivation behind making SW movies is simply "sell toys, people will buy anything SW". It's even been reported that she simply tells the directors to "do whatever you want" and doesn't even check in on the progress until late in the game. This is reportedly the reason why both Rogue One and Solo were either half-reshot, or entirely reshot with the directors of both being fired halfway through production and replaced. She told them to do what they wanted, they did it, she never checked in on their progress until the movie's were already filmed, and then didn't like their direction so fired and replaced them. It's horribly sloppy management.

People say SW is doing great regardless of the "toxic fandom" (The Fandom Menace I think is what they call them?) but look at where we're at. Solo lost money at the box office due to Kennedy's reshoots, all of the announced non-episodic films have either been cancelled or shifted to Disney+ series, SW merchandise is selling well below expectations, the Galaxy's Edge amusement park attendance well below expectations, and now this. Disney bought Lucasfilm for $4billion, not to mention all of the costs associated with making all of these properties along with all of those unsold Rose Tico dolls. People like to claim that they've already made their money back, but factually they have not and they are increasingly unlikely to. Five years ago, hell even three years ago it'd be insane to say but Disney buying SW was a bad investment and they need to course correct big time if they want the franchise to keep the longevity it spent three decades establishing.

~Thylo
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Well, you can’t really deny that a very vocal minority of Star Wars fandom is completely toxic(see Kelly Marie-Tran/Ahmed Best). However that can’t really be to blame for this mess. I predict that Lucasfilm will focus their time on Indy5 and as soon as that’s out Kennedy will be dumped and a replacement found. I have fingers crossed for Dave Filloni.

Also, let’s not forget that Colin Trevorrow was fired as director for this film well into production as well, and they pretty much scrapped all his work and went straight back to the drawing board, meaning that the production cycle on ep9 was slashed in half and the film rushed out!

It’s crazy to think this is Disney, the same studio who released the meticulously put together 20+ film saga that is the MCU, and arguably completely nailed the landing, and yet they couldn’t map out a 3 film story for Star Wars.

I saw an interesting point on Reddit yesterday; it was mentioned that there was 5 years of behind the scenes production on the Lord of the Rings trilogy before they even started filming them, and they already had the full stories mapped out for them. Between Disney buying Star Wars and the release of TFA it only about 3 years. I still love Star Wars, but it’s clear that Lucasfilm jumped the gun big time.
 
giant_anteater said:
Well, you can’t really deny that a very vocal minority of Star Wars fandom is completely toxic(see Kelly Marie-Tran/Ahmed Best). However that can’t really be to blame for this mess. I predict that Lucasfilm will focus their time on Indy5 and as soon as that’s out Kennedy will be dumped and a replacement found. I have fingers crossed for Dave Filloni.

Also, let’s not forget that Colin Trevorrow was fired as director for this film well into production as well, and they pretty much scrapped all his work and went straight back to the drawing board, meaning that the production cycle on ep9 was slashed in half and the film rushed out!

It’s crazy to think this is Disney, the same studio who released the meticulously put together 20+ film saga that is the MCU, and arguably completely nailed the landing, and yet they couldn’t map out a 3 film story for Star Wars.

I saw an interesting point on Reddit yesterday; it was mentioned that there was 5 years of behind the scenes production on the Lord of the Rings trilogy before they even started filming them, and they already had the full stories mapped out for them. Between Disney buying Star Wars and the release of TFA it only about 3 years. I still love Star Wars, but it’s clear that Lucasfilm jumped the gun big time.
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It's never been proven that Kelly Marie-Tran quit social media because of fan backlash to be fair, although I do think that was likely the case. Still, there's a difference between that minority and the vocal group that dislike the Disney StarWars films. The Fandom Menace is a group of mostly independent critics who are definitely not racist, sexist, homophobic, or anything else that people accuse them of being (very often these critics are apart of the minority groups they're told they hate...) but rather just a group of very passionate SW fans who hate the direction Disney has been heading in. Over the past year it's become increasingly common for studios to simply blame the fans for being "toxic" and "hateful" when they dislike something as opposed to owning up to their own mistakes. Take Game of Thrones season 8. Hardly anyone liked that yet HBO and several senior members of the crew continue to blame the fans for them not liking the ending. It's the same with SW. No one who disliked the TLJ is to blame for how Rise of Skywalker turned out (well maybe except for JJ), and anyone who blames them are just looking for scapegoats and strawmen. "Toxic masculinity" and "TLJ hate" did not ruin the saga, the saga ruined the saga.

Well as far as the MCU goes, remember that Disney did not buy the rights from Paramount until after the first Avengers movie came out so the track was already set before Disney involvement. Still, I think the Marvel-Lucasfilm comparison just proves how important competent leadership is. Kevin Feige has led the MCU since day 1 and he's been involved in each and other film along the way to ensure that the movies are all leading in the same direction. The MCU isn't perfect and neither is their continuity, however the endgame (pun intended) has always been clear and they've always had the proper guidance to help aim towards it. These are not things that Lucasfilm has had lately.

~Thylo
 
I just saw the the film Thursday evening. I do have a lot to say about this one...

Let me start by saying, there is a whole lot of movie in this movie. Like A LOT! Early reviews called the movie rushed and I definitely think that is its downfall. So many different things happen within the first 10 minutes with no time to breath and I couldn't even process it all at first. Pacing is definitely off mainly in the first half of the film and this likely to do with JJ attempting to undo many of the events of The Last Jedi. As @giant_anteater said besides Snoke and Luke dying, you could probably skip The Last Jedi entirely and still be able to understand what happening. Because of this, much of the setup of new plot points happens in this movie which is why it reals so rushed and convoluted.

However, I will say that I did like this movie. It's not great, but its not bad. It's good, its fun to watch and I'll probably watch it again. Let me begin with the things I liked about this movie (No Spoilers).
  • Original trilogy characters like Chewbacca and C3PO actually do things this time around. It's great to see that these characters - that in The Last Jedi were pretty useless and just felt like props - actually have an effect on the plot. Lando was also great to have back, even though his screen time is a bit more limited than I had hoped.
  • Palpatine is awesome! We didn't really get an explanation for how hes still alive, but the way hes presented in this film is honestly really cool. He almost looks zombie like and is genuinely pretty scary.
  • They did about as good of a job as you could have asked for when it comes to integrating Leia into the movie. Her dialogue is kept very vague - understandably so - but it works well enough.
  • Kylo Ren actually feels like a threat again. Hes arguably more menacing in this movie than hes ever been throughout this whole trilogy.
  • The "Force FaceTime Calls" from The Last Jedi have been expanded upon and now are actually pretty fun to watch play out. The one near the end of the film in particular is pretty cool.
  • As expected, this movie is downright gorgeous to look at. The visual effects are honestly the best in series history and makes even the simplest of scene more interesting.
  • Its great to finally get backstory to Poe, who until now has only really been known for being a good pilot.
  • Everything involving Luke was great.
Now, what I didn't like...

  • As I mentioned, the plot is way to convoluted. Its a series of fetch quests for Mcguffins. The plot in a nutshell is, go to this planet to find this thing, go to this planet to find a guy who can make the thing useful, go to this planet to use the thing to find another thing, use that thing to find the place your looking for.
  • Not enough times to let dramatic things settle in. This comes back to the movie being far too rushed and there are several occasions were something really shocking or unexpected happens and they just immediately cut to something else completely unrelated. A good example is
    There is a point were Chewie gets captured and were meant to think Rey accidentally destroys the ship he's on. A shocking moment, but in less than two minitues its revealed he was actually on a different ship. If that let that sit with the audience for 20 or so minitues it would have been much more impactful
    .
  • The Knights of Ren are completely useless. They get less than ten minutes of screen time and just follow Rey around. They could've been really cool but they feel very forced into this movie.
  • Plenty of unanswered questions. How did Palpatine survive? How did he get the resources to built the Sith fleet? Who are the Knights of Ren and where have they been this whole time?
  • The new characters were cool, but didn't really appear much.
  • The fights were kind of underwhelming. Visually pretty cool but they were short and it felt like the lightsabers barely even touched.
  • Comedy ruins some crucial scenes. I actually liked most of the banter in this movie, but some of was poorly timed. For example
    When 3PO gets his memory wiped its almost a joke when he wakes up. Poe makes a quid "yeah, thats gonna be a problem." I feel like it should be a big moment when the character thats been in every Star Wars movie ever gets his whole memory completely erased (Though he does get it back by the end of the movie).
The Ending...

  • The ending was... Interesting.
  • The battle in the sky was a spectacle. Even if a little impractical, there was a really cool Endgame type scene that was great to watch. The space horses riding along the destroyer were out of place but I didn't mind it as much as I thought I would.
  • Now for the final battle against Palpatine. It was cool, but kinda weird
    Kylo Ren fights the Knights of Ren, takes all of them down in like 20 seconds, and goes to meet Rey and Palpatine. Palpatine sucks the life out of them rejuvenating his corpse back to his former glory. Rey gets the spirits of every Jedi to take down Palpatine who has the spirit of every Sith. It was cool to watch the double lightsaber force lightning reflect at first, but what exactly did holding two lightsabers do exactly? Anyway, Palpatine dies - hopefully for good this time - and Rey dies from using so much strength to take him out. That is until Kylo climbs out of the pit Palpatine sent him down and rejuvenates Rey by giving her his life sacrificing himself in the progress. I've seen quite a bit of complaints that Kylo dying sends a message of redemption means your going to die, but didn't the exact same thing happen to Vader in Return of the Jedi?
    . So the ending was pretty chaotic, it was again super cool to watch but it felt weirdly impractical.
So overall I liked it. It's flawed, but very fun. At end of the day there is a lot to love about this movie. However, this is essentially an entire trilogy in one movie or at least thats how it feels and it suffers for it. If some of these plot threads started in The Last Jedi and maybe make this film 3 hours, this would have been a much better movie. It's a good finale to the sequel trilogy, but for the entire saga is fails at being a satisfying ending. Again, for what its worth I enjoyed it. I would probably rank it in the middle of all the Star Wars movies, but where exactly I'm not sure.
 
Chlidonias said:
"So stuff is just kind of happening huh?"

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The girl Lando talks to is his long lost daughter in the original version of the movie before they filmed the reshoots. In that version Lando is all depressed because he lost his child but he also doesn't know what gender his child is because they pretend it's going to be Finn for a while before revealing it's this girl. Real good stuff.

~Thylo
 
I just stumbled upon this thread looking for something entirely different, and thought I'd stop in to say a lot of the thoughts expressed by Pachy Pro and giant_anteater line up with my opinions on the film. I'm often very anxious commenting on Star Wars, as I have a very personal relationship with it (many do, I know) and I don't like the extremes in discourse, but seeing thoughts close to my own echoed is something I can appreciate deeply. While it is not the best-made film of the sequel trilogy by all of the technical perspectives, against all reason and logic, it's my favorite of the bunch.

It's nice to finally see all of the trilogy's new characters together, the use of legacy characters is better here than previous films across every board but the dearly departed, and there's a lot of love between the characters. The first two films both still feel like they're still building these relationships - this presents them fully formed. I do wish the film could slow down to explore a lot of ideas more, but the breakneck pace also lets us speed through the stuff I don't like and keep it brief - when something I don't like happens, a minute later something else is going on that is sometimes better.

Some will say the film lacks a lot of seriousness that the finale to such a saga should have, and they are entirely correct from any technical perspective; but I appreciated personally returning to the light fantasy tonal roots and dropping the pretense of seriousness.
 
It is very likely that what I have to say regarding this film and the trilogy overall will be quite controversial, so I pray that no one takes my opinions in poor taste. I think I should start by saying that in hindsight, the concept of a sequel to "Return of the Jedi" was never a good idea to begin with. It has become clear to me that it's impossible to create a direct sequel to the six-film saga without undermining the events of the previous movies. I don't have an issue with a story that takes place well after the events of Episode VI with a brand new set of characters, and I'm all for a few good anthology films - I really enjoyed "Rogue One." However, since the latest trilogy doesn't seem to be going anywhere, I suppose I could share my thoughts on it

After the release of "The Force Awakens," I approached the upcoming films with cautious optimism. I did not want to approach these films with "nostalgia goggles" and immediately declare them inferior to their predecessors, so I made a conscious effort to focus more on the positive aspects of these movies than the negatives. I had done this particularly with the first two films because I felt I could not properly critique them without watching the trilogy as a whole. So I maintained a relatively neutral stance until the release of Episode IX.

In my opinion, "The Rise of Skywalker" was a disaster. The pacing was too fast, the plot was contrived, and many of the characters were wasted. The visuals were impressive, but that's about it. It appears that Abrams, and maybe the studio, wanted to create some distance between this movie and The Last Jedi, but that decision only seemed to make the film even worse than it could've been. As some on this thread have already pointed out, this is all likely due to a lack of a clear vision for the trilogy from the outset.
 
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