[SPOILERS] 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Discussion

Discussion in 'Community Discussion' started by DaybreakerMC, Dec 20, 2019.

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What did you think of The Rise of Skywalker?

Terrible 0 vote(s) 0.0%
Pretty bad, not the worst 0 vote(s) 0.0%
Just okay, mixed feelings 3 vote(s) 37.5%
It was good, not the best 1 vote(s) 12.5%
Amazing! 4 vote(s) 50.0%
  1. !!! WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD !!!

    As many of you know, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker just hit theatres worldwide. It concludes the Skywalker Saga that has been building for 42 years!

    The Force Awakens was mostly well recieved, with some disliking it's similarities to A New Hope (Star Wars). It was The Last Jedi that really stirred audiences though. Some hated it, other loved it. Some of the ones who loved it hated The Force Awakens, and vice versa. Others disliked both, and some liked both. Personally, I liked both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.

    Going into The Rise of Skywalker I had a lot hope and excitement. J.J. Abrams was returning and he's done marvelous things with Star Wars and Star Trek in the past. Then I watched the movie. My immediate reaction was positive, but my opinion has become very mixed over the hours that have unfolded since.

    I'm curious what you think! About The Rise of Skywalker, about the sequel trilogy, about the Skywalker Saga as a whole. I have many thoughts, but I'd love to open a discussion!

    MY SPOILER REVIEW OF 'STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER':
    https://letterboxd.com/daybreaker/film/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker/
    Raaynn likes this.
  2. I just know that this is the last TRILOGY not the last movie on Ray
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  3. It'll most likely be the last time we see Rey. Bob Iger wants to move away from the Skywalker name (hence Ben's death) and into something new and original for Disney. Kathleen Kennedy did say she wanted to stop limiting film arcs to just a trilogy, but we'll see what happens next. Rian Johnson's got a Star Wars trilogy scheduled for 2022/2024/2026 so I guess they're not done with trilogies just yet?
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  4. Well I guess I'll begin the discussion getting into what I disliked.

    This movie disrespects the legacy it's supposed to conclude. From George Lucas's original vision with the chosen one being destroyed by the return of Palpatine, to Rian Johnson's message that you don't need to have a significant family name to become something special being ruined by Rey being a Palpatine. Honestly, most of my problems revolve around Palpatine. His return is primarily unexplained, and introduced THROUGH THE OPENING CRAWL. He's all over the place throughout the film, and for some reason he has a giant super fleet. Assuming he didn't have that fleet when he could've used it to save the Empire, he must've really build that up quickly. I'm curious how many resources they have on Exegol, and if they got it from other regions of the Galaxy, how all that went unnoticed. Palpatine just feels lazy. Then there's a new planet destroying weapon. Wow congrats, how many other times have we already done this trope? That's only the start of my conflicts with this film, but I hope this will spark a discussion.
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  5. I'm curious what my friend thought of the movie. Him and his brother were really into Star Wars when I met them over 10 years ago. I'm curious if they liked the movie as well. :)
    Raaynn and 607 like this.
  6. It was better than The Last Jedi... which isn’t saying much, because that movie was so bad I’d rather sit down and watch Attack of the Clones (The Phantom Menace has Darth Maul and Qui Gon, Revenge of the Sith is an okay movie as a whole).

    PALPATINE

    I thought Palpatine was shoehorned in. There was no reference to him at all in The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi, and he was just put in there because Rian Johnson made the absolutely 100% genius decision to kill Snoke in his second movie for no reason.

    Obviously Palpatine left the void the same way his master, Darth Plagueis, did and just became the Sith equivalent of a Force ghost - but this was never explained. I’ve seen a lot of people confused about how he was alive and if he was alive or not. The only explanation is a god damned meme line spawned in the prequels - “The dark side of the force is a pathway to abilities many would consider unnatural.”

    REY

    I still think that Rey is more bland than a snack consisting of water and plain rice cakes. However her weird expertise in the Force can now be explained by her being the granddaughter of Palpatine - Anakin/Darth Vader was his son and was also a Mary Sue as a child. I did enjoy her battle with identity and her fear of turning to the dark side of the force because of her ancestry though. I also love how she fights like a Sith and chose to have a yellow lightsaber at the end.

    For anyone who doesn’t know, lightsaber colours have meanings. Blue is for warriors, notably wielded by Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader; green is for scholars, most notably Yoda; red means that the user has corrupted the saber with their hatred and are thus wielded by the Sith. Yellow is for Jedi who are a balance between warriors and scholars, who recognise that the Force isn’t the solution to everything and put their non-Force skills first.

    FINN

    I will never understand the excuse for Finn’s continued existence beyond The Force Awakens. He was a useless character in The Last Jedi and this isn’t remedied in the Rise of Skywalker - his biggest plotline is what he wanted to tell Rey when he thought they were going to die, which is never touched upon ever again besides when Poe asks him what he wanted to say and gets no answer; Finn’s second biggest action is traversing the mountain waves around the Death Star’s ruins and then... screaming Rey’s name before seemingly just teleporting back to land.

    KNIGHTS OF REN

    The Force Awakens introduced us to to the Knights of Ren, a group of force-sensitive warriors under the command of Kylo Ren. They were featured in several deleted scenes in The Last Jedi that were all removed to make room for the horrible, universally hated Cantino Bight sub-plot. Fans were asking to see more of them, and J.J Abrams clearly made note of that desire... and then didn’t know what to do with them, because they spent the entire movie dressed like crappy cosplayers of Kylo Ren and ominously staring at Rey, Finn, Poe, and Chewbacca from several miles away. The most significance they ever had was when they turned on Kylo Ren and all got killed in 2 seconds.

    KYLO REN
    Kylo Ren is so cool with his mask on and I liked him in this movie. I’m just sick of redemption arcs and wish that he would have died as a Sith.

    ENDING
    God I loved it when Rey’s life force was drained and all the Jedi (Luke Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Qui-Gon Jinn, Ashoka Tano and Mace Windu) called out to her and filled her with the power of the Force. And when the final battle looked to be lost and thousands of ships appeared through hyperspeed to save the Republic, guided by the Millenium Falcon that was being piloted by god damn Lando Calrissian and Chewbacca.

    OVERALL
    Enjoyed. Kind of meh overall, mostly because the trilogy as a whole is ruined by Rian Johnson’s abysmal second movie, but the action makes up for it.
    Raaynn, benthebobjr and 607 like this.
  7. Well, considering I'm an advocater for The Last Jedi and consider it the third best Star Wars movie (after Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars), I'm sure we'll disagree on a few things. Which fine, as that's what makes a discussion. Although this thread is for The Rise of Skywalker so I'm not sure how much I should really get into The Last Jedi. I'll give my thoughts on your points though:

    PALPATINE
    You're definitely right about him being shoehorned in. Super messy and lacking originality. He should've had an explanation, but one better than the line from the prequels. If I remember correctly that also included "he could save others from death, but not himself." So, Sheev, who saved you from death if not yourself? I thought that Johnson's idea to kill Snoke was a marvelous decision, and we could go the route of Episode IX with Kylo Ren as the primary villain, without some ominous foreboding master.

    REY
    While you think her character is stale, I think her character is an icon for inspiration and hope. Or thought at least, until they narrowed her character down to a last name. Don't get me wrong, I still loved Rey in The Rise of Skywalker, I just felt she was done a great injustice.

    FINN
    J.J. Abrams created an awesome character with Finn in The Force Awakens. One of the things I dislike about The Last Jedi is how they sidelined him. He still developed throughout that movie, but he should've been so much more. The stormtrooper gone rogue is such a cool concept that had so much potential to be explored. Unfortunately, I feel J.J. does the same thing Johnson did by sidelining Finn a lot. Hell, this movie attempted to say that Finn was force sensitive, but it did such a poor job at conveying the message that John Boyega had to confirm it through an Instagram comment.

    I mean there's also the character of Rose. Sure, I wasn't the biggest fan of her in The Last Jedi, but Kelly Marie Tran faced horrible online harassment by members of the toxic Star Wars fanbase. It's terrible, and J.J. seems to have pandered to those trolls and turned into nothing more than an extra. Shameful.

    KNIGHTS OF REN
    To be honest, after Captain Phasma I stopped hyping up the merchandise purposed characters. Knights of Ren are cool, but I'm not going to fault the movie for the fact they did nothing. If I expected them to do something, that's on me, not the screenwriters. I guess we'll get our fill of these characters through the new Rise of Kylo Ren comics.

    KYLO REN
    Easily my favourite part of the sequel trilogy. His character has so much depth with his conflicts, he's awesome. Also played by Adam Driver who's a fantastic actor (watch Marriage Story on Netflix). I've said for two years that if Ben Solo was to redeem himself, he had his chance in The Last Jedi. While I still feel slightly like that, I do love the way J.J. went about redeeming Ben Solo. Considering the circumstances, this is probably the one aspect of the film they nail perfectly. I'm iffy on his death still, but overall really enjoy his character.

    ENDING
    It was awesome to watch. When Palpatine drained Rey and Ben's life force and his eyes started glowing Sith yellow, I lost my shit in the theatre it was amazing. I will say though, his lightning has worked against him more than it has for him. All the ships were awesome though! Seeing Lando return, Wedge's cameo, it was all fun. The voices were also great!
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  8. Did dark vater finally get killed by Luke skypetalker? Using his life saver! :eek: In all seriousness sounds like an interesting movie even though I've never watched a single star wars movie :oops:
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  9. I went into TROS with pretty low expectations, but I honestly liked it a lot better than I expected. It's been a while since I've seen TFA, but I'd say it's tied between TFA and TROS in terms of my favorite sequel movie.

    I think that Abrams did a great job, especially with what he was handed. I enjoy The Last Jedi, but I really dislike what Rian did with it. In my opinion, he looked at what JJ did, looked at where that story needed to go, and then completely went away from that and just made his own movie. I've seen a lot of complaints about Rey not being a nobody, but honestly I prefer the way that they did it. It seems like Abrams had a plan to have Snoke be the big overarching villain and have Rey be the child of someone, but then Rian came along and butchered both of those plans.

    Overall, I think that TROS was a great movie, and highlighted a lot of the flaws that were bound to come up with switching directors for a film trilogy that didn't have a set storyboard.
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  10. I can definitely agree that it highlights the flaws that resulted from switching directors and not having a set storyboard. Thing is, I get confused by the idea that Rian Johnson butchered J.J. Abrams plans. People forget that J.J. consulted with Rian and guided him while writing The Last Jedi. I mean, J.J. pretty much signed off on The Last Jedi. If anything, it was J.J. who screwed over Johnson. Given he separated the crew and threw Luke on a desolated island. I don't know, maybe something changed though because TROS really felt like it wanted to ignore both TFA and TLJ.
    Raaynn and jacob5089 like this.
  11. Just saw it and enjoyed it as entertainment. Felt it did an alright job of recovering somewhat from some of the issues of the first two. Agreed that many good characters may have been underused.. but really this has happened in every movie... boba fett.. jabba... several come to mind. Lack of time during the movie time.. though the knights should have been shown doing some serious slaughter instead of just marching around.

    Final story was just ok.. could have been better. Kind of felt the palpatine thing was a throw towards the cloning capabilty... but not good if you haven't read some of the books. I still feel the third trilogy should have stuck with the original Thrawn saga...

    I did also enjoy the massive fleet again. Good throwback to what i feel should always be an epic scale like was used In the original series.. it's supposed to be a big galaxy...
    benthebobjr likes this.
  12. So, I did something crazy awesome. I spent the New Year's countdown in a theatre watching The Rise of Skywalker for the second time. If anyone was wondering, for my showing at least, 2020 started when Kylo Ren was confronting Rey in the Star Destroyer hangar about to say she's a Palpatine.

    Let's just say, my thoughts have slightly lightened on it. There are a few things I appreciated more. Some of it has to do with Chris Terrio's interview as well.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    I now realize that Luke catching the lightsaber and saying "a Jedi's weapon deserves more respect" was less a jab at The Last Jedi and more in line with his character arc from The Last Jedi (but I can still see how it fuels jabs against The Last Jedi).

    I now realize that Rose had so little scenes because so many of her intended scenes also included Leia, and due to the unfortunate circumstances, a lot of them had to be cut. I still think it was very disrespectful to Kelly Marie Tran, and I think without a doubt those scenes could've been rewritten, but at least I know they tried to give her a decent sized role.

    I noticed a few smart screenwriting aspects while watching as well. For example, BB-8 rolls on screen to display his missing piece right before Poe calls it out. Or on the desert planet I don't care enough to learn the same of (since we've gotten so many), BB-8 taps on a colourful barrel that he'll later use to launch at the Jet Troopers. There are a bunch of small things like this throughout that ended up impressing me.

    It was pointed out to me on twitter that there are two other really cool things done in the screenplay. C-3PO's last line in The Rise of Skywalker is "did you hear that?" Which happens to be the first line ever said in the Star Wars franchise when C-3PO said "did you hear that?" on the Tantive IV.

    Another cool thing is noticable in the items that go through the force connection between Rey and Kylo. The first is a yellow necklace, the second is a red grain, the third is a blue lightsaber. It was pointed out that these could all represent the colour palettes of each film in the sequel trilogy. Along with their titles, The Force Awakens was very yellow, The Last Jedi was very red, and The Rise of Skywalker was very blue.
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    So, those are the few things I can credit the movie more for. I still feel like there was a major conflict between what J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson intended for the story. Although I also felt a conflict between screenwriter Chris Terrio and J.J. Abrams. Apparently conflict also existed between what Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and Disney CEO Bob Iger wanted. Of course, to top it all off, there's a ton of conflict between this entire trilogy and George Lucas (who felt "betrayed"). All of this conflict is felt in a very messy and contradicting final film.

    As it still stands, I really don't like anything in this movie that had to do with Palpatine. I don't like how it brought in unnecessary new characters to the concluding film when it had perfectly fine characters for each role a new character served. I really don't like how it brought in not one, but a whole fleet of mega weapons (it's just getting tiring). I really don't like how it conflicted with previous films and the canon expanded universe (e.g. Poe's backstory). All in all I'm still disappointed, but that's what happens when you don't have a plan.