Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (December 2019)

[Kevvy Metal]

1 minute ago, drmick said:

 

For a children's show those Space Wizards sure do a lot of chopping off of limbs and heads. But I accept that if I had the intelligence of a small child I wouldn't notice these things.

 

I see yes! Senseless violence does add many layers of nuance onto things, only a person of very deep intelligence like yourself could see that.  

[Monkeyboy]

On 29/04/2020 at 11:43, Festoon said:

I am. JJ is a mimic that brings nothing but visual pizzazz. But all his films are starting to look very similar.

 

True.

 

 

[womblingfree]

@PK The final movie would have been infinitely better if Johnson had done it. TLJ has its problems (CGI sections running wild when the budget for puppets got out of control being the worst) but they’re pretty much contained within a movie that has overall coherence. It also goes out of its way to open up the universe in different directions.

 

All binned by Abrams and replaced with an entertainingly forgettable hot-mess of regurgitation.

[c-cat114]

Hmm I kind of agree that tlj would have been a better ending, thematically. 

 

I still think, pound for pound, its the least satisfying of the three and prefer Rise to it. But if Johnson had brought that level of.. Completion is the wrong word. But yes. Last Jedi esque finale would have been better I think.

 

That said, although Rise isn't good, it does at least attempt and almost manage an Avengers level of triumphant bombast to the nineology (?) whereas The Last Jedi only manages one awesome visual scene (the Holdo manouvre), one decent set piece (Crait battle) and all sorts of stupid chatacter motivations and revelations in between. It took the best thing from non SW Sci fi (Gallactica's tired march from destruction) and turned it into abject dullness. 

 

Might be talking myself out of whether it would have been a better finale thinking about it. But would have been fun to see the Internet implode. 

[Mawdlin]

25 minutes ago, c-cat114 said:

Hmm I kind of agree that tlj would have been a better ending, thematically. 

 

I still think, pound for pound, its the least satisfying of the three and prefer Rise to it. But if Johnson had brought that level of.. Completion is the wrong word. But yes. Last Jedi esque finale would have been better I think.

 

That said, although Rise isn't good, it does at least attempt and almost manage an Avengers level of triumphant bombast to the nineology (?) whereas The Last Jedi only manages one awesome visual scene (the Holdo manouvre), one decent set piece (Crait battle) and all sorts of stupid chatacter motivations and revelations in between. It took the best thing from non SW Sci fi (Gallactica's tired march from destruction) and turned it into abject dullness. 

 

Might be talking myself out of whether it would have been a better finale thinking about it. But would have been fun to see the Internet implode. 

 

The character motivations, reversals and development were what made The Last Jedi magnificent to me. I do agree that its intelligence and ending would have made a better end to the trilogy.

[drmick]

3 hours ago, c-cat114 said:

Hmm I kind of agree that tlj would have been a better ending, thematically. 

 

I still think, pound for pound, its the least satisfying of the three and prefer Rise to it. But if Johnson had brought that level of.. Completion is the wrong word. But yes. Last Jedi esque finale would have been better I think.

 

That said, although Rise isn't good, it does at least attempt and almost manage an Avengers level of triumphant bombast to the nineology (?) whereas The Last Jedi only manages one awesome visual scene (the Holdo manouvre), one decent set piece (Crait battle) and all sorts of stupid chatacter motivations and revelations in between. It took the best thing from non SW Sci fi (Gallactica's tired march from destruction) and turned it into abject dullness. 

 

Might be talking myself out of whether it would have been a better finale thinking about it. But would have been fun to see the Internet implode. 

 

Nonology. 

[SweatyTravolta]

11 hours ago, Mawdlin said:

 

The character motivations, reversals and development were what made The Last Jedi magnificent to me. I do agree that its intelligence and ending would have made a better end to the trilogy.

Yes. The Last Jedi is perhaps the only Star Wars movie that borders on being an actual film. It's good to be able to actually have a discussion about thematic elements within a film that hold up a mirror to the real world. Even though my age addled brain would obviously say that Empire is the best entry, it's Last Jedi  that is by far the smartest of the bunch.

 

I am sick of people saying that Last Jedi put JJ in a box and it's that films fault that Rise sucked so much. There was only nowhere to go if you lack any form of imagination whatsoever because it truly opened up the main Skywalker story line to a wider universe.

[Nick R]

2 hours ago, SweatyTravolta said:

Yes. The Last Jedi is perhaps the only Star Wars movie that borders on being an actual film. It's good to be able to actually have a discussion about thematic elements within a film that hold up a mirror to the real world.

 

I'm not a fan of that "actual film" term. Seems to have become the latest way of making distinctions between art and entertainment, cinema and movies. (And I resent it because 90% of the time I see it, it's being used as stick to criticise the MCU. )

 

I don't think TLJ is the first time the Star Wars series has shown definite real world parallels. There's the Vietnam stuff in RotJ's depiction of rebels fighting off invaders in a forest (though it's so cuddlified that I don't think there's a huge amount to say about it, beyond mentioning the trivia connection between Lucas and Apocalypse Now). There's more interesting stuff to say about the prequels: for all the problems with the prequels' execution, there are readings of them that highlight the similarities with the post-9/11 Bush administration and the allegories that Lucas was aiming for, particularly Revenge of the Sith:

http://www.sterow.com/?p=445

 

Quote

The new films are therefore an extended exercise in irony: because we know how everything turns out, we know that the victories in the new films are not the causes for celebration they at first seem. The notion that military victories might have unintended and unpredictable consequences is, to put it mildly, an unusual message to form the basis of a major series of comic-strip science-fiction movies. Yet Lucas’ approach, once again, is prescient. Just as the earlier films anticipated the mood of Reagan-era America, the new films seem made for the unsettled post-September 11 world. While the prequel films were conceived in accordance with a two-decade old plot outline, and the first two written before the events of September 11, 2001, they seem almost to have foreshadowed the political events and debates that have raged since. Lucas has said that Palpatine’s manipulation of democratic process was inspired by the dying days of Richard Nixon’s administration, but his actions are given an added relevance amid debates about the US PATRIOT Act, indefinite detention of uncharged terror suspects, and other such incursions of civil rights exercised in the name of security.

 

Sometimes these resonances are disconcerting, as when Anakin Skywalker, in Attack of the Clones, responds to an attack on his family by slaughtering a group of desert “sandpeople” dressed in vaguely Middle-Eastern looking robes. It is intended as a disturbing moment, but it was doubly so when seen against the background of military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Revenge of the Sith – the first of the films to be fully written and shot after 9/11 – includes shots of the Jedi temple burning on the city-planet Coruscant that are obviously inspired by imagery of the attacks on New York City. Such imagery might leave something of an unpleasant aftertaste, but there is an underlying message in the prequel films that is highly timely: they are a prolonged warning against abuse of civil rights and military power by governments.

 

[womblingfree]

Never have I ever watched the Ewoks in RotJ and thought, this has parallels to the Vietnam, War.

 

I’ve seen closer parallels in Hey Duggee.

[JPL]

When I was a kid Star Wars was just a fun adventure with spaceships, laser swords, weird alien races and fantastical locations, with a simple story that moved along at a pace which made it feel exciting and stopped me from getting bored. If there were any real world allegories in there, then not only did I have no interest in them, but they went totally over my young head.

 

Obviously, I’m aware that all stories come in part from the writer’s life experiences, but it doesn’t need to be so overtly applied. What I still want from the series is what first drew me to it all those years ago. Just pure fun, without any underlying messages that have been purposely drawn from our current real life struggles. I want escapism and creativity. Keep the story simple - good guys vs bad guys, rescue missions, whatever. Just use it as a base to let the film makers unleash their imaginations.

[Nick R]

3 hours ago, womblingfree said:

Never have I ever watched the Ewoks in RotJ and thought, this has parallels to the Vietnam, War.

 

Yeah it sounds like a silly link, but I'm surprised you've never come across anyone making it before - in my experience it's quite often brought up in critiques that try and present the Star Wars films as more than pure escapism. Here's a recent article all about it, with lots of links to other previous pieces of writing that mention parallels between Rebels-vs-Empire (and Ewoks-vs-Empire) and the Vietnam war:

 

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/a-defense-of-the-existence-of-ewoks-in-return-of-the-jedi/

 

Apparently the 2004 ROTJ DVD commentary and Making Of both feature George Lucas explicitly saying that the Viet Cong were the inspiration for having a guerilla army help bring down the Empire.

[Mawdlin]

This is an interesting discussion. Every text - and by that I mean artform - can be read politically; anything from Friends to In the Night Garden. Author intention is hard, some would argue, impossible to pin down. Ultimately I think we have to judge Star Wars on what it means and brings to us personally.

 

I watched Attack of the Clones a couple of nights ago and I always go into it with the same good intentions, to try enjoy it for what it is, but it really is hard to get past the woeful acting, directing and CGI overload. Don't mean to hijack the thread but the two times I've seen Rise gave me much the same feeling. I will be watching it again on Monday and I hope I get more out of it.

 

Edit. It's clearly not as bad as AotC!

[FiveFootNinja]

All good films should have layers, characters and narrative that explore different things, those are the elements that can draw you deeper into something (even if that something is silly) and stop it feeling too 'throwaway'. But I think you also absolutely have to maintain a bit of perspective about 'what they are for'.

 

On the whole I enjoy all the Star Wars films because the original trilogy definitely had some of this and hooked me at such a formative stage of my life that it became part of who I am... I basically grin like a child at the idea of lightsabers, X-Wings and stormtroopers and want as many in my life as possible. But objectively these are not the films I come to if I want to get highly cognitive about things, dissect history, deep dive into allegory or examine the human condition. There are plenty of tremendous films out there that serve that purpose so much better.

 

I think ROS was flawed (I need to see it again to be honest to be better informed and objective about it) but it felt like a big bombastic movie to send out the series. There were some excellent visuals and set pieces in there, even a few character/plot moments that I liked (people will see these once they stop flapping about it) but mainly it was bundled together in a frantic mess of an edit with a story arc/script that was too big for the running time, piles of JJ homages and some real off key/dropped ball moments along the way. However, I've seen significantly worse films and given that the trilogy was already in a total mess, that JJ was directing again and that it was going to be Disney's chance to put a big Marvel style megafilm out to sign off the series I expected little else so perhaps was less disappointed than some going into it. 

 

As for TLJ... it's okay, in fact I much preferred it on a recent rewatch compared to the cinema first time round where I was massively underwhelmed. The Holdo manoeuvre is a thing of beauty and Crait looked amazing, but complex masterpiece it definitely is not. Its massively baggy (you could lose 45 minutes and no one would notice), full of plot holes, tonally doesn't sit well (for better or worse) and feels like it's been through 12 rounds of Director vs Producer grudge match along the way.

 

The biggest issue is my mind is Disney chose JJ to create a big 'reboot' style approach to the franchise because it had worked for Star Trek (and they felt for that he was relatively safe pair of hands). However his method is just pull on tropes, nostalgia and fan service at the expense of actual quality storytelling and that set the direction of travel for the whole thing unfortunately. In fairness it kind of worked initially, I genuinely got suckered in and came out of TFA with a bit of a 12 year old's grin, but after a couple of watches you could see where it was all going.

 

Had they taken a risk and treated it as a proper three part epic production, written it accordingly and put someone who is more of a careful storyteller (like Johnson - although he wouldn't be top of my list either) at the helm to craft their vision for the entire three films it would have been probably a much calmer, more coherent and probably stronger trilogy to see out the Skywalker saga.

 

Perhaps that is the crux of the matter... baggage. Rogue One and The Mandalorian (and even Solo to a degree) show that you can make good material in a Disney owned Star Wars universe when the old baggage is left to one side, so I'm hopeful now this is all done and dusted we will get a bit of a break and then some fantastic new stories to critique in the future.

[PK]

40 minutes ago, FiveFootNinja said:

Rogue One and The Mandalorian ... show that you can make good material in a Disney owned Star Wars universe when the old baggage is left to one side

 

I know this forum has a massive soft spot for Rogue One, but for me these two are like the complete opposite ends of what to do with Star Wars. Tell a dull story with uninteresting characters while smashing all your Star Wars toys together in the background, or tell a fun, exciting story about likeable characters with the occasional reminder that the other films happened at some point.

 

I think Rogue One is probably the film I thought I wanted to see when I was 11 and playing TIE Fighter all the time, so maybe it's just me being old and boring, but it felt so much more weighed down by the Star Wars baggage than The Mandalorian did.

 

I think I broadly agree with your post though, given all of the baggage the series came with I feel like a good path for the new trilogy would have been to start from JJ's Nostalgia Fest and end at RJ's Tear It All Down. There's no clear trajectory like that in what they eventually made.

[FiveFootNinja]

36 minutes ago, PK said:

I think Rogue One is probably the film I thought I wanted to see when I was 11 and playing TIE Fighter all the time, so maybe it's just me being old and boring, but it felt so much more weighed down by the Star Wars baggage than The Mandalorian did.

 

For context... I really didn't get on with Rogue One at the cinema and think it has some pretty big problems of it's own (again it could be 30 minutes shorter and be a better film). However I've warmed to it a lot more since release though and of the newer films it is the one I've gone back to most for a rewatch.

 

I think the reason is partly because it is just what you say - like watching someone smash together my old Star Wars toy collection in modern CGI -  and 12yo just me likes that sometimes. But also because it is a self contained story and set of characters (too many characters) so nothing has to reach too far back into nostalgia or fan assumed sentimental plot lines. It's not an original comparison, but it's that old war movie style, 'Guns of Navarone' type feeling that I think allowed Edwards room to take on a tone he wanted to for that one film. That's more my point, without the Skywalker baggage you can start doing interesting things.

 

The Mandalorian is another example of that, it is literally a Star Wars western with a True Grit feel very different to any Skywalker film and I have really really enjoyed it (going to watch the last one later tonight). I thought the Rebels animated series was good in a similar way too (not seen Clone Wars) and then in games I adored Fallen Order. 

 

I guess my point is I hope that post-Skywalker some great creative people can be given license to be creative and make us new and interesting things.

[Steve McQueef]

3 hours ago, Mawdlin said:

It's clearly not as bad as AotC!

It wishes it was AOTC. 

[Darren]

I watched the extras on the Rise of Skywalker disc the other day. I know they’re just corporate puff pieces but there was something really moving about the main documentary, intercutting all the discussion about the new film with relevant behind the scenes clips from the original trilogy. And I know it’s been hand crafted to hit a 70s kid like me right in the feels, but I don’t mind. It worked and I loved it.

[CarloOos]

I haven't seen AotC in years and can't say whether I think it's worse than RotS, but I honestly, sincerely don't think there's much in it. Maybe RotS just pips it for Adam Drivers performance, which has been the only thing holding this trilogy together by a thread.

 

Drivers performance aside, and the visuals of the Sith planet, I can't think of a single thing of merit about RotS. And I'm not being an internet edgelord, it's just a tiresome load of absolute nothing to me. I found Into Darkness is far more entertaining to watch, and this forum hates that film.

[Paulando]

Holy shit, guys. Seriously.

 

The Rise of Skywalker was crap, but Attack of the Clones isn’t fit to smell its shit. It’s unfathomably bad in every way imaginable.

[JPL]

Why do people keep calling tRoS, RotS?

 

At least, I think fivefootninja and carlooos are referring to the Rise of Skywalker.

[CarloOos]

Sorry you're right, it's because I keep picturing the title as Rise of the Skywalker rather than The Rise of Skywalker, which sounds off to me.

[CarloOos]

1 hour ago, Paulando said:

Holy shit, guys. Seriously.

 

The Rise of Skywalker was crap, but Attack of the Clones isn’t fit to smell its shit. It’s unfathomably bad in every way imaginable.

 

Sure, they're both shit, and TRoS is definitely more superficially polished. But when you consider one as the bizarre, overly ambitious folly of a one-man ego maniac with no self control, and the other as a product of super corporate, cowardly, creatively bankrupt, pandering fan service made with access to almost limitless resources, I genuinely find it hard to say which I find worse. It's a completely heartless film, no matter how hard it tries to poach unearned emotional stakes from what came before.

[HarryBizzle]

1 hour ago, Paulando said:

Holy shit, guys. Seriously.

 

The Rise of Skywalker was crap, but Attack of the Clones isn’t fit to smell its shit. It’s unfathomably bad in every way imaginable.

Agreed. I can’t sit through Clones and struggled with it even the first time. Terrible film. 
 

RoS is rubbish and basically retroactively ruins the end of RotJ but is quite watchable and even enjoyable if you switch your brain off. 

[FiveFootNinja]

1 hour ago, JPL said:

Why do people keep calling tRoS, RotS?

 

At least, I think fivefootninja and carlooos are referring to the Rise of Skywalker.

 

Totally right, I'd been crossing my ROTJ and ROS streams when typing it fast, I'll amend.

[Chadruharazzeb]

RotS is Revenge of the Sith, goddamn it. 

[JPL]

1 hour ago, HarryBizzle said:

Agreed. I can’t sit through Clones and struggled with it even the first time. Terrible film. 
 

RoS is rubbish and basically retroactively ruins the end of RotJ but is quite watchable and even enjoyable if you switch your brain off. 

Oh, I’ve not heard this. How does it ruin the end of RotJ? The Emperor being alive?

[Shoes]

 

 

[RubberJohnny]

16 hours ago, Paulando said:

Holy shit, guys. Seriously.

 

The Rise of Skywalker was crap, but Attack of the Clones isn’t fit to smell its shit. It’s unfathomably bad in every way imaginable.

 

I did wonder why there was so much fuss about the dagger plot vin RoS when AotC already did a similarly ludicrous chain of events with the hyperdart, where an assassin was hired to kill the first assassin (who failed due to using a slow and incredibly complicated method involving inserting a robot into the room that deployed some worms, rather than just sticking a gun on that robot, or a bomb), leaving an essential clue that could be traced back to them by use of a bloke in a 1950s diner who knew all about it even though it was deleted from the archives.

[drmick]

4 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

 

I did wonder why there was so much fuss about the dagger plot vin RoS when AotC already did a similarly ludicrous chain of events with the hyperdart, where an assassin was hired to kill the first assassin (who failed due to using a slow and incredibly complicated method involving inserting a robot into the room that deployed some worms, rather than just sticking a gun on that robot, or a bomb), leaving an essential clue that could be traced back to them by use of a bloke in a 1950s diner who knew all about it even though it was deleted from the archives.

 

Star Wars spamming of fetch quests has now made pay so much attention to them now, in all movies. They are such a poor contrivance for moving the plot along, rely massively on coincidence and often fall apart if you think about them too much.

 

So, not only have the producers ruined Star Wars for me but they have now ruined Indiana Jones, Aquaman, etc too!

 

Started to watch Force Awakens yesterday, having not seen the start of it since the cinema. It opens with everybody trying to find a map of where Luke is hiding. Luke being the most powerful person Force powered person on the side of good in the galaxy. The map is found in the middle of nowhere, but this thankfully happens to be only a few miles from the most powerful Force sensitive person in the galaxy. What are the chances?

[Nick R]

6 minutes ago, drmick said:

What are the chances?