Star Wars 9: The Rise of Skywalker

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I liked it less than everyone else in this thread, unless ICJ was being polite.

I am not going to start busting on something that means a lot to Flack. But no, I did not care for it. I also watched it at the same time the Mandalorian was going, and hoo boy, the difference in story quality was substantial when they were on at the same time.

The sequel movies should have been the easiest thing in the world to knock out of the park. I am truly surprised with how much they screwed up over the course of the three movies. When they announced that Rian Johnson was directing the second/eighth one I thought it was going to be like when Nicholas Meyer waltzed in and made the best Star Trek thing that had existed at that point.

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I mean, part of the reason I'm being so hard on (hehe) it is that I liked the first two, a lot! Even the second one! This was so wildly different and worse, I couldn't believe what I was watching.

Episode 3 was horrible, but the other two were so awful it was no great shock, even better by comparison.

But man. MAN was this bad. Really surprising.

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Last thing I'll say about it until my next post: I could have forgiven all of the plot holes and rule-changing and ridiculous coincidences, if they'd have been in service of a better movie. But since they were in the service of utter garbage, I'll go ahead and say it:

You can't use the force to snatch tchotchkes out of people's hands from halfway across the galaxy. You can't do it. ("No, see, that was because they had a Jedi dyad which means that--")

Nope. Can't do it.

[RetroRomper]

You should have got stoned before you saw it lol

I've done this and all it resulted in were all of the plot holes, inconsistencies, broken bits and incoherent babbling coming through like a red hot poker in my bellybutton. Gave me an excuse to watch Barberella, which made my day.

[Jizaboz]

I didn't read any of the above cuz I hadn't seen it yet. Tonight we watched the first half. We'll finish it up tomorrow.

What a steaming pile of garbage!

I liked 7 and 8. I'm not anti-third-trilogy. But this... this is all terrible. ALL of it.

You are a liar and a TRAITOR! Take him away!

[Jizaboz]

You should have got stoned before you saw it lol

I've done this and all it resulted in were all of the plot holes, inconsistencies, broken bits and incoherent babbling coming through like a red hot poker in my bellybutton. Gave me an excuse to watch Barberella, which made my day.

It's a fucking Star Wars movie, man. I'm the guy griping I didn't get to see enough of the creepy clone lab and that they didn't use enough props instead of CGI.. and that that space fleet appeared outta nowhere at the end.. ok I kinda get your point. I would rather re-watch Barbarella then the last Star Wars movie atm.

[Flack]

With the home theater now essentially complete, one of my first plans is to watch the entire series from beginning to end. (We're talking the original nine here -- no Solo, Rogue One, Holiday Special, cartoons or Ewok movies.) I've never been able to separate my fandom from the films, especially when watching a new SW film in the theater, but enough time has passed that I think I can be a bit more objective in my reviews.

That being said, 8 really goes against everything Star Wars, and does so in a pretty "current event aware" way. Specifically, it introduces this concept that anybody can be a Jedi, and that's just not how it works. That's not my opinion; I mean, in this universe, it's been established that that's not how the Force works. They also took the character of Luke Skywalker who is the forever good guy and the hero of the galaxy and ruined him. It's just a weird film where Disney, who understands merchandising but doesn't understand these films, turned the franchise over to a guy who decided to break everything established in Star Wars over the past 40 years just because he could. It's like making a new James Bond film where 007 is a lesbian Russian agent. If you wanna make a movie about lesbian Russian agents knock yourself out (I'd watch it), but that isn't who James Bond is, and hiding on a remote island while the galaxy collapses isn't who Luke Skywalker was, and snowflake space horse stall sweepers aren't Jedi. Sorry, kids.

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As a non-superfan (after the age of, like 14), Luke is one of the things that made #8 very enjoyable for me. He was a far more interesting/fun character in that movie than ever before. So I liked it. I can believe it did not sit well with superfans. Whaddya gonna do.

I cannot imagine who #9 sat well with.

[Flack]

Going in to writing 9, they knew they had to [a] fix Luke's character, make Solo's death mean something, [c] build a movie around Leia's arc after Fisher had already passed away, [d] figure out a new bad guy since they killed Snoke, [e] resolve the Rey/Ren story, [f] resolve the Ren/Finn/Poe love triangle, [g] wrap up a trilogy, and [h] wrap up a trilogy of trilogies. And this was before cramming in a plot. I think every fan of every series has thought at some point, "man, I could make a better film than that with those characters," and what films 7-9 prove is, "probably not." Perhaps handing the reigns of the greatest trilogy of all time to a bunch of starry-eyed fans wasn't the best idea.

[RetroRomper]

With the home theater now essentially complete, one of my first plans is to watch the entire series from beginning to end.

I have access to 4k fan restored versions of the original trilogy as it appeared in theaters when it first debuted if that is attractive to you. Just be aware they're around 40GB.

(We're talking the original nine here -- no Solo, Rogue One, Holiday Special, cartoons or Ewok movies.)

Out of all the current generation of Star Wars media, Rogue One is the only movie where the story pulled me in and kept pushing interesting, coherent, and actually very high quality directing, acting, and plot that freaked me out. The fact they decided to make a Star Wars movie where there is no chance for the heroes to save themselves tied really well into the overarching themes of the original trilogy: loyalty, duty, having faith in oneself and others, then having to figure out exactly what that means while under stress to directly, actually save the entire galaxy.

I see it as the only current Star Wars anything that paid it's respects and added it's own sort of "spice" to the franchise in a mature fashion, instead of being half ass fan fiction.

That being said, 8 really goes against everything Star Wars, and does so in a pretty "current event aware" way.

Before Star Wars Episode IX I would have agreed with you, but both VII and IX were scrambled love letters written stream of consciousness that were then picked over and had their passages re-arranged by ten other people while it was being written. Episode VIII at least tried to expand the canon and build on Star Wars as a base instead of half assedly recreating whole scenes and shots from the original trilogy, plus the story is far more coherent and doesn't rehash the same things over and over as if they were 10 minutes clips for a trailer.

I'm not arguing that it wasn't an awful piece of shit, just less so than the others while still being in a galaxy far, far away from the quality and challenges that came with Rogue One.

Perhaps handing the reigns of the greatest trilogy of all time to a bunch of starry-eyed fans wasn't the best idea.

I'd argue that they played it safe to the point where they wrote themselves into a corner as opposed to "fanning it up." This includes Disney who were afraid of scrambling the eggs of their Golden Goose to the extent they rehashed and didn't care about why the original trilogy was actually great in a meaningful way.

[pinback]

With the home theater now essentially complete, one of my first plans is to watch the entire series from beginning to end.

I have access to 4k fan restored versions of the original trilogy as it appeared in theaters when it first debuted if that is attractive to you.

I am going to take a wild guess at the percent chance Flack does not already 1) know about these, 2) have them locked and loaded for his plan.

I guessed "minus ten trillion percent". How close was I, Flack?

I see it as the only current Star Wars anything that paid it's respects and added it's own sort of "spice" to the franchise in a mature fashion, instead of being half ass fan fiction.

Mando.

[RetroRomper]

The Mandalorian was awful.

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You've expressed that awful opinion before, and it's still absurd. You're just an absurd, angry guy.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Going in to writing 9, they knew they had to [a] fix Luke's character, make Solo's death mean something, [c] build a movie around Leia's arc after Fisher had already passed away, [d] figure out a new bad guy since they killed Snoke, [e] resolve the Rey/Ren story, [f] resolve the Ren/Finn/Poe love triangle, [g] wrap up a trilogy, and [h] wrap up a trilogy of trilogies. And this was before cramming in a plot. I think every fan of every series has thought at some point, "man, I could make a better film than that with those characters," and what films 7-9 prove is, "probably not." Perhaps handing the reigns of the greatest trilogy of all time to a bunch of starry-eyed fans wasn't the best idea.

I do feel that you, me, and a couple others could create a science fiction with aliens universe that would be a fun venture that would be inferior to the original series but as good as Mando. Maybe in novel form or something. We have as many credentials as Lucas did when he made Star Wars in 1977.

[RetroRomper]

You've expressed that awful opinion before, and it's still absurd. You're just an absurd, angry guy.

The Mandalorian is a better example of a creative team delving and presenting the Star Wars Universe than JJ Abrams was able to do in two movies.

Sound better?