Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker discussion thread (*** now contains spoilers ***)

[Dis_Fan]

For me the movie was ok. It had good acting and effects, and did not totally kick The Last Jedi to the curb. Ben Solo was prefect for his small screen time.

But it was emotionless to me and when J.J. did throw away something from the Last Jedi (Looking a the treatment of Rose) he did it hard. The amount of head scratching plot points and story beats were baffling with questions all the way from Force Awakens still not answered or answered in a horrible way.

It was entertaining enough in a big theater on opening weekend with a big thing of popcorn but in the end it was the worst of the new trilogy.

BUT, something that will irk me for the end of days was how lazy and unoriginal the ending of the movie was. They ripped off Avengers: Endgame beat by beat but 100 times worse. How could J.J. not see this and make some sort of editing change is beyond me.

Avengers: Endgame
-Captain America facing down the full might of Thanos Army alone with the story at its most grim.
-Cap suddenly hear the voice of The Falcon ("on your left") on the radio signalling his return.
-Cap looking back and seeing the reinforcements in the form of almost EVERYONE in the MCU including little cameos (Howard the Duck).

fast forward a little bit

-Thanos is on the cusp of winning and makes a obligatory bad guy quip "I am inevitable"
-Tony Stark counters with the obligatory good guy quip "and I am Iron Man" and snaps his fingers.
-Thanos is defeated and turned to dust.

Now lets look at Rise of Skywalker:

Rise
-Poe is facing down the full might of the First/Final order with the story at its most grim
-Poe suddenly hears the voice of Lando FROM the Falcon on the radio signalling his return.
-Poe looking back and seeing reinforcements in the form of EVERY ship in the Star Wars universe including little cameos.

fast forward a little bit.

-The Emperor is on the cusp of winning and makes the obligatory bad guy quip "I am all the Sith"
-Rey counters with the obligatory good guy quip "and I am all the Jedi"
-The Emperor is defeated and turned to dust.

I have not seen a rip off this blatant since The Lion King ripped off Kimba the White Lion.

 

[BrianL]

For me the movie was ok. It had good acting and effects, and did not totally kick The Last Jedi to the curb. Ben Solo was prefect for his small screen time.

But it was emotionless to me and when J.J. did throw away something from the Last Jedi (Looking a the treatment of Rose) he did it hard. The amount of head scratching plot points and story beats were baffling with questions all the way from Force Awakens still not answered or answered in a horrible way.

It was entertaining enough in a big theater on opening weekend with a big thing of popcorn but in the end it was the worst of the new trilogy.

BUT, something that will irk me for the end of days was how lazy and unoriginal the ending of the movie was. They ripped off Avengers: Endgame beat by beat but 100 times worse. How could J.J. not see this and make some sort of editing change is beyond me.

Avengers: Endgame
-Captain America facing down the full might of Thanos Army alone with the story at its most grim.
-Cap suddenly hear the voice of The Falcon ("on your left") on the radio signalling his return.
-Cap looking back and seeing the reinforcements in the form of almost EVERYONE in the MCU including little cameos (Howard the Duck).

fast forward a little bit

-Thanos is on the cusp of winning and makes a obligatory bad guy quip "I am inevitable"
-Tony Stark counters with the obligatory good guy quip "and I am Iron Man" and snaps his fingers.
-Thanos is defeated and turned to dust.

Now lets look at Rise of Skywalker:

Rise
-Poe is facing down the full might of the First/Final order with the story at its most grim
-Poe suddenly hears the voice of Lando FROM the Falcon on the radio signalling his return.
-Poe looking back and seeing reinforcements in the form of EVERY ship in the Star Wars universe including little cameos.

fast forward a little bit.

-The Emperor is on the cusp of winning and makes the obligatory bad guy quip "I am all the Sith"
-Rey counters with the obligatory good guy quip "and I am all the Jedi"
-The Emperor is defeated and turned to dust.

I have not seen a rip off this blatant since The Lion King ripped off Kimba the White Lion.

Your parallels are actually pretty striking and I had not thought of it before, however I wouldn't call it a "rip off" in that Avengers Endgame didn't come out that much sooner than ROS. They had already finished principal photography in 2018. I don't think they were deliberately trying to duplicate the story from Endgame, though they kinda did. I think this is more a case of "great minds think alike" than a rip off.

 

[LizzyS]

Finally decided to throw my opinion into the ring.

I've watched it twice now and given it some time.

Didn't really like it.

Even though it's a story about laser swords and mystical things, I still prefer my story/entertainment to have a cohesive story, plot and characters. I don't think that is asking for too much.

I'm glad this trilogy is over, they've killed off all the originals and seem to have soured the new actors into doing anything else SW related (at least John Boyega). So we can now move on onto other SW endeavors. I'm excited to see what other ideas they can come up with, and I hope they get far away from the Skywalkers. Many other stories to be told of other people/time periods.

Just some bullet points:

Music: music is one of the best parts of movies for me. Besides the sith planet screeching, I couldn't name one memorable theme or song from this movie. So that was a miss.

Plot points: what was even happening?? so many different sets/needless characters. An ancient Sith dagger that has a map to one of the wayfinders, that perfectly matches up with the death star wreckage...ok I guess it's not an ancient sith dagger and was made in the last 15 years? I just don't know. Sorry, I guess I'm thinking about it too much. I'll just focus on the explosions and pretty people. I realize that expecting things to make sense is asking too much and I'll get slammed for it.

Planet killers: this is an awfully dangerous galaxy. I wonder if, after a while, no one is even affected by losing planets anymore because it happens so often. I guess the Star Destroyer that killed the Zuri Bliss planet is still out there?

Fake deaths: gets tiresome after a while. Chewie dies! no he didn't. C3P0 makes a huge sacrifice and basically kills himself. Nope, he's back. New character Poe love interest with the coin and cute? little alien who kills (or not) C3P0 are dead! Another planet destroyed. Nope, they're fine. Rey kills Kylo! Nope, she heals him, he's fine. Kylo blasted down a giant hole, he's gone! Nope, he's back.

Leia: most of her lines made no sense. Rey says she is going to fight a big bad evil and Leia says 'no', then just stands there and stares at Rey? ok. They should have redone the ending of the Last Jedi and had Leia be the one to sacrifice herself by lightspeeding kamikazing into the First Order fleet. They already had footage of her on a bridge that was destroyed.
It was painfully obvious none of her scenes were filmed for this movie. Personally, it really took me out of the story.

Poe: he was pretty, yes. but not sure of his overall point.

Finn: He has something important to tell Rey. Comes up numerous times. But hey, why resolve this in the movie? We can give the major plot point from a tweet. Myself, and every other person I talked to, thought he wanted to tell Rey he loved her. Big fail of the movie there. Would have liked it if his arc had been to free the other enslaved children stormtroopers. Instead he didn't do much.

Maz Kanata: was flying around in a jetpack with a blaster fighting in Jedi, this movie doesn't join the fight and stays back watching and then gives Chewie a medal because the internet wants to see Chewie get a medal?

Rey: whatever. I guess falling in love with someone who wipes out all his fellow Jedi students and kills his dad is ok? Very romantic. In all seriousness though, would have appreciated if the movie slowed it's frenetic pace to focus more on Kylo and Rey and dark side and light side.

Why was Dominic Monaghan even in this movie?! Weird stunt casting. Could have given Carrie Fisher's daughter or Rose his lines and been fine.

Why were two new female characters added and Rose ignored?

I'm sure there's more but the movie kind of exhausts me.

It's fine that other people loved it, just wasn't for me.

I agree with most of your issues, definitely.

Also, I really don't want to become this person all over the internet, but it's in canon material (The Rise of Kylo Ren) that Ben did *not* burn down Luke's temple. This is something that absolutely should have been explored in the movie and I 100% agree that more Rey and Kylo dynamic would have gone a long way instead of the stupid chases for the Sith dagger and wayfinder.

 

[LizzyS]

For me the movie was ok. It had good acting and effects, and did not totally kick The Last Jedi to the curb. Ben Solo was prefect for his small screen time.

But it was emotionless to me and when J.J. did throw away something from the Last Jedi (Looking a the treatment of Rose) he did it hard. The amount of head scratching plot points and story beats were baffling with questions all the way from Force Awakens still not answered or answered in a horrible way.

It was entertaining enough in a big theater on opening weekend with a big thing of popcorn but in the end it was the worst of the new trilogy.

BUT, something that will irk me for the end of days was how lazy and unoriginal the ending of the movie was. They ripped off Avengers: Endgame beat by beat but 100 times worse. How could J.J. not see this and make some sort of editing change is beyond me.

Avengers: Endgame
-Captain America facing down the full might of Thanos Army alone with the story at its most grim.
-Cap suddenly hear the voice of The Falcon ("on your left") on the radio signalling his return.
-Cap looking back and seeing the reinforcements in the form of almost EVERYONE in the MCU including little cameos (Howard the Duck).

fast forward a little bit

-Thanos is on the cusp of winning and makes a obligatory bad guy quip "I am inevitable"
-Tony Stark counters with the obligatory good guy quip "and I am Iron Man" and snaps his fingers.
-Thanos is defeated and turned to dust.

Now lets look at Rise of Skywalker:

Rise
-Poe is facing down the full might of the First/Final order with the story at its most grim
-Poe suddenly hears the voice of Lando FROM the Falcon on the radio signalling his return.
-Poe looking back and seeing reinforcements in the form of EVERY ship in the Star Wars universe including little cameos.

fast forward a little bit.

-The Emperor is on the cusp of winning and makes the obligatory bad guy quip "I am all the Sith"
-Rey counters with the obligatory good guy quip "and I am all the Jedi"
-The Emperor is defeated and turned to dust.

I have not seen a rip off this blatant since The Lion King ripped off Kimba the White Lion.

Wow, I haven't watched Endgame (or any Avengers movie, for that matter), but that's pretty hilariously bad for TROS.

 

[Boski]

I do watch those guys, but haven't yet had time to watch their Skywalker review.

But our opinions usually do line up, so I wouldn't be shocked if I sound like them.

I also agree with your opinion above, if only they had got the story/script down, these could have been amazing.

People keep saying that the originals had plot holes, but compared to the new trilogy they're more like threadbare places on the sweater instead of giant gaping holes.

Its definitely worth a watch. Pretty entertaining and points out a lot of issues. I don't really watch Screen Rant but I do enjoy their "pitch meeting" series, they did a pretty funny one on TRoS.

 

[Dis_Fan]

Your parallels are actually pretty striking and I had not thought of it before, however I wouldn't call it a "rip off" in that Avengers Endgame didn't come out that much sooner than ROS. They had already finished principal photography in 2018. I don't think they were deliberately trying to duplicate the story from Endgame, though they kinda did. I think this is more a case of "great minds think alike" than a rip off.

It is not the best example (given the movie) but Dark Phoenix had its ending reshot and reworked because it was to much like Captain Marvel. I can not see how in the time between Endgame and Rise J.J. could have not gone in the editing room and tweaked a few things (without reshots) that would have made things a little different. He had like 7 months.

 

[BrianL]

It is not the best example (given the movie) but Dark Phoenix had its ending reshot and reworked because it was to much like Captain Marvel. I can not see how in the time between Endgame and Rise J.J. could have not gone in the editing room and tweaked a few things (without reshots) that would have made things a little different. He had like 7 months.

Well, he certainly could've done that. I just meant that I don't think it was an intentional rip off of the other due to the timeline. Personally, it doesn't really bother me, and it's one of my favorite parts of both movies, but it is interesting to see the similarity.

 

[NoTime42]

I still think the problems with this trilogy started with TFA. A wishy-washy bad guy. And a good guy that went from a nobody to Luke levels of abilities just from hearing the word "force." Other than that it was packed full of fan service and ridiculous amount of circumstance.

Sure it's a fun movie, but I think it was a poor lead in to a trilogy. I think there was more of an over arching story than people believe, it just wasn't a good one.

With the face scars, etc, ROS finally gave Kylo the right look instead of starting as a pretty boy.

I suppose I should chime in as a fan of ROS as a counterpoint to the negativity.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

With the face scars, etc, ROS finally gave Kylo the right look instead of starting as a pretty boy.

I suppose I should chime in as a fan of ROS as a counterpoint to the negativity.

I definitely think ROS was the best that Kylo has been ... it played of his "wishy washyness" or sort of the tormented/uncertain bad guy vs the 100% confirmed bad guy in the other trilogies

Though the prior episodes did lead to the Emo Kylo Ren twitter account that was pretty tremendous

 

[NoTime42]

For me the movie was ok. It had good acting and effects, and did not totally kick The Last Jedi to the curb. Ben Solo was prefect for his small screen time.

But it was emotionless to me and when J.J. did throw away something from the Last Jedi (Looking a the treatment of Rose) he did it hard. The amount of head scratching plot points and story beats were baffling with questions all the way from Force Awakens still not answered or answered in a horrible way.

It was entertaining enough in a big theater on opening weekend with a big thing of popcorn but in the end it was the worst of the new trilogy.

BUT, something that will irk me for the end of days was how lazy and unoriginal the ending of the movie was. They ripped off Avengers: Endgame beat by beat but 100 times worse. How could J.J. not see this and make some sort of editing change is beyond me.

Avengers: Endgame
-Captain America facing down the full might of Thanos Army alone with the story at its most grim.
-Cap suddenly hear the voice of The Falcon ("on your left") on the radio signalling his return.
-Cap looking back and seeing the reinforcements in the form of almost EVERYONE in the MCU including little cameos (Howard the Duck).

fast forward a little bit

-Thanos is on the cusp of winning and makes a obligatory bad guy quip "I am inevitable"
-Tony Stark counters with the obligatory good guy quip "and I am Iron Man" and snaps his fingers.
-Thanos is defeated and turned to dust.

Now lets look at Rise of Skywalker:

Rise
-Poe is facing down the full might of the First/Final order with the story at its most grim
-Poe suddenly hears the voice of Lando FROM the Falcon on the radio signalling his return.
-Poe looking back and seeing reinforcements in the form of EVERY ship in the Star Wars universe including little cameos.

fast forward a little bit.

-The Emperor is on the cusp of winning and makes the obligatory bad guy quip "I am all the Sith"
-Rey counters with the obligatory good guy quip "and I am all the Jedi"
-The Emperor is defeated and turned to dust.

I have not seen a rip off this blatant since The Lion King ripped off Kimba the White Lion.

My youngest teen mentioned the general Endgame parallels right after we watched it this weekend. I was surprised to not see more talk about it.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

For me the movie was ok. It had good acting and effects, and did not totally kick The Last Jedi to the curb. Ben Solo was prefect for his small screen time.

But it was emotionless to me and when J.J. did throw away something from the Last Jedi (Looking a the treatment of Rose) he did it hard. The amount of head scratching plot points and story beats were baffling with questions all the way from Force Awakens still not answered or answered in a horrible way.

It was entertaining enough in a big theater on opening weekend with a big thing of popcorn but in the end it was the worst of the new trilogy.

BUT, something that will irk me for the end of days was how lazy and unoriginal the ending of the movie was. They ripped off Avengers: Endgame beat by beat but 100 times worse. How could J.J. not see this and make some sort of editing change is beyond me.

Avengers: Endgame
-Captain America facing down the full might of Thanos Army alone with the story at its most grim.
-Cap suddenly hear the voice of The Falcon ("on your left") on the radio signalling his return.
-Cap looking back and seeing the reinforcements in the form of almost EVERYONE in the MCU including little cameos (Howard the Duck).

fast forward a little bit

-Thanos is on the cusp of winning and makes a obligatory bad guy quip "I am inevitable"
-Tony Stark counters with the obligatory good guy quip "and I am Iron Man" and snaps his fingers.
-Thanos is defeated and turned to dust.

Now lets look at Rise of Skywalker:

Rise
-Poe is facing down the full might of the First/Final order with the story at its most grim
-Poe suddenly hears the voice of Lando FROM the Falcon on the radio signalling his return.
-Poe looking back and seeing reinforcements in the form of EVERY ship in the Star Wars universe including little cameos.

fast forward a little bit.

-The Emperor is on the cusp of winning and makes the obligatory bad guy quip "I am all the Sith"
-Rey counters with the obligatory good guy quip "and I am all the Jedi"
-The Emperor is defeated and turned to dust.

I have not seen a rip off this blatant since The Lion King ripped off Kimba the White Lion.

My youngest teen mentioned the general Endgame parallels right after we watched it this weekend. I was surprised to not see more talk about it.

Is this really one copying the other or just both using really common film tropes? ... I mean, the army showing up just when all hope was lost to save the day happens in tons of movies ... good guy saying a quip back at the bad guy before defeating them happens in tons of movies ....

just seems like things that are common in movies in general to me

 

[BrianL]

Is this really one copying the other or just both using really common film tropes? ... I mean, the army showing up just when all hope was lost to save the day happens in tons of movies ... good guy saying a quip back at the bad guy before defeating them happens in tons of movies ....

just seems like things that are common in movies in general to me

That's true - and would either movie be better without these scenes? I mean, I loved Avengers, so it's no surprise that I also love ROS since they hit similar emotional beats. Still, overall, they are very different movies. You can make any movie sound similar if you focus on very specific things.

 

[NoTime42]

Is this really one copying the other or just both using really common film tropes? ... I mean, the army showing up just when all hope was lost to save the day happens in tons of movies ... good guy saying a quip back at the bad guy before defeating them happens in tons of movies ....

just seems like things that are common in movies in general to me

It might be, but both were the largest collection of Superhero’s or Spaceships ever seen in prior films ...which made both very cool moments.

 

[LizzyS]

With the face scars, etc, ROS finally gave Kylo the right look instead of starting as a pretty boy.

I suppose I should chime in as a fan of ROS as a counterpoint to the negativity.

You can't dirty up Adam Driver enough to make him unpretty.

I have spoken.

 

[Brianstl]

The story now making the rounds is this was not the cut of the movie JJ made. Supposedly significant changes were made to the cut of the film JJ presented to Lucasfilm/Disney executives. Who knows what to believe, might just be butt covering coming from the Bad Robot camp as they head over to Warner.

 

[BrianL]

The story now making the rounds is this was not the cut of the movie JJ made. Supposedly significant changes were made to the cut of the film JJ presented to Lucasfilm/Disney executives. Who knows what to believe, might just be butt covering coming from the Bad Robot camp as they head over to Warner.

Covering for what exactly? A movie that has made $815 M in 13 days? Yeah, I don't think they need to be too worried about their reputation.

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

Is this really one copying the other or just both using really common film tropes? ... I mean, the army showing up just when all hope was lost to save the day happens in tons of movies ... good guy saying a quip back at the bad guy before defeating them happens in tons of movies ....

just seems like things that are common in movies in general to me

I think the movie shared a lot of similarities to Serenity. It also has a scene with the entire universe showing up in ships. I also thought the speeder scene was very reminiscent of the mule/reaver chase. I have to watch it again but I think certain shots are extremely similar.

I don’t get the feeling that RoS is flat emotionally. I teared up several times in this movie. More than the TFA. But obviously different things are going to get different people.

 

[Brianstl]

Covering for what exactly? A movie that has made $815 M in 13 days? Yeah, I don't think they need to be too worried about their reputation.

The movie is going to make less than TLJ according to Mendelson over at Forbes. Either that or maybe there really is a different JJ cut.

 

[BrianL]

The movie is going to make less than TLJ according to Mendelson over at Forbes. Either that or maybe there really is a different JJ cut.

Yeah, and Return of the Jedi made less than Empire. I don't think that means much. It is not pacing too far behind TLJ - I am pretty sure financially it is just fine.

 

[YesterDark]

Makes me think similar to the prequels in that the first two movies could have been combined and then the third movie could have be expanded on to fill out two movies

You don't even need Ep 1. It's completely unnecessary. The cool characters like Maul and Quigon are killed off and have no impact in the plots of Ep2 and 3.