Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker [Spoilers Ahoy!]

[Theaitetos]

What's your opinion? Did the movie fall short of your expectations or was your mind blown away?

Is it a fitting end for the Skywalker saga or something you wish you had never seen?

The Mod Ogre: Speaking as both a Mod and someone who has not seen this yet, bear in mind that spoilers CAN be discussed here, so if you haven't seen it yet, be aware of that. HOWEVER, if you HAVE seen it, be polite and use the spoiler tag. It's not the law; it's just polite.

[Theaitetos]

The funniest memes I've seen so far:

The Babylon Bee: Some Old Guy Disrupts Multiple ‘Rise Of Skywalker’ Screenings With Loud Booing



The Babylon Bee is a satire/parody news site. But they have a point: It was a bad omen that George Lucas didn't attend the premiere of the movie.



That Face you make when you're no longer the Worst Ending of a Saga in 2019

[Velaryon]

Just came back from seeing it. I'll need to watch it more to settle on my opinions, but my initial impression is that it's the best of the sequel trilogy despite its flaws.

[Lord Raziere]

I mean I saw a review of it that said there are 34 plot holes many of which broke star wars canon, was worse that Last Jedi, wasn't even enjoyable on a low popcorn level, just made the Force do everything, made Ray able to accomplish everything, and

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had multiple instances of characters just being brought back to life with the force out of nowhere

and that whatever the Last Jedi did, this did worse without any the brave attempts at subverting expectation.

so, uh.....not really persuading me to see it.

[Narkis]

I'll see it at some point on Christmas week with my dad who's been a fan since ANH first aired. I don't expect to like it though. I hated TLJ, and even critics who liked it say this one is bad.

[Zevox]

Have not seen it and do not plan to. However, I did look up spoilers for it after they started leaking a day or two ago (which is a first for me and feels weird, but there was something specific I wanted to know), and I will say...

Spoiler: Big spoilers. Seriously.

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Finding out that Kylo Ren dies was the happiest I've been about anything Star Wars-related since at least Rogue One's release. Not just a sigh of relief, but there was an honest to gods smile on my face after I read that. No need to worry about him being the villain of any future films, hurray!

Didn't read all of the rest of the spoilers that I saw, since I honestly don't much care at this point, but what I did looked rather stupid to me. I mean, I guess Rey being Palpatine's granddaughter is technically not a retcon of the reveal that her parents were nobodies in The Last Jedi, and it didn't tie her to the Skywalker family (which I thought they definitely would after the title was revealed), but it still completely undermines the point of her parents being nobodies, which was to not tie her to some special force family dynasty and let her be her own hero. Way to ruin possibly the only thing I actually liked about The Last Jedi. Not that I'm surprised, aside from the fact that they went with her being related to Palpatine rather than the Skywalkers, but still.

Also, she just arbitrarily decides to start calling herself Rey Skywalker at the end despite not being related to the Skywalkers? Or was there an actual reason for that and it just wasn't in the spoilers that I read? Because that seems like a really dumb explanation for the movie's title if that's all there is to it.

Oh, and Rey and Kylo apparently kiss? So, this thing is straight-up in bad fan-fiction territory? Yeesh.

Yeah, suffice to say, even with Kylo dying, I saw nothing in those spoilers that made me reconsider seeing it.

[Sir_Norbert]

Saw it today. Not as good at 7 but not a bad film either. It didn't feel like the grand conclusion to an epic saga, but I think part of the blame for that falls on 8 coming off the rails and making it pretty much impossible to tie the whole thing together in a satisfying way. Still, it was a perfectly decent film and doesn't deserve the level of negativity I keep seeing :(

[Velaryon]

Spoiler: Big spoilers. Seriously.

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Didn't read all of the rest of the spoilers that I saw, since I honestly don't much care at this point, but what I did looked rather stupid to me. I mean, I guess Rey being Palpatine's granddaughter is technically not a retcon of the reveal that her parents were nobodies in The Last Jedi, and it didn't tie her to the Skywalker family (which I thought they definitely would after the title was revealed), but it still completely undermines the point of her parents being nobodies, which was to not tie her to some special force family dynasty and let her be her own hero. Way to ruin possibly the only thing I actually liked about The Last Jedi. Not that I'm surprised, aside from the fact that they went with her being related to Palpatine rather than the Skywalkers, but still.

Also, she just arbitrarily decides to start calling herself Rey Skywalker at the end despite not being related to the Skywalkers? Or was there an actual reason for that and it just wasn't in the spoilers that I read? Because that seems like a really dumb explanation for the movie's title if that's all there is to it.

Oh, and Rey and Kylo apparently kiss? So, this thing is straight-up in bad fan-fiction territory? Yeesh.

Spoiler: Addressing your comments, having seen the film myself

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I'm not super thrilled at Rey being a Palpatine, but I will happily take it over her being a Skywalker. The movie tries to handwave away the "your parents were nobodies" reveal from TLJ by saying something like "they chose to be nobodies, in order to protect you." Basically the idea is that they were trying to hide her from Palpatine's influence. I do agree with you that it was better when Rey was descended from no one special, but I will take this even though it's not exactly what I wanted.

Calling herself a Skywalker at the end is arguably a little forced, but it's not arbitrary. The reveal of Rey's true parentage happens fairly early in the film, rather than at the climax. There's an underlying theme in the film that there are things more powerful than blood, and that the family you choose matters more than the one you're born with. Rey takes the Skywalker name at the end of the film while the ghosts of Luke and Leia look on approvingly, and it shows her accepting the truth that the Skywalker/Solo clan matter more as her family than her birth family does.

The kiss thing... I mean yeah, it's not great, but the sexual tension between the two of them has been there since The Force Awakens, and was ramped up a lot in The Last Jedi. For all that TLJ tore the plot we seemed to be getting to shreds and left very little for this movie to work with, one thing it set up clearly was that the sexual tension between Rey and Kylo was the rope for their tug-of-war to try and turn each other to/from the dark side. Having a single kiss to pay that off is getting off pretty light, honestly.

Anyway, you seem disinclined to see the movie and that's fine. For what it's worth, I liked it at least from my initial viewing. I thought TFA was an okay film that played it way too safe and felt more like a remake of A New Hope than I wanted, and I thought TLJ technically fulfilled everything I wanted from it while still leaving me less than satisfied at the end. Rise of Skywalker at least is its own film, rather than a remake of the original trilogy or an unnecessary deconstruction.

Saw it today. Not as good at 7 but not a bad film either. It didn't feel like the grand conclusion to an epic saga, but I think part of the blame for that falls on 8 coming off the rails and making it pretty much impossible to tie the whole thing together in a satisfying way. Still, it was a perfectly decent film and doesn't deserve the level of negativity I keep seeing :(

I agree completely.

[BlacKnight]

Saw it today. Not as good at 7 but not a bad film either. It didn't feel like the grand conclusion to an epic saga, but I think part of the blame for that falls on 8 coming off the rails and making it pretty much impossible to tie the whole thing together in a satisfying way. Still, it was a perfectly decent film and doesn't deserve the level of negativity I keep seeing :(

That's what happens when you have 3 directors for 3 movies and no general planning. The whole thing becomes incoherent and convoluted.
It would have been much better to have either JJA or RJ make the whole trilogy.

[GentlemanVoodoo]

Well got a free ticket to go see it but hopes were set pretty low. And yeah, that was confirmed. Pretty much everything of the leaks you seen floating around Youtube and the like is correct. The movie was better than The Last Jedi but that isn't saying much. If you want to see it go to a cheap showing or wait until it comes to cable. This movie is not worth full price.

[Mechalich]

The movie is immeasurably less than the sum of its parts.

In that it is similar to The Force Awakens, which was well-crafted but creatively bereft, but this film is worse because both the demands of trying to present some kind of ending and the need to essentially fabricate a functional middle film due to the gaping void left by The Last Jedi make it an overwhelming problem. Rise of Skywalker is a weightless movie, nothing has any impact, nothing means anything, the overall premise is so nonsensical is lacks any tension at all. There are good scenes and some good character moments but it never coheres, in large part because it can't cohere. This isn't actually one film, it's two. The first half consists of overwriting as much of The Last Jedi as possible and grafting into place some sort of hypothetical climax, and the second half is an extremely abbreviated whole movie.

Spoiler: spoilers for detail

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Palpatine is at the center of this movie, and everything involving him is a complete and utter mess. It's clear he's just a stand in for Snoke, but Snoke's dead. This is particularly obvious because they also had to replace General Hux with the completely new General Pryde because Last Jedi so completely undercut Hux as any sort of threat. Hux's character has been completely different in each of the three films and I honestly feel bad for Domhnall Gleason who must be wondering what the heck he was actually supposed to be doing this whole time.

Then there's the central conventional threat - the super-fleet of planet-killing Star Destroyers that the somehow-not-dead Palpatine just happens to have lying around. It's never explained how he got them or where he got the technology to give something that's like 1/millionth the size of the Death Star the power to blow up planets. They're just willed into existence without explanation. Worse, they should be entirely irrelevant - since the First Order already had the rest of the galaxy outgunned, right? That was the whole big thing in The Last Jedi, right? Wrong. turns out that after Palpatine's super fleet is destroyed everyone in the galaxy just conveniently rises up and throws off the shackles of the First Order in about ten seconds. Which means that they could have beaten the First Order the whole time! Apparently all everyone needed was to be inspired. It's really quite ridiculous.

I could go on and on, because this movie has a lot of problems, but I find I just don't care. Unlike The Last Jedi, which was horrible enough to inspire real anger, this film's just...empty.

That's what happens when you have 3 directors for 3 movies and no general planning. The whole thing becomes incoherent and convoluted.
It would have been much better to have either JJA or RJ make the whole trilogy.

There is definitely a lot of stuff in this movie that was clearly part of a hypothetical JJA Episode 8 that never happened. For example, there's really nothing in this movie that wouldn't have worked perfectly fine with Snoke in the big bad role. Especially if Snoke is actually Darth Plagueis and Rey is Anakin 2.0 rather than the reveal we get instead. Likewise, the First Order would have been much more coherent if we'd still had Force Awakens edition General Hux in command. I mean, the 'oh crap, the bad guys have this giant extermination fleet now' would have made so much more sense as Snoke's Starkiller Base backup plan than what actually happens.

I don't think an all Abrams trilogy would have been good exactly - I have real problems with his approach to stories and this movie has waaaay too much McGuffin chasing - but it would have at least then reasonably coherent and we could have had a conclusion with some meaning that might not have felt it necessary to pull half-a-dozen different deus ex machinas out to reach an ending.

[Dienekes]

So saw it with my buddy that loves all things Star Wars. Unsurprisingly he loved it. Personally, it was fine. It seemed competently enough made for those who just want an action romp in the Star Wars universe. However, as someone who actually found TLJ interesting and was bored with TFA. Rise of Skywalker pretty much ignored everything I thought was interesting with the last movie and focused on everything I had little interest in at all.

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So the stuff I found truly interesting with TLJ was that Rey was a nobody. That along with the stinger at the end of the movie with the slave kids being inspired to be the next rebels. Or the concept that there are direct apolitical economic systems in place to keep the Galaxy filled with chaos and war. Or what would douchebag Space Joffrey Kylo Ren do with all his power?

I wanted these threads to be developed and pulled. They were all ignored.

Sadly instead of really delving deep into the petty abuses of power caused by nepotism and privilege. The villains of the last movie were completely sidestepped. Hux got replaced by Admiral Generic Guy. And Kylo got upstaged by Palpatine.

As an aside, the title crawl was infuriating. You know what would have been a great way to establish a villain? Show the protagonists and villains doing stuff, only to be interrupted in their plans by the voice of the most terrifying person in the galaxy. How do they react to that? Instead it’s a title crawl.

One thing I will say, Rey has an arc in this movie. Hurray. Or I should say, she has an arc about her power. Now I’m not going to say Rey was a Mary Sue. She wasn’t, outside some strange times the characters warped around her (Leia you have never met this girl, why are you hugging her after your husband died? Chewie is right there!). But mostly, this characters general narrative has been about becoming a Jedi. So it’s about her gaining power and wisdom. With such power, if you want an actual arc they should start untrained or bad at it and learn to be better (Luke in episode 4 and 5). Or start out awesome and learn self-control (Luke in episode 6, Anakin in 1, 2, and 3). Or the somewhat harder one of using power to explore and comment on some sort of political or social situation (Star Trek, the best Superman comics). Rey didn’t really do any of that. She was just kinda good. In this it is very clear that she needs to learn self-control and is on the verge of falling to the dark side. Only at the end it’s less framed as going Evil and gets switched to being possessed by Palpatine.

The galaxy rising up to fight the empire is -technically- following the thread of the people rising up at the end of TLJ. Only outside of like 1 brief conversation with Lando, this movie had nothing to do with rallying the galaxy against the empire. So the cavalry coming felt kinda hollow. I did not get the surge of emotion that I got from the “on your left” scene of Endgame. Where the whole movie was about heroes coming together and trying to bring the cavalry back to life. So when they appear it feels like the culmination of the story. This just felt like a way to defeat the Fleet of Death Stars! that Palpy had. The fleet of Death Stars that of course had the one weakness to exploit. But I don’t really expect originality from a JJ Abrams plot.

I did get to see Kylo Ren die. Twice, kinda. Not nearly harsh enough, though. Now personally, I like Kylo as a character. He is so pathetic and vile. He can try to turn someone to his side and not see the issue with killing all her friends so she has to be dependent on him. He’s this perfect ball of power and pathetic. Space Joffrey. I loved to hate Space Joffrey. Only this movie tried to redeem him, only it just didn’t have the gravitas of Vader’s redemption. Now part of that is Luke wanted so much to redeem his father. And I liked Luke. I wanted Luke to succeed even though I kinda thought it was a fool’s errand. But he risked his life just to try and make a monster repent. I just don’t feel that with Kylo. He’s not a Zuko. I don’t respect him enough to want to watch 3 movies of him teasing redemption. After going over this for two movies, I really just wanted to see him cut loose with his villainy. And no. He’s still waffling about turning good. Has a Force Ghost meeting with Han to turn him good. Which should have been Leia but couldn’t be for obvious reasons.

Speaking of Leia. Respect to Carrie Fisher, but it was painfully obvious she wasn’t there. I don’t think they could have done any better. But man it was distracting.

Poe got more characterization. And actually does play into his arc from TLJ in that he’s less hotheaded and seeks advice from time to time. Then they decided to make his backstory involved with Spice. Which was always Han Solo’s thing. Wondering why they decided to make the hotshot pilot who becomes “a natural leader” more like Han but ok. At least he got one of the few times I actually laughed when masked chick turns him down.

Finn remains the greatest waste of potential in Star Wars history. They bring up he has something important to tell Rey 3 times! And then never says it. Talk about Chekhov’s blue balls. If it’s not important don’t bring it up 3 damn times. Anyway, he meets other former Troopers turned good. They exist. Then just acts like a generic action hero. You suck Finn. Respect to Boyega of course, his acting is great. Honestly all the acting is good, except sadly Fisher who’s reactions clearly don’t really fit.

But all that said, the actual final was kinda nice. Showing all the Jedi coming together in Rey to defeat Palpy was somewhat fulfilling. A bit cheap. But it is a resolution to the “Jedi lives in you” thing they’re going for, and brings them as a direct counter to Palpatine’s more direct plan to live in her by outright taking over. Nice narrative symmetry there. Still think Palpy should have been left dead. But if they’re going to take away Anakin’s great moment of success and the completion of his character arc, at least they replaced it with something that isn’t the worst thing ever.

I have some other minor complaints and praises. One of the knights of Ren has a Dane Axe! Another a mace! Sweet cool new weapons! And we don’t really see them use it all that much. In fact all the knights who I thought where supposed to be the other students that Ben corrupted with him are no more than glorified Stormtroopers. Some of the visuals are amazing. Some of the dialogue is bad. Palpy hiring a stadium sized choir to ominously chant is both hilarious and awesome. Giving Snoke a backstory doesn’t really answer any important questions and creates a bunch more.

But overall that’s the important stuff for me. It did things. I didn’t fall asleep. At some points I was even excited. But overall, I’m left feeling pretty whelmed. We got rid of the Thrawn trilogy for this.

[Maelstrom]

Honestly, very surprised by the harsh reactions here. I *HATED* episode 8. Walked out of the theatre with a bad taste in my mouth. Watched it again after it came out on video, and hated it even more. I went in to this film with very low expectations.

I'm still busy processing it, but, I'll go see it again to confirm and to possibly pick up some of the other running themes, but I was blown away. I loved it and found it to aptly wrap up the saga.


I did see it's flaws, and honestly, I think they were mostly there as they were trying to patch up the holes ep 8 created. I'll get back to this thread once I've reflected a bit more.

[RCgothic]

I've never come out of a star wars film thinking it was anything less than awesome. Some, like the Phantom Menace, I've had second thoughts about later. But this was the first one I think just didn't work.

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To start with, it was painfully obvious Leia wasn't really there. It was distracting to have nothing but reactions and platitudes from her.

How many times did they kill someone and then walk it back five minutes later?! Chewie? On another ship. Not even dead long enough to have Rey's angst come to anything. C3PO's mind wipe? Reversed. Planet destroyed with Poe's Ex and Babu Frick on it? Nah, they got out somehow. Kylo Ren dead? Healed (called it). Finn and his new love interest making a sacrifice - rescued. Ben thrown down a pit- inexplicably survived. This film never had the courage to follow through.

Rey being a Palatine - come on! This completely undermines the message of the last film that heroes can come from anywhere. You have to be part of a special dynasty. Did not like.

The Knights of Ren - no development, just slightly elite mooks for Ben to curb stomp. Wasted.

Hux - interesting plot thread killed off and replaced with general generic. Wasted.

Finn and Rose's relationship - forget about it. Wasted.

Charlie from Lost? I'm sorry I don't know the character's name, but he was too recognisable to play a bit part. Every scene he was in I was just thinking "That's Charlie from Lost".

Finally, I found the finale really unsatisfying. The plucky rebels attack and are horrendously outgunned, oh noes! Ridiculous levels of reinforcements arrive! All is saved! The emperor pulls Force Storm out of his ass. All is lost! Rey blocks the force lightning and the emperor is too stupid to try something else! All is won! It's like a rocket tag of Deus Ex Vs Diabolos Ex. Every great battle in the previous find had had a very tight focus on characters trying to attempt something, so that it felt like an acheive when they succeeded and swung the battle in their favour. Most of the scenes in this (Poe particularly), just felt like they were hanging around until the plot resolved. Did not like.

Speaking of Diabolos Ex, where did the emperor get a galaxy's worth of fleet? Where did all those reinforcements come from?

There was a serious lack of foreshadowing for basically every major plot point, exposing a lack of planning for the entire trilogy. It doesn't hang together as a while and it's no surprise they didn't stick the landing with the final film.

There are bits I really liked. The entire bit on the ruined Death Star was great. Rey passing Ben a lightsabre through the force. Luke and Rey on the island. Several of Finn and Poe's interactions were awesome, as was D-O.

It's just the good bits don't make up for the incoherence.

[Wraith]

Spoiler: LOTS of spoilers; Please don't read if you don't want to know about specific events

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Spoiler: No, seriously, I'm giving away the important beats in the story, be warned

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I think that the movie had more parts that were good, than it did that were bad, but there was enough in there which I didn't like that I wouldn't call it a "great" film.

The opening crawl tells us that Palpatine isn't dead, and everyone knows it because he announced it live on the space-internet. My reaction was; "...Wait, did I miss another movie? When did that happen?"

That seemed to set the tone of the movie, for me. "Things just happen". Why do they happen? "They just do".

The antagonists have a fleets of hundreds of Star Destroyers, each of which now has a planet-killer weapon mounted on it. Who built them? Don't know. How did they do it in secret? Don't care. Where did the crew for all of them come from? Shut up, that's why.
The heroes need a way to find the McGuffin; within 2 minutes they fall into a cave and find it lying on the ground.
They need to find someone to decrypt a droid's memory; within 2 minutes, someone VERY hostile to the group decides that actually they don't mind any more, they'll show them where to go. Oh and by the way here's my single most rare and precious possessions which will help you move on to the next part of the plot, why not take it with you?
Getting the droid's memory decrypted will wipe it forever, resetting them back to new; No wait, here's another droid that fixes it in under 30 seconds.
The group decide to infiltrate a Star Destroyer, so they just... do. They fly in, land, shoot the two guys who ask for their ID and no one notices for 10-15 minutes until a chase scene needs to happen. Why not let Poe show off what an amazing and cunning pilot he is, like Han Solo did in A New Hope? Nope - smash cut from "standing in a desert" to "landing inside a Star Destroyer unmolested".
When the group invade a Star Destroyer they meet a spy who has been providing them intelligence. The spy helps the group escape, and to make it look convincing Finn shoots the spy in the leg so that they can pretend they were overpowered and forced to help; within 2 minutes the spy is shot dead with barely a word and never mentioned again. They never needed to exist - Finn could have met no one on Endor and the guys in the dropship could have been random nameless Rebel troopers and it wouldn't have mattered in the slightest.
Finn meets a tribe of Troopers who, like him, mutinied against the First Order and share his desire for freedom and purpose; it doesn't go anywhere, they just fight and die in the final battle and then the last survivor just leaves with someone else.
Rey and Kylo fight 3 or 4 times, but the first 2 or 3 are all 'imaginary' and don't do anything but remove the tension for when they fight and mean it.

See what I mean? LOTS of things happen in the movie, but there's no build up to any of it and it's almost always resolved nearly immediately, in a way that also has no setup. It very quickly stops feeling like a movie, and more like a string of separate scenes that were filmed for their set-piece and then some flimsy handwave was made to string them all together.

THAT BEING SAID. Despite my gripes, I would say that I liked the film. I enjoyed the nostalgia where it was offered, the choreography of the fights is way better than The Last Jedi, the relationship between Kylo and Rey is given much more time and depth (the scene aboard the crashed Death Star is GREAT), the music is absolutely fantastic, and I LOVE what they did with Palpatine. Even though he just kind of turns up with little more explanation than "I just did", he looks and sounds amazing and I'm prepared to forgive a lot for the privilege of seeing Ian McDiarmid being told to really go for it and enjoy himself.

And I'm not afraid to admit it; I choked up both times they started to play The Princess' theme. They handled Carrie Fisher's absence with grace and kindness and it's exactly what I was hoping for, seeing Leia one last time.

All in all, I'd say it's a 6.5 out of 10. There's nothing outright horrible about the film, but its full of contrivances that progress the story without really letting any tension build, and the cut that I would make if I were editing it would probably lose about half an hour of side-quests in favour of just letting the characters solve a problem, instead of a random stranger appearing to do it for them.

It's a good STORY. It's a good CAST. It's space-wizards and their little robot buddies having lazersword fights in space. It's unconditionally STAR WARS, where recent efforts have been somewhat lacking. It's definitely worth watching, for reasons other than it just being the end of the Saga.

[TheSummoner]

Is it a fitting end for the Skywalker saga or something you wish you had never seen?

"Skywalker saga"

Disney can call it that all they like, but the Skywalker story ended in 1983. What Disney did in the Mary Sue trilogy only served to retcon and invalidate it.

[Felhammer]

Saw the movie last night.

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This whole trilogy is a dumpster fire. It is so obvious that there was no over arching story for the trilogy or even an over-arching vision for the narrative. It was literally three separate movies loosely bound together in a very haphazard and unsatisfying manner.

This movie is where the creative process should have started, then you work back how to seed the ideas, mysteries and plot twists into the narrative of 7 and 8.

Regardless, I enjoyed this movie more than the other two. I actually left with a smile.

[Sapphire Guard]

Question because I'm not sure if I missed this or not.

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Exogel is super difficulty to get in and out of, you have to follow a very specific path basically that even fighters struggle to get through and the Sith Fleet needs precise navigations to get out.

So how did that big Rebel fleet get in at the end?

It's an okay film by itself but the themes kind of eat each other or get overly meta.

[Dienekes]

Question because I'm not sure if I missed this or not.

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Exogel is super difficulty to get in and out of, you have to follow a very specific path basically that even fighters struggle to get through and the Sith Fleet needs precise navigations to get out.

So how did that big Rebel fleet get in at the end?

It's an okay film by itself but the themes kind of eat each other or get overly meta.

It is not directly stated but, presumably

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Lando had them. He was there when they got the coordinates and recorded them. And/or Poe broadcast the exact pathways along with his message for help. Honestly, at this point the information is known to the heroes and they have no reason to keep it a secret.

[Mechalich]

Thinking about it some, it's really rather interesting how the whole Disney ST matches up with the big DC trio of films: Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman, and Justice League.

You have a first film that's competently put together but fails to break new ground and seems to broadly miss the point, a second film that completely indulges the whims of a single creature that completely trashes any broader storyline to serve their specific desires which is beloved by a small subset of the fanbase but otherwise reviled, and a third film that tries to pick up the pieces and tie them together but ends up being a slapdash incoherent mess without any dramatic heft due in part to how much it's forced to walk back the previous film.

Much like Justice League, Rise of Skywalker is significantly more fun to watch than its predecessor while not actually being better. That's mostly a consequence of mood, tone, and overall structure. Watching the heroes achieve ridiculous success is better than watching ridiculous failure, and Rise of Skywalker is also busy enough that something is always happening on screen and that something usually looks good even if it doesn't amount to much. For example, the Kylo-Rey spatial link trick allows for a number of cool bits of visual trickery despite the ridiculous mess that is their relationship in this film. Likewise the actors seem to have a better grasp of having their characters charge through bits of random adventure romp, shallow though it may be, than trying to figure out what their emotions were supposed to be within the confusion of The Last Jedi's anti-story. Finn and Poe in particular work so much better in this film. It doesn't actually matter, because the plot is all 'things just happen' but you get hints of what could have been.

[Theaitetos]

I mean I saw a review of it that said there are 34 plot holes many of which broke star wars canon, was worse that Last Jedi, wasn't even enjoyable on a low popcorn level, just made the Force do everything, made Ray able to accomplish everything, and

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had multiple instances of characters just being brought back to life with the force out of nowhere

and that whatever the Last Jedi did, this did worse without any the brave attempts at subverting expectation.

so, uh.....not really persuading me to see it.

Oh, you mean the Review on Shadiversity? I watched that one too. I really love his channel, it's so amazing (recommendation for all RPG fans!). Here's the review, if others want to see it too; first 14min without spoilers, then he gives a big warning, followed by 1h with spoilers.

[Sapphire Guard]

Makes some sense.

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So maybe the ISDs are too big to get out without the special broadcast thing, but the Rebel's don't need it because they're smaller, or else the Falcon was broadcasting the path or something. I'll take it.

[Wraith]

It is not directly stated but, presumably

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Lando had them. He was there when they got the coordinates and recorded them. And/or Poe broadcast the exact pathways along with his message for help. Honestly, at this point the information is known to the heroes and they have no reason to keep it a secret.

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This is what I took from it. Poe's X-Wings/Finn's lander went in first, and were broadcasting the signal as they invited others to follow. Hence all the radio chatter as the fleet turned up with Poe's ex-girlfriend and the likes; the radio was open and active as they pleaded for reinforcements.

This does however beg the question; why couldn't the Imperial Fleet get out again? Apparently they needed the code/instructions that was being transmitted from the lead ship, but... Why didn't the fleet already have that?
Kylo Ren turned up days ago with his little pyramid-map, and Palpatine got there 30 years ago so clearly he and his staff know the way. They even clearly stated at the beginning that the fleet was going to move out in 16 hours' time, only for the Rebels to turn up with 10 minutes to go. Why on earth did they wait until the last 10 minutes before the ships were due to move out, before telling the ships where they were going and how to get there?

The Rebel fleet did it in about 2 minutes - when Palpatine exploded, everyone just turned around and went home because they already knew the way out. Did one of the Imperial generals just not bother to send an email or something?

[Velaryon]

Having slept on it, the things that bugged me a little bit during the film bug me a little more today.

Spoiler: LOTS of spoilers; Please don't read if you don't want to know about specific events

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Spoiler: No, seriously, I'm giving away the important beats in the story, be warned

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I think that the movie had more parts that were good, than it did that were bad, but there was enough in there which I didn't like that I wouldn't call it a "great" film.

The opening crawl tells us that Palpatine isn't dead, and everyone knows it because he announced it live on the space-internet. My reaction was; "...Wait, did I miss another movie? When did that happen?"

That seemed to set the tone of the movie, for me. "Things just happen". Why do they happen? "They just do".

The antagonists have a fleets of hundreds of Star Destroyers, each of which now has a planet-killer weapon mounted on it. Who built them? Don't know. How did they do it in secret? Don't care. Where did the crew for all of them come from? Shut up, that's why.
The heroes need a way to find the McGuffin; within 2 minutes they fall into a cave and find it lying on the ground.
They need to find someone to decrypt a droid's memory; within 2 minutes, someone VERY hostile to the group decides that actually they don't mind any more, they'll show them where to go. Oh and by the way here's my single most rare and precious possessions which will help you move on to the next part of the plot, why not take it with you?
Getting the droid's memory decrypted will wipe it forever, resetting them back to new; No wait, here's another droid that fixes it in under 30 seconds.
The group decide to infiltrate a Star Destroyer, so they just... do. They fly in, land, shoot the two guys who ask for their ID and no one notices for 10-15 minutes until a chase scene needs to happen. Why not let Poe show off what an amazing and cunning pilot he is, like Han Solo did in A New Hope? Nope - smash cut from "standing in a desert" to "landing inside a Star Destroyer unmolested".
When the group invade a Star Destroyer they meet a spy who has been providing them intelligence. The spy helps the group escape, and to make it look convincing Finn shoots the spy in the leg so that they can pretend they were overpowered and forced to help; within 2 minutes the spy is shot dead with barely a word and never mentioned again. They never needed to exist - Finn could have met no one on Endor and the guys in the dropship could have been random nameless Rebel troopers and it wouldn't have mattered in the slightest.
Finn meets a tribe of Troopers who, like him, mutinied against the First Order and share his desire for freedom and purpose; it doesn't go anywhere, they just fight and die in the final battle and then the last survivor just leaves with someone else.
Rey and Kylo fight 3 or 4 times, but the first 2 or 3 are all 'imaginary' and don't do anything but remove the tension for when they fight and mean it.

See what I mean? LOTS of things happen in the movie, but there's no build up to any of it and it's almost always resolved nearly immediately, in a way that also has no setup. It very quickly stops feeling like a movie, and more like a string of separate scenes that were filmed for their set-piece and then some flimsy handwave was made to string them all together.

THAT BEING SAID. Despite my gripes, I would say that I liked the film. I enjoyed the nostalgia where it was offered, the choreography of the fights is way better than The Last Jedi, the relationship between Kylo and Rey is given much more time and depth (the scene aboard the crashed Death Star is GREAT), the music is absolutely fantastic, and I LOVE what they did with Palpatine. Even though he just kind of turns up with little more explanation than "I just did", he looks and sounds amazing and I'm prepared to forgive a lot for the privilege of seeing Ian McDiarmid being told to really go for it and enjoy himself.

And I'm not afraid to admit it; I choked up both times they started to play The Princess' theme. They handled Carrie Fisher's absence with grace and kindness and it's exactly what I was hoping for, seeing Leia one last time.

All in all, I'd say it's a 6.5 out of 10. There's nothing outright horrible about the film, but its full of contrivances that progress the story without really letting any tension build, and the cut that I would make if I were editing it would probably lose about half an hour of side-quests in favour of just letting the characters solve a problem, instead of a random stranger appearing to do it for them.

It's a good STORY. It's a good CAST. It's space-wizards and their little robot buddies having lazersword fights in space. It's unconditionally STAR WARS, where recent efforts have been somewhat lacking. It's definitely worth watching, for reasons other than it just being the end of the Saga.

Pretty much all true, yeah. There's a lot of small threads being juggled that would have been better spread out over two films and given more time to breathe, and a lot of undermining tension because every bad thing that happens gets undone a few minutes later. It feels a lot like when people complain about the "revolving door afterlife" in Dungeons & Dragons, in that it can remove all sense of meaningful consequences.

I still stand by what I said, that it's the best film of the sequel trilogy (but not the best Disney Star Wars film, which is still Rogue One).

[Mightymosy]

So saw it with my buddy that loves all things Star Wars. Unsurprisingly he loved it. Personally, it was fine. It seemed competently enough made for those who just want an action romp in the Star Wars universe. However, as someone who actually found TLJ interesting and was bored with TFA. Rise of Skywalker pretty much ignored everything I thought was interesting with the last movie and focused on everything I had little interest in at all.

Spoiler

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So the stuff I found truly interesting with TLJ was that Rey was a nobody. That along with the stinger at the end of the movie with the slave kids being inspired to be the next rebels. Or the concept that there are direct apolitical economic systems in place to keep the Galaxy filled with chaos and war. Or what would douchebag Space Joffrey Kylo Ren do with all his power?

I wanted these threads to be developed and pulled. They were all ignored.

Sadly instead of really delving deep into the petty abuses of power caused by nepotism and privilege. The villains of the last movie were completely sidestepped. Hux got replaced by Admiral Generic Guy. And Kylo got upstaged by Palpatine.

As an aside, the title crawl was infuriating. You know what would have been a great way to establish a villain? Show the protagonists and villains doing stuff, only to be interrupted in their plans by the voice of the most terrifying person in the galaxy. How do they react to that? Instead it’s a title crawl.

One thing I will say, Rey has an arc in this movie. Hurray. Or I should say, she has an arc about her power. Now I’m not going to say Rey was a Mary Sue. She wasn’t, outside some strange times the characters warped around her (Leia you have never met this girl, why are you hugging her after your husband died? Chewie is right there!). But mostly, this characters general narrative has been about becoming a Jedi. So it’s about her gaining power and wisdom. With such power, if you want an actual arc they should start untrained or bad at it and learn to be better (Luke in episode 4 and 5). Or start out awesome and learn self-control (Luke in episode 6, Anakin in 1, 2, and 3). Or the somewhat harder one of using power to explore and comment on some sort of political or social situation (Star Trek, the best Superman comics). Rey didn’t really do any of that. She was just kinda good. In this it is very clear that she needs to learn self-control and is on the verge of falling to the dark side. Only at the end it’s less framed as going Evil and gets switched to being possessed by Palpatine.

The galaxy rising up to fight the empire is -technically- following the thread of the people rising up at the end of TLJ. Only outside of like 1 brief conversation with Lando, this movie had nothing to do with rallying the galaxy against the empire. So the cavalry coming felt kinda hollow. I did not get the surge of emotion that I got from the “on your left” scene of Endgame. Where the whole movie was about heroes coming together and trying to bring the cavalry back to life. So when they appear it feels like the culmination of the story. This just felt like a way to defeat the Fleet of Death Stars! that Palpy had. The fleet of Death Stars that of course had the one weakness to exploit. But I don’t really expect originality from a JJ Abrams plot.

I did get to see Kylo Ren die. Twice, kinda. Not nearly harsh enough, though. Now personally, I like Kylo as a character. He is so pathetic and vile. He can try to turn someone to his side and not see the issue with killing all her friends so she has to be dependent on him. He’s this perfect ball of power and pathetic. Space Joffrey. I loved to hate Space Joffrey. Only this movie tried to redeem him, only it just didn’t have the gravitas of Vader’s redemption. Now part of that is Luke wanted so much to redeem his father. And I liked Luke. I wanted Luke to succeed even though I kinda thought it was a fool’s errand. But he risked his life just to try and make a monster repent. I just don’t feel that with Kylo. He’s not a Zuko. I don’t respect him enough to want to watch 3 movies of him teasing redemption. After going over this for two movies, I really just wanted to see him cut loose with his villainy. And no. He’s still waffling about turning good. Has a Force Ghost meeting with Han to turn him good. Which should have been Leia but couldn’t be for obvious reasons.

Speaking of Leia. Respect to Carrie Fisher, but it was painfully obvious she wasn’t there. I don’t think they could have done any better. But man it was distracting.

Poe got more characterization. And actually does play into his arc from TLJ in that he’s less hotheaded and seeks advice from time to time. Then they decided to make his backstory involved with Spice. Which was always Han Solo’s thing. Wondering why they decided to make the hotshot pilot who becomes “a natural leader” more like Han but ok. At least he got one of the few times I actually laughed when masked chick turns him down.

Finn remains the greatest waste of potential in Star Wars history. They bring up he has something important to tell Rey 3 times! And then never says it. Talk about Chekhov’s blue balls. If it’s not important don’t bring it up 3 damn times. Anyway, he meets other former Troopers turned good. They exist. Then just acts like a generic action hero. You suck Finn. Respect to Boyega of course, his acting is great. Honestly all the acting is good, except sadly Fisher who’s reactions clearly don’t really fit.

But all that said, the actual final was kinda nice. Showing all the Jedi coming together in Rey to defeat Palpy was somewhat fulfilling. A bit cheap. But it is a resolution to the “Jedi lives in you” thing they’re going for, and brings them as a direct counter to Palpatine’s more direct plan to live in her by outright taking over. Nice narrative symmetry there. Still think Palpy should have been left dead. But if they’re going to take away Anakin’s great moment of success and the completion of his character arc, at least they replaced it with something that isn’t the worst thing ever.

I have some other minor complaints and praises. One of the knights of Ren has a Dane Axe! Another a mace! Sweet cool new weapons! And we don’t really see them use it all that much. In fact all the knights who I thought where supposed to be the other students that Ben corrupted with him are no more than glorified Stormtroopers. Some of the visuals are amazing. Some of the dialogue is bad. Palpy hiring a stadium sized choir to ominously chant is both hilarious and awesome. Giving Snoke a backstory doesn’t really answer any important questions and creates a bunch more.

But overall that’s the important stuff for me. It did things. I didn’t fall asleep. At some points I was even excited. But overall, I’m left feeling pretty whelmed. We got rid of the Thrawn trilogy for this.

Happy I didn't watch it.

Furious they ditched Thrawn trilogy for this excuse of a storyline.

Happy we now have the Marvel Universe as "Saga".
At some point, appearantly it's better to hand stuff over to a new generation.

Sad that Star Wars ended like this. I have always cheered for a sequel after 6, but I can simply headcannon the sequels away and imagine the Thrawn trilogy instead.

They skipped Mara jade. Why?

[Zevox]

Spoiler: Addressing your comments, having seen the film myself

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I'm not super thrilled at Rey being a Palpatine, but I will happily take it over her being a Skywalker. The movie tries to handwave away the "your parents were nobodies" reveal from TLJ by saying something like "they chose to be nobodies, in order to protect you." Basically the idea is that they were trying to hide her from Palpatine's influence. I do agree with you that it was better when Rey was descended from no one special, but I will take this even though it's not exactly what I wanted.

Calling herself a Skywalker at the end is arguably a little forced, but it's not arbitrary. The reveal of Rey's true parentage happens fairly early in the film, rather than at the climax. There's an underlying theme in the film that there are things more powerful than blood, and that the family you choose matters more than the one you're born with. Rey takes the Skywalker name at the end of the film while the ghosts of Luke and Leia look on approvingly, and it shows her accepting the truth that the Skywalker/Solo clan matter more as her family than her birth family does.

The kiss thing... I mean yeah, it's not great, but the sexual tension between the two of them has been there since The Force Awakens, and was ramped up a lot in The Last Jedi. For all that TLJ tore the plot we seemed to be getting to shreds and left very little for this movie to work with, one thing it set up clearly was that the sexual tension between Rey and Kylo was the rope for their tug-of-war to try and turn each other to/from the dark side. Having a single kiss to pay that off is getting off pretty light, honestly.

Anyway, you seem disinclined to see the movie and that's fine. For what it's worth, I liked it at least from my initial viewing. I thought TFA was an okay film that played it way too safe and felt more like a remake of A New Hope than I wanted, and I thought TLJ technically fulfilled everything I wanted from it while still leaving me less than satisfied at the end. Rise of Skywalker at least is its own film, rather than a remake of the original trilogy or an unnecessary deconstruction.

Spoiler: Replying

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Personally, I won't take that. Rey being a Palapatine being better than her being a Skywalker/Solo doesn't make it good, just not the worst thing they could have done.

For her use of the Skywalker name, alright, that doesn't sound like the worst way to handle that, and having not seen the film I don't think I can properly say whether I'd agree with you about it. I will say that it is still definitely a forced and poor excuse for the title of the film, IMO. Especially since, honestly, aside from the bond she seemed to be forming with Han in TFA, I don't feel like she was ever particularly close to the Skywalker family prior to this film.

As to the kiss, yeah, I don't agree that there was such sexual tension between them, and even if there were that's something I would very much not want paid off in any way, as it strikes me as a really dumb, inherently bad idea. Though as mentioned before, I kind of hate Kylo Ren (already didn't like him even in TFA, and boy did TLJ solidify that), so my views are certainly colored by that.

As far as the previous films, I pretty much agree with you on TFA (aside from already having criticisms of Kylo's character and the final fight between him and Rey there), but personally found TLJ to be just bad, and came away from it feeling like my enthusiasm had died with Luke. I said at the time that I would only see the next film if it came out to a surprising amount of praise from audiences, particularly including others who hadn't like TLJ. So far, it looks like it's very much not doing that. So at this point, I'm thinking I definitely don't see it in theaters, and if I see it afterward it'll probably only be because I'm sure my parents will buy a Blu-Ray copy that I could borrow if for whatever reason I ever feel so inclined.

I'm glad you enjoyed it though - at least someone does. For my part, I just hope that the passing of the Sequel "Trilogy" into the franchise's history lets us get better films in the future. As bitter as the taste TLJ left is, and as much as the effects of decisions made in the sequel trilogy in general have a lot of implications for the franchise's future that I don't like, Disney's overall track record with the franchise isn't so awful that I can completely write it off as hopeless. I really did like Rogue One quite a lot - it's my favorite Star Wars film that isn't part of the Original Trilogy - and while I certainly have things I criticize about them both Solo and even TFA were decent films on the whole. I can't say I'm optimistic that better stories will come soon, but we've seen that Disney can do better, so I do hope that they will again one day.

[Peelee]

Just dropping in to say the trailers are playing now, shows gonna start soon. Later tonight/tomorrow I'ma be active as hell in this thread, but right now I'm just damned excited! Always like the first time, seeing a new Star Wars. This is a wonderful feeling

[ImperiousLeader]

Overall, I think this movie demonstrates that making it up as you go might have been a bad way to end the "Skywalker Saga".

[KillianHawkeye]

Just got back from seeing it. I actually thought it was pretty good. Best of the latest trilogy, at least. Is there a word for a trilogy of trilogies?

I really didn't think they'd be able to tie up all the errant plot threads and unanswered questions from the last two films, but they got most of them. Palpatine wasn't bad. The lightsaber fighting was excellent. Going back to classic locations was cool. Ewoks! And the resolution and ending gave me enough satisfaction.

Right now my biggest complaint is the pacing felt rushed. They spend the whole movie fighting against the clock on Palpatine's threat of impending galaxy-wide revenge. There weren't quite enough slow parts to balance the climactic, high-intensity parts.

I won't be able to stop calling it "Rise of the Skywalker" to match the naming schemes of episodes III and VI, though.

[Dragonus45]

Caught it last night and just got back from seeing it again today. It was a bit to heavy on the fanservice nostalgia baiting but overall still the best of this new trillogy and lightyears better then the trash that was the Last Jedi. Especially because some of that wasted narrative space could have been used to better set up this one and make it feel less rushed.