The Rise of Skywalker

[Valigarmander]

Alright, I'm excited.

[CaptHayfever]

That's a title on par with "WandaVision", but I'm still pretty excited to see how this ends.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"

[Marilink]

I like the title because people are really taking it at face value and not considering that it could be (and almost certainly is) misdirection.

[X-3]

Rey goes back in time and becomes Anakin's father

[Booyakasha]

Ray stops pissing about and gets real with Kylo Ren during their next fight. Roars like a lunatic and gives him a thunderous kick in the groin. He goes down, screaming his fool head off, and while he's writhing around, she takes his lightsabre. He struggles to his feet. 'Give it back!' She sticks it down the back of her pants. 'Uh-oh! What now? You gonna go in after it? Huh? Lalala! Whee!' Starts dancing around, wiggling her butt at him, while he gets more and more flustered. 'Does the baby want his pwetty swowd? Boo hoo hoo! Poow wittoe Kywo! You gonna cry? Huh?!?'

There's not enough childish taunting in Star Wars. Jedi kids should have more of a Goonies thing going on----------little bit of swearing and shoulder-punching would go a long way toward making the prequels feel more authentic.

[CaptHayfever]

I like the title because people are really taking it at face value and not considering that it could be (and almost certainly is) misdirection.

I hate it because it's clunky & awkward to say.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"

[Booyakasha]

Real reason people love 'The Goonies' is because it feels real. Adults forget that their dumb little ten-year-olds fight and laugh at fart jokes and tell each other to shut up and go to hell and throw dead birds at each other and dare each other to eat mud, and draw skulls on things to feel tough. Any ten-year-old who tells you he wants to be a doctor when he grows up, you can bet your eye-teeth he's talking about Doctor Jones.

Jedi kids should be scrappers. Hard little sumbitches--------otherwise what the hell can they possibly protect? Tough evil little assh*les, like Huck Finn and the Artful Dodger, and Jubilee. Cindel and Wicket. Little Orphan Annie and Jon Snow. Harry Potter, Short Round, Ash Ketchum and Agatha Heterodyne. Miscreants. You wanna tell me the Ben Kenobi of the real movies, the nutcase who chopped a man's arm off for pushing Luke, never threw rocks at cars or looked up cheerleaders' skirts? The old looney-tune who led a heist on the goldang Death Star never once sprayed the neighbour cat with the hose for hissing at him. Yeah, I'm so incredibly sure.

[ScottyMcGee]

Random theories I'm pulling out of my butthole:

Rey IS the Force incarnate.

Rey was conceived the same way Anakin was (But I feel that would be too stupid)

Skywalker is revealed to be a general term for a Force-user. The way I think everything should end is that Jedi and Sith no longer exist - people use the Force freely and train how they wish and are judged by how they use their powers - regardless whether they draw it from the Light or Dark side.

Also another theory

[Valigarmander]

Getting more hyped.

[steeze]

Getting more hyped.

Final fight in Revenge of the Sith: "Let's have it happen in a volcanic eruption."

Final fight in Rise of Skywalker: "Okay so we can't do lava again."

[Valigarmander]

Coming out December 20.

[CaptHayfever]

I'm excited. Granted, 12/20 is when the wife & I are headed off on a vacation, but we'll be effectively cut off from the world till we get back, so it'll be easy to avoid spoilers.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"

[ScottyMcGee]

I always had an idea that C-3PO will regain his "deleted" memories and realize that Anakin created him. Like maybe he saw something back in the prequel era that ends up being important and they need to fish it out of his databanks or something. I always wondered if one of the new movies might do that. This scene in the trailer where he has wires hooked to his head and he's telling everyone that he's getting a last good look at his friends - maybe they'll do that? Maybe the procedure has a danger of his personality being rewired or destroyed or something.

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

I read we might get an edit of this film with work by George Lucas. That'd be cool but I'd need him to go fix the rest first, then I could watch.

[Deku Tree]

Spoiler.

Yo who slept with Palpatine though?

[Valigarmander]

Spoiler.

"Every ship has planet-killing capabilities... So that's how he's ending this." -Poe, sharing his thoughts on Abrams and the sequel trilogy

I'll give my full thoughts on the movie later.

[RinkuTheFirst]

Spoiler.

Not as good as The Last Jedi, but not bad.

[Valigarmander]

My thoughts on the movie:

Spoiler.

As a whole, the movie felt rushed and disjointed. It's as if they had a long list of things they wanted to include in this film, places they wanted to go, and they just shot through the list as fast as they could to fit it all into two hours. No time to stop and breathe. No time to take things in. No time to reflect on the past or think about the future. Just hopping from one mandated plot point to the next.

I was hoping that Palpatine would be integrated into the story organically, maybe only appearing late in the film, as a total surprise to the heroes. But no, he "broadcast" his revival to the galaxy before the movie even began, and appears at the very start of the film to give Kylo Ren a big ol' infodump.

Lando's kinda just there. For no reason.

Hux was a character that went **** nowhere.

All things considered, I think they handled Leia well in this movie. Yeah, you can sort of tell when it's Carrie Fisher and when it's a double, and Leia does seem to just up and die with little buildup. But I think this was about the best that could've been done given the circumstances, and I'm thankful that they were respectful enough not to create a CGI specter a la Tarkin.

I did like Palpatine's appearance in this film. They found a way to make him genuinely creepy, and Ian McDiarmid is a scene-stealer as always.

I kind of liked the twist about Rey's heritage. As soon as Palpatine was announced to be appearing in Episode IX, I knew he was going to be revealed to have some important relationship with Rey. (I was close, but not quite there: my theory was that they were going to recycle a deleted scene from Episode III where Palpatine claims to have "created" Anakin manipulating midichlorians or whatnot.) Though as Deku notes, this does raise some burning questions...

It sure is a good thing Luke's X-Wing still functioned perfectly after being submerged in saltwater for years.

Lando and Chewie's return with reinforcements was the most eye-rollingly predictable deus ex machina in the entire franchise.

I'm really not a fan of the "bad guy is redeemed by the power of love" trope, especially when said bad guy is a cruel, mass-murdering totalitarian. Like grandfather, like grandson I guess.

This movie felt like a good conclusion to Rey's character arc. But what about Finn and Poe? They had a lot of good development in The Last Jedi, but here they were little more than minor characters. There was no sense of "ahh yes, this character's story has reached its conclusion" like there was with Rey.

All in all, this was a disappointing end to the trilogy. Return of the Jedi was a good cap to the franchise. Rise of Skywalker isn't. It did not feel like an amazing, satisfying climax, one that was artfully built up towards. The parts with Palpatine were cool, but everything else felt like it was going through the motions. The space battle with Poe and a bunch of nameless other pilots we've never been introduced to and do not care about felt pointless. The line about how "everyone is rising up" against the First Order in the end felt tacked on. It was like how Return of the Jedi implied that the Empire crumbled after the destruction of the second Death Star, however little sense that made... only this time around it makes even less sense.

The sequel trilogy went out with a whimper, not a bang.

My thoughts on the sequel trilogy as a whole:

Spoiler.

I think the fatal flaw of the sequel trilogy is that Disney went in with no outline, no overall plan. Each movie was to have different writers and different directors, with different ideas about where to take the series. The result was a trilogy of movies that felt aimless and incohesive. Each new entry pulled some new plot point out of its ass and sped off in a different direction than its predecessor. The sequel trilogy does not feel like a unified story, it feels like the product of a high school group project where the participants barely communicated and all had conflicting ideas about what they wanted to do.

But eh, still better than the prequels...

[Deku Tree]

Spoiler.

I don't know that much of what was going on with the emperor made any sense. The Being John Malkovich mechanism that the Sith have makes the Plagueis immortality seem a bit redundant. Not really getting why he made a Snoke, or how he's still alive. Like, if he's a clone, why is he so damaged?

The Knights of Ren were a real nothing of a concept.
That dagger pointing to the vault via it's shape when you're standing exactly where Rey was standing was some contrived nonsense.
Chewie getting a medal seemed really tacked on and meta.
The scavenger hunt seemed kind of A.D.D.
Also, kill Chewie and 3PO or don't.


All that said, while I was watching it I mostly just took it in and enjoyed it without thinking too critically. It was much better than I feared it could have been.

[ScottyMcGee]

Spoiler.

Yo who slept with Palpatine though?

Spoiler.

Do you think he said "Do it!" when they did it?

My thoughts:

Spoiler.

First thing's first - there was a theme that I was hoping they would go with and they didn't and I hate it because it would have been SOO GOOD. Goddammit, Disney. Judging by the events of The Last Jedi, I was hoping that the overall theme and "lesson" of the sequel trilogy would be that there should be neither Sith nor Jedi - just Force users who are free to use the Force as they please. The prequel trilogy taught us that the Jedi Order were fallible in their hubris. The original trilogy showed us the totalitarianism of a Sith Empire. The sequel trilogy should have been like "You know what? **** Jedi. **** Sith. Just be a good person." The Force Awakens should have showed us Luke's new Jedi Order and culminated in it falling after Kylo rose to power, instead of it being a backstory. That SHOULD have been the story. Luke would have to deal with failure and guilt over creating a new Vader, and Rey would have been introduced as some orphan student who's not really into following Luke's ways but also not really following the Sith ways either. She's just able to find that right balance. That's how I would have started it from the get-go.

I don't remember the exact verbatim but in Rise of Skywalker, Palpatine was like "You're a Sith" and Rey was like "No, I'm a Jedi" before killing him. I actually wish she said, "No. I'm Rey."

The first hour or so was so rushed it wasn't even funny. When Palpatine showed up literally minutes in I was like "Oh, we're here? We're here already, guys."

Like it's been said before here, it feels like there were three different writers. JJ Abrams had one direction. Rian Johnson seemed to go another. JJ Abrams then tried to combine the two and it came off as messy and rushed.

I'm still digesting Palpatine being involved again. It looked really cool. There was a particular wide shot with Rey against Palpatine and you see the throne in the background and the long support system keeping Palpatine alive that looked epic. It looked like vintage Ralph McQuarrie concept art. Palpatine returning does create the potential for some interesting themes. It makes sense that Palpatine would be afraid of losing power like Plagueis and have backup plans for his death. But I currently feel like it feels really contrived. I don't like secret plot lines that just inorganically arise. There was absolutely no indication that Palpatine did the dirty with someone and had a child. It just happens. There's a difference between a plot twist and a Deus ex Machina, and this felt like a Deus ex Machina especially when a random character said, "He's been pulling the strings this entire time." I rolled my eyes at that. Also, doesn't it kind of ruin the emotional weight of Anakin's sacrifice?

The main issue with the sequel trilogy is that things. . . just happen. Right away in The Force Awakens, Rey JUST FINDS Anakin's original lightsaber, despite the fact that it was lost in Cloud City. Maz NEVER explained how she got it, and I was hoping she would in Rise of Skywalker. It's been most annoying retcon to me because it's cheating the audience out of a logical flow of story. There's absolutely no explanation and it was a shoe-in so that they could create the theme of passing on the lightsaber. I have no problem with Anakin's lightsaber being found and becoming a plot point. I have a problem with it just arising without no explanation and how Rey just finds it without anything pushing her towards it. She just "hears a voice" and finds it in Maz's basement. Like, "Oh, what's that? The plot is calling me to go down here now."

Also it was unclear to me how Palpatine "survived". Was that body a clone body that his Dark Side spirit embodied? Or was that his original body somehow?

Before Rise of Skywalker came out, I was thinking about how the Star Wars series gives the main character a main fear in each trilogy. Anakin's was "I'm afraid of losing loved ones." Luke's was, "I'm afraid of my father." I had trouble for a moment thinking about what Rey was afraid of, and then thought hesitantly, "I'm afraid of who I am?" They actually expressed that in Rise of Skywalker and that cemented the theme. At the same time, I think they could have played that theme stronger throughout the other two movies. Rey just seemed too much of a good, confident person for her to naturally question her goodness. There should have been more incidents throughout the trilogy to ask us "Is she really going to be good or not?"

Instead of giving C-3PO's memories back, I think they should have done it this way: R2-D2 keeps reminding him that they've already done stuff. Towards the end, C-3PO would be like "I'm sorry little guy, I just can't remember anything. But I trust that we've been friends, and if we were really good friends then we should have no trouble doing it all over again, right?" And they hobble off into the distance together, restarting their friendship anew. That would be the perfect way to close them out.

All in all, I got emotional at the end, tbh. I grew up with Star Wars since I was practically born and I was so emotional at the end to see Rey visit the Lars homestead where everything started. Her seeing the spirits of Luke and Leia by the homestead killed me. Regardless of how the the middle of the story should have been, that was a great shot to end it all on.