It's that time again: Rise of Skywalker

[Turrosh Mak]

Who's seen it? I haven't, but the leaked plot makes me think I never will.

[StarCruiser]

From what I've heard (trying to avoid spoilers), it's got 14 different plots all wound up and then run through a blender!

[Zorg56]

Very bad "movie", dont watch it.
They failed everything including edit.

[Arioch]

I have little interest in seeing it, but as a favor to my sister I'll be seeing it with her on Sunday.

I just can't imagine how it might be not terrible.

[Arent]

Somehow i don't care about the star wars stuff. I was in Frozen 2, though

[dragoongfa]

I YAAARRRRGGHED it and... let's just say that I want the half hour I spent skimming through it back.

I went in expecting the worse and how much I would hate it and it's actually pity inducing. It's bad, really bad and the Mary Sue ends up taking more than she ever would in a divorce.

[Werra]

This might help you enjoy the movies.

I'm sure they're also available as tiny BB-8s.

[raistlin34]

Still have hope for The Mandalorian.

[Zorg56]

Mandalorian is decent, not good, but you can watch it and dont feel like someone is shitting on your face.

Death Star Star Destroyers ugh...

[boldilocks]

It feels like only the first 2 or 3 episodes of the mandalorian were actually good, though. The rest seem mediocre, even though they're based on proven story concepts.

[StarCruiser]

Haven't subscribed to Disney+ (and probably never will) so, no Madalorian for me...

[orion1836]

May I present a much better Star Wars movie.

[Zarya]

Mandalorian is decent, not good, but you can watch it and dont feel like someone is shitting on your face.

the episode in which the Mandalorian and his sidekick reenact the story of "Seven Samurai" in less than 20 minutes smelt like someone shitting very nearby tho..

[Zorg56]

Really?
I saw only 1 2 and 7 episodes, and they were decent.
I jsut saw first two and later checked if quality is consistent...

[Zarya]

you may want to avoid Episode 4

(unless interested in how Seven Samurai can be 'done' in under 20 minutes)

[Ithekro]

The Clone Wars did a Seven Samurai type episode itself in about 20 minutes. They had three Jedi and a band of bounty hunters against pirates, but it worked.

[Arioch]

I saw Rise of Skywalker this morning with my sister.

I didn't expect it to be good... I frankly didn't think it could be good, but I didn't imagine that it could be this bad.

It's worse than Last Jedi. It's worse than any of the prequels.

[StarCruiser]

^ And that's what's scary... The Clown Wars was really bad, The Phantom Idiot was dull/bad. Rotten Tomatoes - 56% rotten...

[Razor One]

Saw it with a friend a couple days before christmas.

SpoilerShow

Between the two of us, I'm usually the one who rips apart shitty writing and contrived plot. For example, I savaged Prometheus when it came out because the so-called best and brightest recruits for a deep space mission devolved to brainless horror blood bags the second the amazing visuals faded whilst my friend raved about the film, but came around to my point of view when he got over his hype and actually thought about what he watched.

So, that said, he was the guy who was shredding the film walking out, whereas I was put into a very numb state of mind. I just didn't care to shred the film because that would have required more effort to do than what they put into the plot. It felt like betting at a casino where if you won, you lost your money, and if you lost, you'd lose double your money.

Anyway, I don't honestly care to recall all of its multitude of failures, but the most egregious for me were major events happening offscreen and mentioned only in the opening scrawl, the fact that they didn't seem to give a shit about organic character development, and Rey and Ben kissing.

The first part I can sort of excuse as a result of having differing directors working against each others vision for the series. Only sort of though. Even if you don't like what's handed to you, a good creator will try to work with what the last guy left him with rather than going "yeah, nah" and doing what he wants even if it results in a contradictory mess.

Organic character development is something I love and enjoy seeing in films. It's such a terrible shame that it's just so god damn rare. Character X desires Y, so he does Z to attain Y. It's that easy. And yet it always seems to wind up more along the lines of "The plot requires this to happen, so the characters will do whatever it takes to make that happen even if it makes them stupid".

Rey and Ben kissing was the final straw for me in a film that had otherwise only inspired numb spectacle and little more. It was so utterly unnecessary. Pacific Rim had the right approach to this; just fucking don't do it. Nobody was invested in a Ben/Rey romance. They had no chemistry, nothing drawing them together aside from plot, and was precisely the cheap and tacky kind of fanservice that turns people off.

Ultimately, it fails on the same reasons as prior Star Wars films and the nuTrek films suffer from; the aspiration towards spectacle over anything of value or substance. Compare and contrast with any of the original trilogy. Those films are cheap, tacky, and almost completely lacking in spectacle in comparison, but they have a soul to them that is missing in these more modern incarnations. We feel for Luke when he's grieving Kenobi's death, chuckle at the UST between Han and Leia in Empire, feel the tension and catharsis as Vader considers and then betrays the Emperor to save his son. In the old trilogy the stage may well be grand but the characters fill that stage and make you care about them.

The newest trilogy? The acting is good, don't get me wrong, but the best actors can only work with what they're given, and that's second billing after all the spectacle you're meant to be enjoying. See the giant deathstar ruins? Lookit all them star destroyers! Look! Planet killers! Again! Rey is Palpatine's granddaughter! She's a total mirror to Ben! Bet you didn't expect that! Now watch as they kiss! Are you not amazed! Are you not entertained?!

No. I'm not. I'm just disappointed.

In short, put as much effort into watching this film as they did writing it; None.

[Arioch]

SpoilerShow

I went in without expectations, prepared to try to enjoy empty spectacle, but it was too stupid for words.

It starts right at the very beginning, with the momentous and unexplained return of Emperor Palpatine being revealed... IN THE OPENING TEXT CRAWL. And from that point the stupid just hits you in the face at an unrelenting pace for the next two and half hours.

My sister and I did spend about an hour afterwords complaining about it -- and that's a big task -- but it was not because we were invested in the story or characters, but rather because we're both interested in storytelling and in diagnosing what works and what doesn't work. We often talk about what were promising concepts that could have been better developed, and we could have done differently to make the story work... but in this case the premise was so flawed that I don't see any execution that could have saved it.

I have no doubt that JJ. Abrams was put into a virtually impossible position of having to somehow try to fix what Last Jedi had broken... and I have no doubt that Disney interfered with his efforts... but a retarded monkey could have done a better job than what he and his team came up with. The story reads like fanfiction written by a mentally impaired 13 year old.

Nobody was invested in a Ben/Rey romance.

Alas, not so... the Reylo shippers are legion. My own sister said that the kiss was one of the only moments in the movie that she liked.