They should rename this film DON'T ASK QUESTIONS: A STAR WARS STORY
There is so much I could write about this nightmare of a production, but I think the general consensus surrounding it summarizes my feelings more, especially from the "fandom menace." How a world class beloved A-list brand like Star Wars could reach this point in it's lifespan, no better than a Sci-fi channel film, completely baffles me. In less than 4 years, Disney was able to grab such a loved property and turn off every audience member imaginable from ever investing in it again. In just 3 films, fans are now crawling back to George Lucas asking him to redeem the saga and asking for forgiveness for all their words about the prequel trilogy. The cynic in me just says they deserve this. They were so quick to throw Lucas under the bus and put the mouse on a pedestal of, "Oh, look at how great Marvel and the Avengers are! Surely Mr. Iger and Lucasfilm can "return Star Wars to it's former glory" now that it's out of that George "Special Edition" Lucas' hands!" The rose tinted glasses were rip torn from the blind fans faces with Rian Johnson's subversion fueled train wreck of a movie that derailed any semblance of cohesion the trilogy may have had, which there wasn't and there was no plan day one, exposing the rat underneath the sheath of painted glass that was being fed to the general audiences. But with Solo bombing, it finally cemented what state the brand was in for the viewing eyes, that Disney had force feed way too much bad way too quickly and was able to dilute a classic property in to the ground, the actual red negatives in stock and profit. Toys began collecting dust on shelves, Toys R' Us went out of business, hurting merchandise moves even more, and events around the world cancelled in wake of diminishing interest in this brand. It failed to please the OT fans. It failed to please the prequel fans. And most importantly, it failed to attract a new audience of youth, like what fandom Star Wars had garnered when it first premiered in 1977. The series by 2018 had reached a point of no return. No one was on board anymore except for the extreme die hards. This fate is something not uncommon though, unfortunately, anymore. Time and again this decade, Hollywood has declared it's war to market as many nostalgia properties as possible because originality when given monumentous blockbusters budgets, which is the standard now, is not encouraged. So the familiar is the norm, while the challenging is to the way side. The only solution, given the failure of such like Voltron, Ghostbusters, and the success of Joker, is hopefully the heads will learn to start lowering it's budgets are trusting it's creative leads. Because I can't think of a more better example of everything wrong with Hollywood and the current system of moviemaking than The Rise Of Skywalker. I know that's a phrase tossed around a lot now, "this film is everything wrong with [FILL IN THE BLANK]," but this latest J.J. "Trek" Abrams bombshell of a fanservice, retcon baffling shitstorm is the embodiment of it all. If any of you want to point from this day forward what happened to cinema in the 2010's, this is the ultimate lead up to it all. What a perfect way to end 2019, with the most corporate driven, committee driven, test screen driven, pandering garbage to ever been conceived by Hollywood. The entire premise of the film is to walk back what everyone hated about The Last Jedi, which even though that received glowing praise from the "critics," which have now all been debunked as shills looking for publicity, the audience and majority of fans were then rallied to talk about how this film went wrong and what it meant for the rest of the series. Disney became well aware of the reception, and especially the financial bomb of Solo: A Star Wars Story, so Rise had an unachievable challenge. It had to answer questions from the previous two films, wrap up all remaining open arcs, which there were a shit load of them, tell it's own story, create a satisfying conclusion to all 9 films in the saga, and still be a coherent, fun experience. It achieved none of them. Nothing in the movie makes any sense, not even joking or playing dumb. It has so many balls to juggle and consistently drops them at every turn, it becomes embarrassing, hilarious, then boring, and then depressing to watch. I was sitting watching in like an empty void of sadness and disbelief that something I used to love so much be reduced to this, all because of a lack of planning and bad decision making from every angle, starting back in 2014. If J.J. had for just a minute listening to George's story plan and stopped using his story breaking "mystery box" technique, maybe we could be here this year with something that's passable. Not good, passable. The film opens with Palpatine back. No reason. He's just back. Turns out he created Snoke himself and he has cryo tubes full of more. I'm not even kidding, it's hilarious. He also has an entire army of Death Star Destroyers, like thousands of them, that he controls by hand. He raises them up out of the ground. He's lifted around by a Glad0s crane. He looks younger than he did in Return of the Jedi. Don't ask questions. Leia's CG reused footage is horrible. Rey is incredibly overpowered in this movie. The wayfinder shit is boring and tedious. There's no reason for Lando to be there. Nothing about the force use in the movie makes sense. The transfer of life energy makes no sense. Kylo putting his helmet back together, why? Don't ask questions. Rey kisses Kylo after he saves her. Why? Don't ask questions. Rey goes to Tatooine, she somehow knows it's there, and makes that her new home. Why? Don't ask questions. She adopts the name Rey Skywalker. Why? I'm done with that. So many things happen in this film that require you to suspend your disbelief, you will detach and the film will exhaust, and then make you cackle and howl with laughter at the absurdity of what happens. The fact they had to bring Sheev Palpatine at all because Snoke was out of the picture just screams desperate. It's backtracking retconning to make Snoke seem like less of an important factor in the previous two films. I guess you can just clone force users now. How? Don't ask questions. They bring back Palpatine just so Rey can one up him in the same film. They completely take away Anakin's redemption and Sacrifice and Luke's journey, just so Rey can have all the glory. Kylo dies, so the Skywalker lineage just ends. What a slap in the face.
"I am all of the Sith." - a wasted Ian McDiarmid "No! I'm all the Jedi." - a Mary Sue
The exposition dumps and lack of motivation in the story makes this truly the spectacle of chaotic awfulness that can't even be ranked higher than The Room. What's the point of this story? Really, why are we here? What is the goal of this? What set up was there for this? There was none. There was no road map. There's no moral, no intrigue, no grand vision, no borrowing and inspiration from classic serials like Lucas was. Nothing artistic or respectable about this waste of human resources and time. This is a film made for everyone, but pleases no one.
May the 2020's bring about the death of fake nerd culture! Give comics back to the real nerds!
Review by filmtoasterVIP 3BlockedParentSpoilers2020-03-02T21:21:55Z
They should rename this film
DON'T ASK QUESTIONS: A STAR WARS STORY
There is so much I could write about this nightmare of a production, but I think the general consensus surrounding it summarizes my feelings more, especially from the "fandom menace." How a world class beloved A-list brand like Star Wars could reach this point in it's lifespan, no better than a Sci-fi channel film, completely baffles me. In less than 4 years, Disney was able to grab such a loved property and turn off every audience member imaginable from ever investing in it again. In just 3 films, fans are now crawling back to George Lucas asking him to redeem the saga and asking for forgiveness for all their words about the prequel trilogy. The cynic in me just says they deserve this. They were so quick to throw Lucas under the bus and put the mouse on a pedestal of, "Oh, look at how great Marvel and the Avengers are! Surely Mr. Iger and Lucasfilm can "return Star Wars to it's former glory" now that it's out of that George "Special Edition" Lucas' hands!" The rose tinted glasses were rip torn from the blind fans faces with Rian Johnson's subversion fueled train wreck of a movie that derailed any semblance of cohesion the trilogy may have had, which there wasn't and there was no plan day one, exposing the rat underneath the sheath of painted glass that was being fed to the general audiences. But with Solo bombing, it finally cemented what state the brand was in for the viewing eyes, that Disney had force feed way too much bad way too quickly and was able to dilute a classic property in to the ground, the actual red negatives in stock and profit. Toys began collecting dust on shelves, Toys R' Us went out of business, hurting merchandise moves even more, and events around the world cancelled in wake of diminishing interest in this brand. It failed to please the OT fans. It failed to please the prequel fans. And most importantly, it failed to attract a new audience of youth, like what fandom Star Wars had garnered when it first premiered in 1977. The series by 2018 had reached a point of no return. No one was on board anymore except for the extreme die hards. This fate is something not uncommon though, unfortunately, anymore. Time and again this decade, Hollywood has declared it's war to market as many nostalgia properties as possible because originality when given monumentous blockbusters budgets, which is the standard now, is not encouraged. So the familiar is the norm, while the challenging is to the way side. The only solution, given the failure of such like Voltron, Ghostbusters, and the success of Joker, is hopefully the heads will learn to start lowering it's budgets are trusting it's creative leads. Because I can't think of a more better example of everything wrong with Hollywood and the current system of moviemaking than The Rise Of Skywalker. I know that's a phrase tossed around a lot now, "this film is everything wrong with [FILL IN THE BLANK]," but this latest J.J. "Trek" Abrams bombshell of a fanservice, retcon baffling shitstorm is the embodiment of it all. If any of you want to point from this day forward what happened to cinema in the 2010's, this is the ultimate lead up to it all. What a perfect way to end 2019, with the most corporate driven, committee driven, test screen driven, pandering garbage to ever been conceived by Hollywood. The entire premise of the film is to walk back what everyone hated about The Last Jedi, which even though that received glowing praise from the "critics," which have now all been debunked as shills looking for publicity, the audience and majority of fans were then rallied to talk about how this film went wrong and what it meant for the rest of the series. Disney became well aware of the reception, and especially the financial bomb of Solo: A Star Wars Story, so Rise had an unachievable challenge. It had to answer questions from the previous two films, wrap up all remaining open arcs, which there were a shit load of them, tell it's own story, create a satisfying conclusion to all 9 films in the saga, and still be a coherent, fun experience. It achieved none of them. Nothing in the movie makes any sense, not even joking or playing dumb. It has so many balls to juggle and consistently drops them at every turn, it becomes embarrassing, hilarious, then boring, and then depressing to watch. I was sitting watching in like an empty void of sadness and disbelief that something I used to love so much be reduced to this, all because of a lack of planning and bad decision making from every angle, starting back in 2014. If J.J. had for just a minute listening to George's story plan and stopped using his story breaking "mystery box" technique, maybe we could be here this year with something that's passable. Not good, passable. The film opens with Palpatine back. No reason. He's just back. Turns out he created Snoke himself and he has cryo tubes full of more. I'm not even kidding, it's hilarious. He also has an entire army of Death Star Destroyers, like thousands of them, that he controls by hand. He raises them up out of the ground. He's lifted around by a Glad0s crane. He looks younger than he did in Return of the Jedi. Don't ask questions. Leia's CG reused footage is horrible. Rey is incredibly overpowered in this movie. The wayfinder shit is boring and tedious. There's no reason for Lando to be there. Nothing about the force use in the movie makes sense. The transfer of life energy makes no sense. Kylo putting his helmet back together, why? Don't ask questions. Rey kisses Kylo after he saves her. Why? Don't ask questions. Rey goes to Tatooine, she somehow knows it's there, and makes that her new home. Why? Don't ask questions. She adopts the name Rey Skywalker. Why? I'm done with that. So many things happen in this film that require you to suspend your disbelief, you will detach and the film will exhaust, and then make you cackle and howl with laughter at the absurdity of what happens. The fact they had to bring Sheev Palpatine at all because Snoke was out of the picture just screams desperate. It's backtracking retconning to make Snoke seem like less of an important factor in the previous two films. I guess you can just clone force users now. How? Don't ask questions. They bring back Palpatine just so Rey can one up him in the same film. They completely take away Anakin's redemption and Sacrifice and Luke's journey, just so Rey can have all the glory. Kylo dies, so the Skywalker lineage just ends. What a slap in the face.
"I am all of the Sith." - a wasted Ian McDiarmid
"No! I'm all the Jedi." - a Mary Sue
The exposition dumps and lack of motivation in the story makes this truly the spectacle of chaotic awfulness that can't even be ranked higher than The Room. What's the point of this story? Really, why are we here? What is the goal of this? What set up was there for this? There was none. There was no road map. There's no moral, no intrigue, no grand vision, no borrowing and inspiration from classic serials like Lucas was. Nothing artistic or respectable about this waste of human resources and time. This is a film made for everyone, but pleases no one.
May the 2020's bring about the death of fake nerd culture! Give comics back to the real nerds!