Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker 2019

This is probably the closest to that classic Star Wars magic that the sequels got, original, fun creatures and planets, beautiful shots, colors, set pieces, and scenes. If the first movie was more like this in the original but familiar vibe of classic Star Wars, I feel that the sequels would've been more highly received. Also General Hux best general, at least in the sequels.

People be so mad that they introduced new force abilities like bruh, you rather have it never be changed or anything? A lot of expanded universe stuff and the games did the same but no one complains.

Also, the people in that theater who said "Where's Ben?" Is like going to heaven and asking where Mao is, the man was evil bruh, this ain't no Vader redeeming himself type of stuff. This ain't no family bonds or you could tell he cares about her type of thing like the original trilogy. He might've redeemed himself at the end but Death Vader you can tell he was never gonna kill his son or anything. It's also just a non-issue, it's like the littlest thing bruh. Like people really only wanted refunds because of that and her saying her name is Rey Skywalker like bruh you want her to say she's Rey Palpatine? Like if I was the granddaughter of like some terrible dictator and xenophobic person I would change my name too. It's all basically self-entitled man-children who want their own headcanons and politics in it.

[6.5/10] The Rise of Skywalker never stops. From the first minute, it is relentless, reintroducing major characters, blowing through plot point after plot point, tossing in a new face every half hour or so just because it can. Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy speculated that had co-writer/director J.J. Abrams known that he would do Episode IX back when he originally signed onto Star Wars, he would have saddled up and directed the whole damn Sequel Trilogy. The Rise of Skywalker bears that out, if for no other reason than it feels like Abrams tried to cram two movies into one.

Episode IX throws everything and the kitchen sink at the audience. There are major retcons to The Last Jedi. There are check-ins with every character of note. There are major expansions of the lore. There are new planets and alien species. There’s returns from the last remaining Original Trilogy figures who’ve stayed on the sidelines until now. There’s a caper. There’s a lightsaber fight. There’s a throne room scene. There’s a massive dogfight. There’s a speeder chase/podracing homage. There’s a star destroyer escapade. There’s an endless series of chases. There are multiple “not actually dead” fakeouts. There are force ghosts galore.

However much the producers and writers and cast swear up and down that this is it, it’s dubious that The Rise of Skywalker will actually be the last Skywalker Saga film. There’s too many Republic credits to be had when Disney’s coffers are feeling a little light for that to bear out. But Abrams treats it like the last chance to do anything Star Wars. It’s not enough to have another epic Sith vs. Jedi confrontation. A revivified Palpatine has to be imbued by the power of all Sith and Rey has to represent the collective strength of all Jedi to make things as epic as possible. Every Star Wars ship that’s ever flown has to crowd the skies above a villainous fleet, 10,000 times the size of the First Order’s, where every star destroyer is equipped with a Death Star cannon. For better or worse, Episode IX is the quadruple-loaded nachos of Star Wars movies.

Despite, or maybe because of all that, there’s really only room for two (or arguably even one) arc in the film. Like Luke and Anakin before them, Rey and Kylo Ren must each decide whether to embrace the Dark Side of the Force, or hold onto the light. There’s poetry in that parallel. Abrams conjures Return of the Jedi where the angry Jedi and the “it’s too late for me” Sith try to turn one another. And he even summons a heartening echo of Revenge of the Sith, where Ben Solo succeeds at what spurred his grandfather’s downfall -- saving someone he loves from death, albeit at the cost of his own life. For all its other faults, The Rise of Skywalker puts its focus in the right place, with the emotional trajectory and shifting alignments of its biggest hero and original villain taking the spotlight.

But that squeezes out meaningful character development for pretty much anyone else in the film. Finn and Poe get plenty of screen time, but end the film with half-finished or undeveloped arcs (at best). The film seems to set up some big character moments with Finn, whether it’s in the form of the thing he “never told” Rey, or the sense that he’s constantly trying to get her to return, or his realization that there are other moral, mutinous former stormtroopers out there. But Episode IX never really ties any of these story threads up, just letting them dangle in the jet stream until time runs out. Poe has a half-baked challenge to succeed Leia as a Resistance leader, but it’s over and done in the span of just a few short scenes.

It’s nice that Abrams and co. want to pay homage to everything significant in the franchise. But between reviving each member of the Original Trilogy, introducing a handful of new characters this late in the game (who each require quick backstories and basic motivations), making sure that Maz, Rose, Snap, BB-8, and plenty more get their moment in the sun, there’s just not room for much substance outside of the Rey/Kylo drama.

It’s not that these briefly sketched scenes are bad. C-3P0 gets the most affecting moment in the film; Chewey’s mournful roar sells Leia’s death better than anything else, and a nearly nonsensical return for Han Solo still contains the movie’s best echoing exchange. There’s just not time in a two-and-a-half hour movie to service all the characters and ideas Abrams wants to include, which leaves most of them feeling like they get the short shrift.

That’s before all of the retcons and expansions to the lore that Abrams and co-writer Chris Terrio cram in. In The Force Awakens, some of the puzzling and unaccounted for developments or details could be written off as Abrams’s usual mystery box setup. But in the Sequel Trilogy’s final installment, Abrams offers just as many new questions as he does answers, building major new pieces of the mythos and overarching plot on the fly in ways that leave even the devoted Star Wars fanatic scratching their head.

Palpatine is back and tethered to some bizarre mechanical apparatus, with the only explanation being a borrowed line about abilities others find “unnatural.” He’s apparently been puttering around for the past thirty years, on a never-before-mentioned secret Sith planet, with a cadre of random Sith druids, a gazillion star destroyers he just raises from the dirt, and a tank full of Snoke clones. With a single line of dialogue, he takes credit for pulling the strings for everything that’s happened in the Sequel Trilogy so far.

If that weren’t enough, Leia apparently almost became a Jedi and was one lesson away from completing her training, replete with an extra legacy saber no one’s ever seen or talked about before. But she’s still knowledgeable enough in the Force to be Rey’s new master. Oh, and she and Luke both already knew Rey’s true parentage. And Rey and Kylo have some mystical Force bond that is super rare. And all Sith souls or energy or life force or something gets subsumed by the next living Sith. And that life force can be transferred or stolen. And you can’t kill a Sith while leaning toward the Dark Side or the Sith will possess you, but if you use lightsabers and good vibes to reflect their force lightning back at them, it doesn't count as slaying them and you’re safe from Sith possession so long as you’ve gotten your cootie shots.

Look, it’s Star Wars. Not everything is going to make perfect sense, and not everything requires an in-depth explanation, particularly in a movie that’s sprinting to encompass all it wants and needs to. But Abrams and Terrio just stack unprecedented Force rules and new bits of major backstory and significant retcons on top of one another in such quick succession that it’s like the Sith lightning round. The cumulative effect of all these quick-twitch revisions is stupefying, with the results seeming like shortcuts to a desired endpoint rather than an earned part of the journey.

This comes part and parcel with the biggest retcon of all -- that Rey is Palpatine’s grandfather. Nevermind the fact that this requires the audience to consider the wrinkly green wretch fathering a child. It reinforces Star Wars’s consistent small universe problem, where almost everyone of note has to be related to someone else of note. It’s a questionable change that undercuts the laudable “the Force belongs to everyone” message from The Last Jedi and makes noble bloodlines more important than the idea that the hero can be anyone and come from anywhere.

But Episode IX at least uses the retcon to similarly noble thematic ends. The broader moral of the film is that parentage isn’t destiny, but instead, we choose who we want to be and who our loved ones are. Rey has always wanted to find out where she came from, to find new family, so as to help define herself. When she’s having dark visions and learns that she’s related to the Emperor, the itch she wanted to scratch so badly is suddenly drawing blood. She fears that her turn to the Dark Side is inevitable.

Instead, she chooses her found family, the people who’ve supported her, trained her, and in Ben Solo’s case, given his life for her, because they know she’d do the same for them. The final line in the film, where Rey calls herself a Skywalker, is a little too corny and imitative, but the impulse is a creditable one, to declare that the choices we make and the people we hold dear mean more than any genetic predestination could. It dovetails nicely with the theme around the Resistance -- that bad guys like the Emperor and the First Order try to make you lose hope by thinking your alone, but that there’s “more of us than there are of them” -- a commendable people power message in line with the Original Trilogy.

That message bears out with the human element that suffers the film’s best stretches. While The Rise of Skywalker often loses itself in convoluted lore and rapid-fire plot points, the sheer joy of seeing all our heroes working together and going on adventures keeps the first act of the film afloat and adds heart to the last moments. The tension between Rey and Kylo Ren remains potent throughout, and just as Daisy Ridley is able to play Rey’s fatalistic intensity with aplomb as the young Jedi teeters toward the Dark Side, Adam Driver does a superb job at not only conveying Kylo Ren’s renewed internal conflict, but also his more casual, dare I say Solo-esque bent when he pivots toward the light.

The film harnesses these performances in a series of solid action sequences, extending the locale-traversing force connection to fights and more corporeal confrontations. The saber stand-offs have character, and while the final act ends up as overstuffed and busy as the rest of the film, Episode IX can boast any number of stellar sequences. Likewise, despite occasional muddy visuals, the film’s production design, costuming, and design teams realize a score of new people, places, and things in beautiful detail.

That aesthetic excellence, mixed with John Williams’s always stirring score, create emotional high points that the film has trouble ginning up through other means. While not fully seamless, the effects team works around Carrie Fisher’s absence in creditable fashion, even when the script gets a little clunky in trying to write around those limitations. A swelling score helps cover for the script’s middling attempts replicating the semi-profound pronouncements the franchise is known for. And raw images -- of a Force battle between Rey and Kylo, of Chewey pawing at the ground in anguish, of our heroes enjoying a warm, victorious embrace -- muster more feeling than the whirlwind plot and fan fiction-y lore expansions ever could. The craftsmanship on display in so many areas deserves recognition, even as the film rumbles through so much while practically bursting at the seams.

The advantage of The Rise of Skywalker’s grand, film-length rush through everything is that it robs the audience of the chance to stop and process what they’re seeing. Taken as a cluster of individual moments, of vague feelings and isolated sequences smushed together, the movie has a certain propulsive allure. The charm, warmth, nostalgia, and kinetic energy hold the thing together -- sometimes just barely, via the same duct tape and bubble gum holding the Millennium Falcon together after all these years -- but it’s enough to keep you along for the ride.

But when the ride stops, and the viewer finally has a chance to actually stop and process what they just watched, the movie all but falls apart. The more you stop and think about The Rise of Skywalker, the more the ungainliness of the thing stands out, the more its narrative leaps seem questionable if not downright baffling, the more its efforts to channel the affection for characters and stories past feel less and less earned.

Cinema is always a magic trick, and savvy audiences, willing to dig deep enough and think hard enough, will inevitably uncover the sleight of hand. The brilliance of Star Wars, past and present, is that the trick is mesmerizing enough, the magicians so endearing, that it’s easy and even fun to handwave away all of the ruddy details. But Episode IX crumples its own weight, but also accumulated weight of ten other movies, scores of spinoffs, and forty-two years of this franchise swirling around in the pop cultural ether that it strains to pay off and pay tribute to in a single, off-balance heave.

It attempts to be and do everything, with resurrections, redemptions, and reunions that all happen so fast and furiously that almost none have time to really land before it’s on to the next thing. That pace protects Episode IX, keeping both its stronger and weaker moments weightless enough that the film keep rolling no matter what. But eventually, like all things, it has to end. It’s then that the accumulation of story beats and character moments and callbacks feels less than the sum of its parts, less than the proper culmination of nine films’ worth of storytelling, less than the capstone to Star Wars that it aims to be.

The Rise of Skywalker isn’t a bad film. But it is, well, a lot. Abrams and company attempt to bite off more than they, and maybe anyone, could chew. The ultimate result of all this tumult, revision, and rebellion, is a well-intentioned but ill-fated finale -- one that does too much and yet, somehow, not quite enough.

I rewatched The Rise of Skywalker the other day in honor of May the Fourth. I've been steadily rewatching the franchise (as I basically always am) and as I made my way back through it I was hit in the face with a bag of bricks with a realization: all these movies are good to varying degrees, but if you want to look at each trilogy as its own entity it becomes absolutely fascinating. The original trilogy is a fan favorite. It has two of the strongest entries of the whole deal and it gets bonus points for kicking off this absolute unit. But it also feels extraordinarily limited at times, not by technology but in an understanding for how a universe can exist. This is through no fault of the films or the talent behind them, who could have really known what Star Wars would become? I think my most nuclear take at this point, though, is that the prequel trilogy is actually lowkey the best trilogy. It's the most consistent, it builds world the best, introduced the best memes, and feels like an incredibly cohesive three film arc, particularly if you start considering Obi-Wan as protagonist and think of it as some tragic arc. Everyone sort of recognizes Revenge of the Sith as a good film, but the way all three of those films move is dynamic in a way that makes me absolutely mourn how blockbusters used to function.

And then we get to the sequel trilogy. It's definitely the most uneven of the whole lot. But in being uneven, you introduce variance. And in the case of the sequel trilogy, that means you get the highest highs (The Last Jedi is unquestionably the best entry in the entire franchise. Yes, I will explain that in another post. And no, your opinion does not supersede mine). But you also get the lowest lows: enter Rise of Skywalker.

The issue with this movie boils down to how everyone treated Episode VIII. It gave everyone cold feet on how to move forward because not only did Solo underperform at the box office, but it was also happening in the wake of the whole DC Universe thing crashing and burning which was happening alongside the Dark Universe failing to even launch. Studios were suddenly aware that their franchises, regardless of how big and produced they felt, might suck--financially and critically. And so, after all this happened and Disney also saw the shifting perspective of Trevorrow we witnessed one of the harshest pivots I've ever seen in a sequel. The Last Jedi works because of how it subverts expectation for how a second entry in a trilogy operates. So many plot threads were seemingly resolved. Luke is dead, Snoke is dead, Rey's parentage was revealed (and yes, her being nobody is much more interesting by a country mile). It set up the then theoretical Episode IX to be something entirely new because it seemed like it would be much more difficult to just be some retread of anything we'd seen before. And instead, Disney and Abrams and Kennedy seemed to get cold feet.

The Rise of Skywalker feels like two movies smashed into one. And so my biggest question becomes: if they were going to pivot this hard, why not just make two movies? You don't need to retcon anything. Just have the Skywalker Saga end not with a trilogy, but a quadrilogy. I mean, hell, even call it Rise of Skywalker Part 1 and Part 2 to keep it technically as a trilogy, a la Tarantino on Kill Bill. I doubt anyone would have really been upset they needed to go see another Star Wars movie in theaters. And it would have easily fixed the biggest issue in the finished product: the pacing.

I'm an editor. Pacing is something I'm always tracking and clocking. It's chief amongst any editor's concerns when piecing together the movie after everything is shot. And Rise of Skywalker's pacing isn't whack just because of how quickly it moves, but because of how many elements it introduces and then immediately moves on from. When Disney announced this was the end of the Skywalker Saga, I immediately assumed we'd see a long movie. I'm never really upset to have a theatrical experience like that either. And Disney themselves proved fans will turn out in droves to see long movies with Endgame, so when the runtime for Episode IX came in ten minutes shorter than Episode VIII, you could say I was confused. adding a half hour to this movie would remedy so many issues with it (although you should also excise everything Palpatine here too).

And it's weird because everyone's biggest echo was that the sequel trilogy felt so unsure of itself. And Disney had an opportunity to use everything set up in VII and VIII to prove that as absolutely false. There was a great thread running through the sequel trilogy that the old blood and old ways have a tendency to repeat the past mistakes and that rebellion and greatness can come from anyone. And they reneged on it. They had a great throughline of pushing the story out of realms we'd seen before: new lightsabers, new planet types, a side of the galaxy that had been to that point unexplored (Rose and the Codebreaker are such good characters because they are actual laypersons, two sides of just trying to see the next day). But instead we got a package where Rey's power only comes from her parentage, Kylo Ren gets a redemption because so did Vader, rogues who seem uninterested show up because they've got good hearts. And Rey just...chooses to claim Skywalker, despite being associated with both Vader and Kylo Ren?

Listen. If you look at The Rise of Skywalker in a more isolationist perspective, it's really not that bad. It's still a hell of a lot of fun and has some really great worldbuilding to it. I liked the idea of settlements. I liked seeing the aftermath of the Death Star crashing onto a planet. I liked the idea of a Sith homeworld (even though Palpatine shouldn't be there). It had a focus on adventuring that hasn't really been seen in the movies which are usually much more conflict based than exploratory. So there's things peppered throughout that seem to be less concerned with wrapping up the Skywalker Saga, and more with being a love letter to the franchise to show how much more juice it has in it. And I'm cool with all that. I think it does a good job at proving that it exists less as a series and more as a series set within an entire universe. It might put a bow on one massive story, but there's so much more to explore. It has a good mouth feel, if that makes sense.

The Rise of Skywalker had been on my "to watch" list even before it came out. Because of all the negative backlash this movie received, I never decided to watch it in the theaters. Recently, this movie was leaked online and as soon as it did, I decided it was time to give it a chance - despite everything that was being said and all the spoilers I accidentally read while browsing Reddit.

After watching the movie I began to think about things they could have made better, but I did enjoy it. Whether or not if it was because it was another Star Wars film has yet to be clear for me.

In the end, I felt that these movies could have been made better than what they were, as it opened up the possibility of introducing more threats than the ones we are far too familiar with in the Star Wars universe. For example - When Palpatine was revealed to be alive he could have introduced us to more Sith for Rey to face. Which makes sense in the end, since Kylo betrayed Palpatine and the Empire.

I just don't understand how Kylo Ren was the only Sith Rey had to face this entire time.

Also, Having Rey denounce her last name that her parents gave her, despite it being from a sinister origin , made me kinda lose some respect for her in the end. If she really wanted to have the Skywalker name she could have made it : Rey Skywalker Palpatine. Or Rey Palpatine Skywalker. Any way would have been fine.

Leia's CGI was terrible right for the get-go. It immediately felt like a recording from the previous movies, which I know was planned, and I believe they could have made it more convincing with the money they had. They pushed out the movies too soon and it leaves a bitter taste, just like GOT S8.

Pros
+Effects looked great
+Action sequences were decent
+Outstanding costume design and visuals in general
+The moment with the surprise lightning was neat
+I like the general idea behind Ben Solo's redemption
+The acting was good enough
+Cone Head droid was BASED

Cons
------------- The main story line was absolutely moronic Even if we suspend the disbelief in that There's this massive sith fleet of planet destroying ships. Why the fuck are they waiting to do anything? They're literally just asking to be destroyed. Even if Sidious wants to wait for Rey to claim the throne he could have facilitated her arrival in so many ways. Waiting for Kylo Ren to provoke her into coming was awful, lazy writing
-There is almost no connection to any of the previous movies' plot line. It felt like they just decided that they should forget all of the build up done in the past two movies and said "Fuck it, we'll just do episode 6 again."
-Dumb revisionist bullshit with 0 actual explanation literally all they had to do to justify the Emperor was say that his force spirit possessed a clone he had. Him surviving his fall is just as idiotic as Darth Maul's resurrection. Sidious is an awesome villain but his inclusion doesn't strengthen this film, it just cheapens the others. The backtracking on the Last Jedi telling us Rey was just a normal person was absolute dog shit too. It was JJ completely caving into moronic fans who want the canon to match their fanfics. And then when push comes to shove.... THEY FUCKING GO BACK ON IT AND CLAIM IT WAS MEANINGLESS. Like bitch! You just unnecessarily brought it up and made the entire movie about this dumb shit, you clearly thought it mattered enough to write 90% of the dialogue about it
-They just copied episode 6 except woah get this!.... There is a whole fleet of OP megaweapons and they're all just waiting for the rebels to blow them up OMG! There's just a massive amount of "OH you've seen this before but now it's even stronger!" and it is just so uninspiring
-That backtracking on Chewy's death objectively made the movie worse considering Chewy did literally nothing in the movie anyway after that bit. It's just another example of this movie being completely sackless
-the spy gag did not hit and served no purpose

-The execution of all the subplots was really rushed, nothing they did had any weight to it until the final confrontation
-The last part is literally just Mass Effect 3's ending but with less weight because of the messy lead up
-The dialogue was kind of typical of Star Wars... which means bad... but it is what it is
-The world building was non-existent after that one festival bit. I want to know why it matters that the Sith fleet was destroyed. Are there not entire systems still loyal to the First Order? They give us nothing to go on. I mean even Episode 6 gave us little glimpses of other systems revolting after the destruction of the death star

It's sad that this is how the series will end, just trying to copy the earlier iterations with no respect for the new additions to the story or the backbone to defend decisions that were made that were good. Star Wars became huge and stayed huge because of the creativity. The fan response to the Last Jedi showed they couldn't try to be creative and tell the story in a unique way so they end up killing off the series with boredom. Rise of Skywalker isn't horrible but it is not worthy of being the big finale and it is easily the weakest in the series.

Since we can rate the whole bunch now here it goes
God Tier:
Last Jedi
Empire Strikes Back

Excellent Tier:
Revenge of the Sith
A New Hope

Good/Entertaining Tier:
Rogue One
Force Awakens
Attack of the Clones
Phantom Menace

Average Tier:
Return of the Jedi

Disappointing Tier:
Rise of Skywalker

Dog Shit Tier:
Solo

I actually did it. Despite telling everyone I know, I'll never see this movie, I abandoned my principles. Well, that and I pay for Disney+ anyway. So, what the h***, right ? So, did I like it ? Not particularly. Do I hate it ? Same Answer. Truth be told I didn't expect anything.

First of, I felt I was sitting in front of the TV for at least three hours and was surprised it was way less. Is that a good thing ? I don't know. And I still feel they could loose an hour of the movie if the cut all the crap out. Visually it was great, althought at times overloaded. Which is true for many movies nowadays. But seriously, why? A hundred Star Destroyers are not impressive enough ? Let's make it one thousand ! You know what, it's CGI. Once we have the model they cost only pennies. So here's ten thousand (I didn't count them but I want to make a point). Same goes for the resistance fleet coming to the rescue. And those grand scenes where your character becomes a pin tip that is hard to make out. All this just to make the audience awe and to reflect from the fact that there is little content.

Because the story is all over the place with no real direction. Everything is coppled together. Is this the movie they wanted to make in the first place or is it them trying to plug the holes in the dam that came after TLJ? Everyone insists Johnson's movie didn't change a thing but I have my doubts. From my point it was a bad decision bringing Palpatine back. The way they did it with just the line in the opening text. Maybe do a flashback how he survived the fall, who found him, how he got to where he is. But he did little for me at all, that chapter closed with ROTJ. It was literally beating a dead horse. And with every scene and twist they try to climb one more step on the ladder to make something grand, not realizing they already went overboard two steps below.

How many times do we need to see a fight between Rey and Kylo ? Plus those fights were awful. Look at the Duel of the Fates or the Anakin vs Obi Wan on Mustafar as a template. They were full of intensity and emotion. Here it was one-two-three- STOP. Change position, repeat. I know a dozen vids on youtube with better choreographie.

And please do remind us another half dozen times that we are in this together because I am not sure I got it. Spanning the whole trilogy I didn't connect with any of the main characters at all. Which is another factor why this whole sequel is not for me.

In the end it is Star Wars as imagined by Disney. It's a benchmark at what is visually possible and at the same time an excample of what to avoid.

Now, I wrote a lot about something I didn't care about at first, didn't I ? I care for the franchise, but not for this sequels. I tried to see them as something seperate, removed from the Lucas movies. But even that didn't help. While TFA was not bad (or maybe it was the enjoyment of new SW getting the better of me) Ep.8 and Ep.9 are just not good movies.

Like everything I write it's my personal opinion. I don't attack people who like the movie so please grand me the same courtesy.

May the Force be with us.

@andreas1138
you wanted my opinion but it is not favorable.
Concerning Ren, I never liked him as his story is flawed to begin with. He wanted to continue Vader's work. But Vader came to the realisation that ultimately he was on the wrong side, killed Palpatine, and by that fullfilling the Prophecy and bring balance to the Force. He became Anakin again. Up to this point Vader was the ultimate evil. Kylo a wanna-be. He didn't understand Vader because if he had he would not have idealized him.