Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

“Do it!” I’m surprised they added that in there despite all the memes. Anyway… A long time ago...four years to be distinct; the space opera ‘Star Wars’ returned to cinemas with ‘The Force Awakens', that brought back the bittersweet experience that fans have been craving for over 30 years. Well lets just say Christmas was magical that year. While I wasn’t quite as wowed as everyone else, but I still enjoyed it otherwise and I was interested where the story will go after J.J. Abrams left his “mystery box” of questions for another director to answer. How exciting and epic the next years will be. And then the sequel and two spin-offs happened. Well lets just say my interest for these new movies has completely evaporated. Sad times indeed. And no I don’t feel like I’m being overly negative in the heat this movie is receiving, because right now, at this very moment, my thoughts and overall feeling on this movie are genuine, and re-watching it isn’t going to safe it. I’m not disappointed or angry, because at this point I stopped caring. ‘Rise of Skywalker’ is a factory made movie with no heart, no soul, and no magic. Words and phrases like: bold, epic, and satisfying - are not the type of words that I would describe this final chapter in the Skywalker saga. I can’t call something bold if it played things incredibly safe. Each movie exists just to shred up and apologize for what came before it. J.J. Abrams can be hit or miss sometimes, but I must admit he had a difficult task to follow up on ‘Last Jedi’ and Rian Johnson undoing his mystery box questions. If that wasn’t bad enough, the death of Carrie Fisher also had a massive effect on the story, and including her into the movie, while respecting her legacy and giving her as much screen time with the limited deleted footage they have. Abrams sadly treads on familiar ground and doesn't really handle the originals (or even the prequels) with respect. This is literally a remake of ‘Return of The Jedi’. The story in this movie is almost nonexistent. It’s so rushed that you can’t catch a breather amidst the chaos. Nothing flows naturally. Characters running around and jumping from location to location. I think the quick pace easily hides the poor writing and plot holes. I also thought the title crawl is a bit off and felt it was written by a Reddit user. From the moment the movie starts until it ends nothing makes a lick of sense. I think the biggest waste of opportunity is the character of Finn, because the potential of greatness was set up in ‘The Force Awakens’, and they didn’t do a single thing with it. I mean, a Stormtrooper who revolt against the corrupt and sinister empire, which is something we haven’t seen before. Heck, a long time ago he held a lightsaber. Unfortunately in this movie he’s a comedic buffoon that sweats and shouts a lot. What a waste of John Boyega’s talent. They did him dirty. I like Daisy Ridley, not so much on Rey. I don’t want to jump on any bandwagon here, but I don’t understand how someone can be so over powered and skillful at the force with barely any training. Whenever there is training it’s over before you know it. There was a point where I said to myself, “Who taught her to do that?”, or “how the hell did she do that?”. I really struggled to emotionally connect with Rey, because there’s nothing more dull than a character with no flaws or growth. The strongest element throughout these three movies was Kylo Ren by the magnificent Adam Driver. This guy literally carried this series on his back. At least his character as an arc, and not just wasted potential. I actually connected with his inner conflict between the dark side and the light side. The cinematography looks beautiful and absolutely striking. The visuals and music will always be great with these movies regardless on the actual movie. Emperor Palpatine is back...for some reason. The vague explanation of why he’s back made it clear to me that Disney had no plan from the start for these new movies. Still, Ian McDiarmid is fantastic as always. He oozes with evil and soaks up every wicked moment of it. The awkward and ill-placed comedy from ‘Last Jedi’ is still present and it got worse and worse as it went along. With this being the finale, new characters still get introduce and get some development. Like, why are you introducing new characters now? Billy Dee Williams returns as the slick and classy Lando, but sadly doesn't really do much for the story. Richard E. Grant is great as the ruthless new commander of the First Oder with the small screen time he has. Dominic Monaghan, on the other hand, feels like an extra. Rose Tico has a smaller role this time around and her entire love triangle with Finn from ‘Last Jedi’ gets brush under the carpet. Kelly Marie Tran sure can’t catch a break. The action sequences with the lightsaber fights and space battles were mostly forgettable. Even the scenes that stick to mind wasn’t that special. The camera fails to capture focal points with the grand scale lacking. I like how there’s a lesbian couple towards the end that’s on screen for about two seconds. So when the studio want to market the movie for China, they could easily edit out it to make it more “marketable”. How progressive Disney. Overall rating: An unsatisfying conclusion. At least ‘The Mandalorian’ is good.

Well.. this was dull. Let me give you a little context to understand better how I felt during this movie. Firstly: I'm NOT a big Star Wars fan. I like the movies and see them as a "good" franchise, but I wouldn't put any of them on my personal top lists. I enjoy the art of the franchise way more than the story. I LOVE the music, the design of ships and the visual world building. I like some aspects of the overall story more than others of course, but none really come to mind when I think of what I like about the movies in general. That being said, I felt "The Force Awakens" was really boring. Just a generic movie trying to do "the Star Wars things". It was fine but not in any way memorable to me. "The Last Jedi" on the other hand really tried ignoring the big "Star Wars cult" and therefore entertained me the most of all the 9 movies. I prefered the focus on using the "Star Wars" world to tell a story rather then to tell another "Star Wars"-version. "The Rise of Skywalker" now is at best as boring as "The Force Awakens" and very often a big punch in the face to everything I liked about "The Last Jedi". Obviously the higher ups at Disney decided to take notes on everything "the fans" disliked about the 8th movie and do some sort of "damage control" according to that feedback. The movie hast way too much going on for reasons which are often non-existant or just plainly bad. Since the movie couldn't grab my focus I just happened to think more about the big plotholes and started nitpicking and sometimes even mocking the movie for certain decisions which I don't want to spoil here. It's really a shame. I hope Disney will use the name in the future to do standalone movies of different genres, for example a racing movie in space would be great or a good action flick with one or two of the beloved characters. If I had to give it a rating I would probably give the movie a 4-6/10. I only REALLY enjoyed one scene because I hoped for it to happen most of the movie, but that didn't save the rest.

Went to the first showing in town tonight. I really enjoyed the film. Although it leaned heavy on nostalgia, it should, since it is wrapping up 40 years. I did not care for The Last Jedi, and was worried going in. Will do a deeper dive after I have seen it a few times.

It’s hard to write a review for this film without any major spoilers, so this might seem a little vague here and there. There will be very minor spoilers, primarily what’s revealed in the opening text crawl or the trailers, so not much, but if you want to go into this film completely virgin, stop here. The film starts off with things already underway. A transmission has been sent out that contains the voice of Emperor Palpatine. Kylo Ren, now Supreme Leader of the First Order, goes to seek out Palpatine as a potential threat to his power. In the meantime, the Resistance is still in shambles after the events of “The Last Jedi,” and they are busy doing scouting missions and regrouping. All of this is revealed in the opening crawl of the movie, which is where the problems begin. It violates a cardinal rule of storytelling: Show, don’t tell. It wouldn’t have taken much to have this done on screen in more dramatic and effective fashion. Instead, this has the effect of making it feel like we either missed something important or that we’re watching an entirely different movie with a different story. This makes things confusing. It doesn’t help that I was already thinking that J.J. Abrams probably needs to go back to Screenwriting 101 during the opening crawl. Not a good way to start. Other things happen during the course of the movie that make no sense. Why does Kylo Ren reforge his helmet? We never really find that out. He just does. The Knights of Ren do appear in this film finally. Who are they? If you’re expecting an answer of any kind, you’ll be disappointed. Why is there this strange connection between Rey and Kylo Ren? One of the mysteries of the Force, I suppose. Characters who we don’t know appear from nowhere having been significant to the goings on even though we’ve never seen them before. Other characters take bizarre and up to now not even hints at character arcs. It becomes a horrendously confusing mess. I liked some of the more controversial aspects of “The Last Jedi.” Rey being a nobody with no significant parentage? Great idea! The galaxy is a big place. Why does everyone have to be related? Well, this is adjusted slightly. I won’t go into details, but it was disappointing what they did, in my opinion. Leia’s story arc in this film is...weird. I’m going to allow that it’s due to the loss of Carrie Fisher and having to use archival footage (one scene that shows a young Luke and Leia using computer effects is freaky at best). But it’s off-putting and feels tacked on for convenience. It was nice to see Lando return, although even that felt more like throwing a bone to the fans. He could have potentially been replaced by any character with flying skills. Speaking of such, Wedge does make finally make an appearance, but it’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. Here’s how I would sum it up spoiler-free: As I said, I liked “The Last Jedi” a lot, including parts that many didn’t like or found weird as I stated above, but at the same time it was not a problem-free movie for me. “The Rise of Skywalker” is the exact opposite. It definitely has some really cool moments, but feels so sloppy and makes so many storytelling mistakes that, on the whole, I have to say that it’s a bad movie. I’ve said this about just about everything I’ve seen come from J.J. Abrams, that he’s great at coming up with interesting imagery. He gets these pictures in his head of something that would be really interesting to see on film, like flashes one might remember from a dream. For example, there’s a great scene near the end that finally corrects what many consider a great injustice done in an earlier movie. But couching these images in a cohesive story is not his strong suit. In fact, he’s downright terrible at it. This problem seemed to be going in full force in “The Rise of Skywalker.” Were some of my complaints addressed in some expanded material? I don’t know, but even if they were it would still make it bad storytelling. Star Wars has always been fairly good about keeping things self-contained. Expanded material adds extra background to enhance the enjoyment of the main material, like adding seasoning, but shouldn’t be necessary to appreciate the meal. Overall, you need to see this movie to close out the Skywalker Saga, but that’s really the only reason. Don’t go into this expecting a good or even decent film, or for every question to be answered. Ultimately, it’s a disappointing end to Star Wars, and I say this as a Star Wars fan.

When The Force Awakens was released the vast majority of fans liked it. They were practically watching a remake of A New Hope but it was enough for them. Although they never liked Rey. That damn feminist agenda right? The Last Jedi took that from them, it got away from the formula and they went crazy. Who was that Rian Johnson and how he dare to change the characters that only they know how they should act? They did not give them what they wanted and that annoyed them and it's ironic because many times they have complained about the saga and its direction and if something has become clear to me it's that the great majority only want the same, like in the original trilogy. And what does that mean? Fan service. And that's what Star Wars has become. You don't believe me? Ask fans about the scene they liked the most about Rogue One. Vader's scene. A fan service scene. And the fear of losing the ''fans'' forced Disney to undo what they were creating, they also threw Johnson and his film under the bus and they practically announced this new film like the one that came to fix the disaster. A shame and an insult to the director's work. Rise of Skywalker in my opinion represents a setback and it doesn't matter that this is supposed to be the ending. It's a setback because they decided to play it safe and submit to the whims of the audience. While that does not translate into poor quality, it doesn't represent something worth mentioning either. Star Wars represents pure and good entertainment but when it lacks surprises and feels so safe and predictable it means that you're sacrificing any emotional resonance and when it comes to the end of the 9 episodes, that emotion is simply not there. That shot of Rey looking at the two suns should have felt overwhelming and thrilling and I don't know about you but I didn't feel it and that was a huge letdown. And that's what separates this ending from Return of The Jedi and Revenge of the Sith, even though it was known what would happen in Episode III, despite the mistakes there was emotion, here was like finishing the business. I don't consider myself a die-hard fanatic of Star Wars but I do like the saga a lot, yet in order to survive, even of its toxic fandom, they have to dare to try new stuff and forget about the original trilogy because to live in the past is to die in the present and for the saga to have a future, looking forward is the only way. It's a very well made and entertaining film and it was a decent ending for this trilogy but quite an underwhelming conclusion for the saga as a whole. And the Knights of Ren? What a fucking disappointment.