The Rise of Skywalker: Discussion

P.S. From the trailers I see that Daisy Ridley again looks constipated instead of concentrated and is not that she cannot act at all.

Are you Mike Sidious?

Let me get this straight. Negative posts about a movie by people who are actively flaunting that they will literally never know what they're talking about because they refuse to even see the movie they're complaining about? This might actually be even worse than prequel bashing.

"PEOPLE HATE WHAT THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND."

My oh my what a dreary, dim corner of Star Wars fandom. It's a shame that Prequel-gushers have become what they always fought against. I'll go ahead and post my little slapdash review of the ST, copy-pasted from TFN forum. Typed with my middle finger on my phone:

TFN veteran and oldschool master Prequel defender reporting in for my opinions on the sequel trilogy. Like with the Prequels, I reserved my judgment until the full story was told. I don't know why so many people jump the gun and judge a trilogy before it's finished. Anyway, I found Ep 7 to be slow, boring, and too safe but I did like all the new characters. Daisy Ridley is a total heartthrob and she is a great over-the-top type actor. Perfect for Star Wars.

Ep 8 was great to me, mainly because of the Reylo tension and new Force abilities. Kylo destroying his mask always gives me chills, and the Force-skyping totally captures the first-love type feeling. Honestly, Rey and Ben might be the only relationship in Star Wars that feels natural to me. I loved the Force Island, with the porgs and Force nuns. It was too long, much like Ep 2, but I gotta say I was satisfied with Luke's sacrifice and it still moves me to tears sometimes. The fathier chase would be my only gripe with Rian's movie. It just didn't feel like Star Wars, especially with Rose's sappy theme music. Rose is a very sweet character though, and I like her a lot. I appreciated the Snoke twist. When they sliced him in half, it was the first time since the OT where I was on the edge of my seat and wondered what could possibly happen next. The look on Rey's face when she rejects Kylo. The set, the fire, the falling sparks against the blackness of space. So good. It felt like the most daring Star Wars movie to me, despite its flaws, and that kind of mirrors my sentiments about my beloved Prequels.

I did not have high expectations for The Rise of Skywalker. I thought the name sounded corny, the word around town was that it was the worst SW movie ever, and I accidentally read a spoiler about Rey's lineage the morning before I went in to see it, and I was NOT impressed. The only thing I needed from this movie was for it to end, so I could get on with my life.

Episode 9, though I've only seen it once, could not have been more perfect. I always considered Palpatine to be the real villain, and having Snoke instead would have felt cheap in light of the original 6 movies. I was a fan of the Dark Empire comic (whose story came from George Lucas himself btw), so the choice to bring back Palpatine felt logical and intuitive and it was executed even better than I could have expected. I feel the fast pacing was totally appropriate given how slow 7 and 8 were. There was a lot hanging on this movie, really the same thing happened with the prequels where 1 and 2 beat around the bush, and 3 had to cover a lot of ground, and it worked then and it works now. I enjoyed everything about this movie. It felt a little predictable, but it felt right. The 9th episode in the saga had to really be big, fast, heavy-handed, and nostalgic. I wish the situation between Rose and Finn was given a little more attention, because it was a whole side-plot in 8, but I guess one thing common among all the relationships and crushes in these sequel movies is that everything is basically never vocalized and it's all very between-the-lines. Poe and his old lady friend with the helmet's little non-verbal exchange at the end captures this and it just works. My guess is that Finn kinda friendzoned Rose after Episode 8. Oh well. One of life's bitter pills. I don't understand the criticisms of the first act. The festival scene where the hippie alien girl gives Rey a necklace was so relatable, and the whole sequence was gorgeous and fun. The Force-skype battle where Rey is in Kylo's chambers and Kylo knocks over the basket of red beads/berries into the black and white interior of his ship was so gorgeous. (Black, white, and red are known to be a Satanic color combination, and they are both really angry in the first half of this movie.) I laughed, cried, and most of all, frequently nodded my head in recognition during this film. All the new abilities like objects passing through the Force, and environments combining, it was so psychedelic and it never needed to be explained, these things just rang true. Even much of the dialogue, it was like I already knew it in my heart. JJ, you really exceeded my expectations!

I can't say much on little hidden directorial choices, aside from the obvious BB8 Force-healing D-O, but I'll point out a couple things that seemed like obvious Christian imagery. The battle on Endor was on the water, and Kylo was healed and turned to the lightside in the rain. It totally felt like baptism imagery the way he was being sprinkled. (The Han Force-memory made me cry, of course.) It also seemed like when Rey defeated Palpatine at the end, her lightsabers only reflected the hate-lightening when she made an X with them, a universal symbol for the Cross and Jesus Christ.

I've only seen the movie once, but chances are, I will watch it many, many more times as I feel it's the most fun of all Star Wars movies, and may be my favorite. ROTJ was my favorite as a kid, but the pequels made it retroactively seem kind of cheap-looking and small in scope. So this was like capturing the magic of ROTJ all over again, and that positive glow and sense of closure I used to get watching my old Return of the Jedi VHS tape is back and here to stay!

I won't, because TLJ kicked ass.

I see what looks to be a lot of sanctimonious whining. I mean *endless* complaining. I wasn't impressed with TFA. Never once did I go online and expound on it for page after page. All the sequel hate just looks incredibly familiar to me. I would call it lazy, but it looks like a lot of work, and not much fun at all.

Edit: It's not just this forum of course, it's everywhere. I was just under the impression that this forum was more prequel-friendly, and figured if you knew how to enjoy the prequels you wouldn't fall into the criticism loop. I realized by TLJ that was far from the case. It baffles me though that anyone would stick around for a party that they clearly do not like. For what? To ruin it for those of us who WANT to be here? The only reason I showed up was to talk about things I like. Now that I've seen the complete story, and I can make a reasonable judgment about the sequel trilogy, it feels like deja vu when I signed up on TFN after Ep III came out. That's what I'm saying.