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Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise Of Skywalker discussion (Spoilers)

The Rise of Skywalker is the worst Star Wars movie ever somehow topping the crap that was Attack of the Clones.

There was no plan to bring back Palpatine. It was an asspull to come up with some threat after Snoke was killed in The Last Jedi and Kylo Ren couldn't carry the movie on his own when he already lost to Rey in The Force Awakens.

That said, the actual location of Exogol is one of the highlights of the movie. I love how creepy it is and the Sith chanting in the background. It feels unnatural.

Leia, C3PO, Chewbacca, Han, and Luke all have great scenes. I think JJ Abrams gave Leia a thoughtful and deserving sendoff while fleshing out her backstory with her Jedi training. He did the best he could with Carrie Fisher's unfortunate passing. C3PO had some funny quips especially with Babu Frik involved. And the end scene with Chewbacca getting a medal was wholesome. Han Solo had a much more satisfying end to his character end with helping Kylo redeem himself. And Luke redeems The Last Jedi by catching his lightsaber.

The actual story, however, is so devoid of creativity and originality and it executes old ideas worse than in the past. You liked the Death Star? Let's make a whole fleet of planet destroying star destroyers. You liked Palpatine in Return of the Jedi? Let's recreate the throne room scene. It's one giant scavenger hunt to find Palpatine who behaves like a complete dummy by announcing his attack. Why wouldn't he attack while he's still secret? Such nonsense. And there's a general in the First Order we never saw before who secretly works for Palpatine to try to damage control that he was brought in at the last second.

Let's talk about the ending. The Knights of Ren are wasted. Kylo chops them up like paper scraps. Rey gets a second lightsaber and then suddenly deflects Palpatine's sith lightning that was strong enough to mess with all the Resistance ships. Damn, Mace Windu and Yoda were dumb for not thinking of that when Palpatine was way weaker. Rey killing Palpatine also invalidates the Prophecy of the Chosen One. JJ tried to damage control that by having Rey hear the voices of the past Jedi but it's not enough. Kylo dying after kissing Rey once he heals her was so dumb that everyone in my theater laughed. The best new character of the trilogy is the only one to die. Rey adopting the Skywalker name at the end is obviously a way to tie her into the whole Skywalker saga but still feels forced considering she never got along with Luke in The Last Jedi and was more connected to Leia. But it's less offensive than the other things I mentioned.

If someone wants to watch this movie for special effects and action, I'm sure they'll have a fun time, but as someone invested in the Star Wars universe, this movie was so unoriginal and poorly executed it hurt to watch.
 

thePlinko

What’s the character limit on this? Aksnfiskwjfjsk
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I got to admit, as much as I dislike the new trilogy I think RoS is the best one. Or rather, the least bad one. The entire first half is just as garbage as I thought it would be, but around the point where they explore the ruined Death Star I feel like Disney stepped up their game.

First off: the plot. A major issue with the new trilogy is that there is something of substance to be found here, but “Jar Jar Abrams” doesn’t understand that In order for a sequel to be called a “sequel” it actually has to have some relation to the original.

Or rather, he thinks he understands this but you need to be really detailed in order to make a sequel work, and not just throw in a ton of Easter eggs and plot devices from the original and prequel trilogies. In a way I kinda sympathize with JJ, it’s truly hard to make a good sequel. I mean, how many times have you seen someone say “Raiders of the lost ark is the best Indiana Jones movie” or “they ruined my favorite franchise” or “you aren’t a REAL fan if you think World War 2 was better than World War 1.” My point is that it making a sequel is arguably harder than an original.

But that doesnt mean that you should just make the same movie. I’ll give TLJ one thing, it was certainly original, unlike TFA which was just episode 4 3.0. I think that RoS actually does a half decent job at making something new yet with a lot of callbacks. I think exploring the wreckage of the Death Star is GENIUS.

The real problem is the retcons. IMO it was a lot worse in TLJ, but it’s pretty bad here too. Granted most of the retcons here are just fixing crap about episodes 7&8. But there are others that are awful too. There are the obvious ones, like Anakins lightsaber not being destroyed, etc. but here’s the one that got me: about a quarter of the way through the movie, Kylo and Rey start playing tug-of-war.... WITH A SPACESHIP! Not just any spaceship, a freakin troop transport! How is that a retcon, you ask? Well in episode 5 Yoda, a 900 year old Jedi who has been training since birth, struggles to lift Luke’s X-Wing. It can’t be old age as we have seen on multiple occasions that the force transcends age and even death! So how come one of the most powerful beings in the known Universe is struggling but a woman who just kinda woke up one day and said “neat I can use magic now” can juggle spaceships? Rey was a Mary Sue before but now this just takes the cake.

The other characters are terrible as always. Rey is the single worst Star Wars character ever, hands down. Other than that you have a bunch of old characters, discount Han Solo, a character who had so much potential but was ruined because he couldn’t do anything but yell REY, and Happy Gilmore with a lightsaber.

Actually, I take that back. Kylo Ren was alright in this movie. Previously he was a way too forced character, and I couldn’t take him seriously because of his over the top-ness. He’s actually a half decent character here, and the best scene in the entire trilogy has got to be him reconciling with his father and throwing his admittedly cool lightsaber in to the ocean.

The other scene I really enjoyed was the psychic battle between Rey and Kylo. It wasn’t ever really explained, which is both a good and a bad thing. Bad because it’s never even mentioned anywhere else in the series, good because it helps show how mysterious the force is and how little we know about it. The entire scene is made purposely confusing and it really adds to the universe IMO. I only wish they tried to explain why it only just now exists. I’m personally a fan of the “the characters just recently discovered/invented it and even they don’t quite know how it works” theory.

Force healing was dumb, but it did leave us with an alright death scene for Leia.

And now for the big one: Emperor Palpatine returning. As much as I hate to say it, I think this movie handled it well given the circumstances. Obviously it would’ve been better if he weren’t here, but given that this is the last movie in the trilogy I think they could’ve done worse, assuming the writers knew that this movie would have Palpatine in it before they wrote the script but after TLJ was finished, that is. However I think everyone is in agreement that if they were to do this then they should’ve put him in episode 7 or 8, not in 9. The fact that Rey is Palpatines grandchild is yet another stupid thing in this movie that was handled surprisingly well.

My final thoughts on the sequels:
VII: eh. Alright first attempt but they really could’ve done better. Still decently enjoyable once you get past the bastardization of the best character in the series
VIII: alright movie, awful Star Wars movie
IX: awful at first, got pretty decent about halfway through.
 
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Hero of Pizza Time

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The casualty of such was the loss of a pretty clever set-up of deception on Snoke's part, reducing him to a literal flesh puppet whilst killing off Kylo's subtextual development in the process.

You gotta admit though that if they were going to continue with Snoke as the villain (which would have been a much better idea than shoehorning Palpatine in imo) they should have at least given him a better name than "Snoke." It sounds like a hobbit's name or something.
 

VikzeLink

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Saw it today and I liked it. Not my favorite in the series, but definitely my favorite of the new ones. Loved the stuff with C-3PO in this one (Oh my, my first laser battle!" XD), and the little mechanic guy that worked on him. A lot of you seemed to dislike the return of Palpatine, but I just love that villain so much that I was fine with it. But I would have liked to see a bit more of his mannerisms though.
The Chewbacca fake-death they pulled really got me, I totally fell for it.

I'm a bit curious to what they did about the one Star Destroyer that was already gone though (the one that destroyed that planet). It was already out in space, so it's shields were up. Must be quite the rush to find and destroy that one quickly.

But most importantly: CHEWIE FINALLY GOT HIS MEDAL!!!
 

Terminus

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You gotta admit though that if they were going to continue with Snoke as the villain (which would have been a much better idea than shoehorning Palpatine in imo) they should have at least given him a better name than "Snoke." It sounds like a hobbit's name or something.
Imagine a silly name in Star Wars, where such normal human names like Sheev and Obi-Wan are so common.
 

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