Finally saw rise of skywalker

"HammerheadFistpunch" (hammerheadfistpunch) 05/05/2020 at 13:51 • Filed to: None

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I try not to be an annoying superfan and just mentally check out for story time . The  problem is ...the story sucked. It probably doesn’t help that I haven’t one bit invested in the main characters of this saga, or that they show no real emotional growth over 3 freaking movies. The meat and potatoes of this movie were rotten. The garnish was world class. sound mixing, design, graphics...all top shelf. But it won’ t do much to make a rotten mess more appealing.

WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 14:01

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The good news, is that they made a movie in 1977, then one in 1980. They may have made one in 1983, but they certainly never made any more.

On a serious note, I remember liking TFA, but it certainly didn’t move me the way the original trilogy did when I was a kid. This led to me basically not caring enough to be offended by the last 3 . I liked Babu Frick though.

For Sweden > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 14:01

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I’m brewing a hot take that Star Wars VII I and IX would be improved just by making General Hux a better character.

HammerheadFistpunch > WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI 05/05/2020 at 14:02

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babu frick was an accidental awesome that happened to work out for the toy market. So here is my list. I was thinking about it today

Empire

R eturn of the jedi (deal with it)

R ogue one

N ew hope

S olo

TFA

P requels (I really can’t say I’ve rewatched them recently enough to have an opinion on which one is least bad)

Rise of Skywalker

ttyymmnn > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 14:06

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We’ve been watching all 8 of the earlier films in preparation for watching ROS. We saw it in the theaters, but neither my wife nor I can remember much of any of it, aside from the epic lightsaber battle on the wreckage of the second Death Star. I guess the good guys won? I thought the reveal (sort of) of Rey’s parentage was stupid, and the return of that one big character was just lazy. In 7-9, it’s just one recycled trope after another, with nothing original. We watched TLJ last night, and I ignored the utterly meaningless, waste of time Finn/Rose side story, with yet another cantina scene.

But, as you said, the movies are nice to look at, and Williams’ scores continue to be the star of the show. I get that they want to honor the original films, but that doesn’t mean you have to rehash them twice. I still think Rogue One is the best Star Wars film since Star Wars, mainly because the story was entirely original while still paying homage to the source material.

HammerheadFistpunch > For Sweden 05/05/2020 at 14:07

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He needed to be older IMO.  the series has enough skinny whiney tall white boys. 

HammerheadFistpunch > ttyymmnn 05/05/2020 at 14:09

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plus the characters of Rogue one were ones you cared about, showed growth and had satisfying arcs (that don’t need 3 movies to close)

lone_liberal > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 14:11

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I thought it was fine. Just fine. Nothing more, nothing less. You want a hot take? I liked The Last Jedi more than the other two of this trilogy. 

ttyymmnn > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 14:13

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And, that scene of Darth Vader kicking ass at the end was just awesome. You never really got the sense from the other movies of just  how much of a mean SOB he was. He wasn’t all that far away from slaughtering little Jedis and the entire Trade Federation. 

For Sweden > ttyymmnn 05/05/2020 at 14:18

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Just Jeepin' > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 14:24

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Someone on Twitter (probably reposted here) equated  the trilogy as a class project where the group members didn’t actually see each other’s presentations until getting in front of the class.

I’m fine with the final trilogy overall. Nothing can persuade me that the prequels were anything other than total garbage, but tbh, I gave up after the first one, so that’s an utterly uninformed take.

I do think the Jar Jar as Sith Lord theory, if true, is Lucas’s biggest failure, and one he should have had the courage to follow through on. That might have elevated the prequels to watchable.

Arrivederci > ttyymmnn 05/05/2020 at 14:26

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100% agreed.  Rogue One is the best Star Wars feature in Disney’s ownership.

RallyWrench > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 14:27

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I’m not full nerd but I do love me some Star Wars. We watch all of them in order every few months. I ’m willing to suspend canonical expectations in the name of entertainment, and RoS is fun to watch as just that , but I didn’t like how it burned down everything good about TLJ in an extremely petty way.

Arrivederci > ttyymmnn 05/05/2020 at 14:30

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To me, TLJ was the worst of the last three - it seemed to start the meaningless content that RoS continued and also introduced items that needed to be explained away in RoS (Holdo maneuver).  TLJ also produced Leia’s Mary Poppins moment and gave us the new information that you can follow someone through Hyperspace, but somehow can’t jump in front of them.  Oh, and bombers in space can’t go fast and need to drop bombs from “above” their targets.  

gin-san - shitpost specialist > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 14:44

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I was disappointed by it, too. People talk shit about the prequels but I enjoyed them far more than the sequels.

I'm sure everyone had high hopes for the new trilogy, but it was just so unimaginative. 

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 14:48

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Yet their production and story telling in the Mandalorian is simply amazing. 

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 14:57

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It is (especially now living in a movie industry enclave town) to see how these studios can throw a few hundred MILLION at these films... and yet omit the basics of story-telling, character-development or even basic emotional investment in any of the protagonists. They are just empty soul-less cast members going through the motions.

We always joke that it’s no accident that the wealth of great movies in 2019 was ENTIRELY dominated by new work from new creative stories and directors with a vision. Movies like Parasite, OUATIH, Jo-Jo Rabbit are like a completely different art form from the Disney Milk-the-Franchise-Dreck

ttyymmnn > Arrivederci 05/05/2020 at 15:00

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Wait, there’s no gravity in space? Who knew? I hadn’t thought about it, but yeah, what determines the speed of a ship in space? Certainly not weight. There’s really no reason that size should limit a ship’s speed.

And the Mary Poppins thing was just dumb. I did notice, though, that when Leia was sailing through the smashed bridge of the ship, she passed through a hologram of whatever FO ship that was that was chasing it. Foreshadowing the Holdo Maneuver , perhaps?

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 15:14

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I eye-rolled hard at “I don’t care if you win, Kylo Ren just needs to lose!”

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 15:16

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I just watched last night. Agreed on all points. The production quality and the fight/battle scenes are good to great...the story needs a lot of help.

CobraJoe > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 15:16

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It had some problems, but I liked it overall. (We didn’t need another “planet killer” weapon, Leia didn’t need to be explicitly trained by Luke, zero stakes for C3PO’s memory wipe , and that kiss... ).

I’m not even sure what exactly tipped it over into the “like” side for me. That it takes a lot of people working together to defeat the singular powerful evil. That Kylo’s memory of Han is viewed differently after “dying”.  I even kind of like it that time passes between each movie and not everything is explained.  It feels like a lived in universe, especially because that universe keeps changing.  

Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 15:18

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I liked Force Awakens, I thought the Last Jedi has some cracks, and Rise of Skywalker full on was busted. It was so disappointing. I watched A New Hope with my now 5 year old almost a year ago and we watched all the rest with her in the series(and screened some of the more wicked stuff) and we all had high hopes for Reys character and it just fell flat. The villain in ROS was such an awful choice. Her confronting her dark side was really weak. The culmination of her relationship with Kyle was also okay.

On a separate note, my wife had nothing to do with Star Wars growing up and she loved ROS. (Shrug)

CobraJoe > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 15:18

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plus the characters of Rogue one were ones you cared about, showed growth and had satisfying arcs (that don’t need 3 movies to close)

Except that any unknown character in Rogue one died before the end of the movie. “We don’t see them in A New Hope, so we gotta kill them off now!  Plus it’ll make it seem more dramatic! ”

Feels like lazy writing to me.

Pickup_man > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 15:19

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It ruined the whole trilogy for me honestly. The acting and music and cinematography etc. we are excellent but the story suuuuuccccckkkkeedd. I like TFA well enough, even though it was a little slow and a re-hash it felt like a new Star Wars for my generation, I’m in the camp that loved the twists that TLJ had, despite its flaws, but TRoS just threw all of it in the trash, practically ignored the first two movies, sidelined hugely important characters of the other two films, and had so many WTFITS moments it took me completely out of the experience. I haven’t watched anything from the final trilogy since.

I re-watched TRoS last night thinking I might enjoy it a little better since I knew what was coming, and could tie a few more plot points together, and in general, I did, or rather I disliked it less, but I still found myself scrolling through my phone for a good bit of the movie.

Rogue one will forever by my favorite Star Wars movie. 

HammerheadFistpunch > CobraJoe 05/05/2020 at 15:25

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I wouldn’t say lazy, I would say they painted themselves into a corner.  

HammerheadFistpunch > CobraJoe 05/05/2020 at 15:28

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it certainly had its moments, the trouble is all its moments were disjointed and only haphazzardley cobbled together. 

HammerheadFistpunch > gin-san - shitpost specialist 05/05/2020 at 15:30

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They (the new prequels and the latest 3) are both bad for different reasons, but the new movies at least had their shit together for graphics and world building.  so they get the nod from me.

Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 15:30

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It was three movies mashed together by what appeared to be three different script writers who never met no read the others’ work

HammerheadFistpunch > Highlander-Datsuns are Forever 05/05/2020 at 15:30

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They CAN tell stories.  I think they just couldn’t bring themselves to tell interesting stories in this new series, or at least that they didn’t have a strong enough hand controlling the story arc through all 3.

HammerheadFistpunch > Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire 05/05/2020 at 15:33

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Basically. It was 2 plus hours of trying to chase lose ends and conclude decades of story... And it still feels open ended

CobraJoe > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 15:35

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There are so many other ways of preventing characters from appearing in later stories that were written previously.

Have them working in the shadows and bring them back in a later sequel. Have them grow disgusted with the situation and hide on a far off planet. Let them join the republic as an unseen source of info. Hell, just let them ride off into the sunset and forget about them.

Star Wars has forgotten about characters for decades in the movies, and they almost always let time past and events happen off screen between movies.  Not every character’s story needs to be tied up with a tidy “Sacrificed themseles for the greater good” death.  

CobraJoe > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 15:38

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Thinking back on it now, that disjointed feeling kind of fits with Rey’s growing frustration and panic.

But I’d agree that they should have trimmed a bit and slowed the pace down slightly.  

HammerheadFistpunch > CobraJoe 05/05/2020 at 15:39

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I agree with what you are saying but in a world where literally any character can and does come back...its nice to have some just die and be done with.

Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 15:40

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MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > ttyymmnn 05/05/2020 at 15:43

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Certainly not weight. There’s really no reason that size should limit a ship’s speed.

I mean, yea things are weightless in space, but they still have mass. So there is no limit to out right speed, but mass certainly affects acceleration and turning.

CobraJoe > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 15:46

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I’m ok with a character dying and being gone from the story, but almost every new and named character in Rogue One individually sacrificed themselves for a noble cause . Besides, a single character dying off might have more impact than half a dozen spaced out through t he movie

Plus, it would have been great to see a sequel to Rogue one, there are probably tons of side missions they could have worked on as a secret faction of the rebellion, and that would easily explain their omission from the original movies.  

gokstate > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 16:02

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It will forever hold a special place for being the first IMAX experience for my daughter and I got to take her. The movie itself is deeply flawed and forgettable, as is pretty much the entire franchise after the original three. I am a fan of K2S04

TheD0k_2many toys 2little time > HammerheadFistpunch 05/05/2020 at 16:47

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The only good movie of the new Disney generation is Rogue One. Probably because they dont recycle all the old characters and then kill them off. Oh and it actually had good writers.