Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Post-release)

[Paul Andrew]

Star Wars has only been about "in media res" because the one standalone Star Wars film George set out to do was done that way to evoke the feeling of coming into the middle of a serialized story. If he'd actually intended it, at the time, to be realized as a serialized story, he'd've started at the beginning and gone ever forward. There would be story gaps between episodes, but minor. There would not be such huge gaps in story or character between one episode and the next that the audience has no idea what's going on or why the returning characters are utterly unfamiliar.

To get to where we started in TFA, we needed to have actually seen at least some of the story leading to that point. Doesn't have to be all of it, but when 86% of the ST is Mystery Box, that's bad writing.

Be that as it may, it's been a hallmark of the series with each film since then too. I'm not saying these films are perfect, I'm just calling out how they relate to and recall the things previous (loved) films do.
I never said the writing was great, but at the end of the day I am a Star Wars fan and these movies are still Star Wars, even if not the pinnacle of the series.

 

[laszlo]

Eh, I thought there was a lot of cringey stuff in TROS but Luke was some of the worst of it. Totally phoning it in, “oh look he caught the lightsaber cause she threw it away like he did”, “oh look he finally lifted the X-Wing cause that was something we were all waiting for”. Probably one of the worst parts of the movie to me. Like the writing or not, at least Hamill did a good job in TLJ. In TROS the writing and acting were bad.

Totally - Hamill clearly signed out and disconnected himself from it emotionally after TLJ. He was doing the minimum for his Disney Overloads in TROS as he doesn’t give a S**t anymore. I respect that.

 

[Joek3rr]

So one of the most powerful Jedis was written as being so incredibly weak-minded that he was unable to control himself? That's again, incredibly sloppy. The entire point of that scene was to show the audience Ben's motivation for turning to the dark side. Which is funny, considering we saw his struggle before that in killing his father, suggesting he hadn't completely embraced it.

In other words, if he HADN'T clearly fully embraced it, why the hell hadn't Luke still sensed good in him YEARS before on that fateful night? He was able to do so with Vader. The biggest, baddest person in the galaxy. Well, Luke apparently wasn't able to sense that good still in Ben, that was evident in the TROS, because of sloppy writing. Ben was still conflicted.

And yes, the past movies had sloppy writing as well, but I expect better in the 21st century. ****, Disney can rock 10 years of Marvel movies into some woven tapestry of greatness, but they couldn't get 3 movies with an existing back history into some degree of continuity with EACH OTHER. 3 lousy movies that feel like 3 completely separate movies with sloppy writing.

I still enjoyed them more than naught, despite the ******** lack of vision. But that enjoyment is like reading a book, then watching the movie adaptation. You can NOT go into a movie based on a book, with ANY thought that it will be as good. Just ignore that book and hope it's a decent movie.

What does power have to do with it? His father was one of the most powerful Jedi, and look where that got him.

No the entire point of that scene was not to show Ben's motivation. That was part of the point. The other point was to show why Luke Skywalker, our hero, disappeared without telling a soul, into self exile.


Let me lay out like this.

Luke's greatest strength, is the love he has for those he cares about.(Han, Leia, Anakin, Artoo, Chewie etc...). He will do anything for them, and to keep them safe.

Luke's greatest weakness, is the love he has for those he cares about. He will do anything for them, and to keep them safe. He fears(fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.....the Dark Side) to loose those he cares about.

If Luke were to have a trippy Force vision showing him the ones he cares about dying and suffering. And for him not to have a reaction. That would be out of character for him. There's no two ways about it

 

[Analyzer]

I finally got to see it last night.

Overall it had some good Star Wars action scenes

The plot ( as others had mentioned) was a lot of going from point A to B without any real reason other than they wrote it that way

A few cringe worthy parts. I thought Luke's force ghost catching the saber as well as raising Red 5 was dumb.

Palpatine's lighting hands disrupting the fleet was also dumb

it was very much a typical JJ Abrams movie, but despite those shortcomings I enjoyed it

 

[ConvergencePro]

All sorts of messed up Rian... I don't even wanna know what was going through his head when writing that scene. Thanks for dropping a Tallboy on StarWars... only for the smoldering wreck to be torpedo'd by JJ into the murky depths. If anything positive has come out of this Trilogy its that it's helped further drop the curtain on Disney, showing it to be the giant soulless money-grubbing corporation that it truly is

 

[Joek3rr]

All sorts of messed up Rian... I don't even wanna know what was going through his head when writing that scene. Thanks for dropping a Tallboy on StarWars... only for the smoldering wreck to be torpedo'd by JJ into the murky depths. If anything positive has come out of this Trilogy its that it's helped further drop the curtain on Disney showing it to be the giant soulless money-grubbing corporation that it is
View attachment 1248831

That picture , doesn't even come close to the truth.

Let's try this instead.

'Uncle Luke is going to use the Force to see what's bothering his nephew, and why his slipping towards the Dark Side. When he does, he's sees a vision of his nephew destroying people he cares about, and is faced with incredible darkness. Luke is going to draw is lightsaber out and think about killing his nephew, to save his loved ones. But he quickly snaps out of it and comes back to his senses. But it's to late, Ben reacts to what he sees.'

That is the truth. Not your version, not Luke's first version, not Ben's version.

 

[patrickivan]

What does power have to do with it? His father was one of the most powerful Jedi, and look where that got him.

No the entire point of that scene was not to show Ben's motivation. That was part of the point. The other point was to show why Luke Skywalker, our hero, disappeared without telling a soul, into self exile.


Let me lay out like this.

Luke's greatest strength, is the love he has for those he cares about.(Han, Leia, Anakin, Artoo, Chewie etc...). He will do anything for them, and to keep them safe.

Luke's greatest weakness, is the love he has for those he cares about. He will do anything for them, and to keep them safe. He fears(fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.....the Dark Side) to loose those he cares about.

If Luke were to have a trippy Force vision showing him the ones he cares about dying and suffering. And for him not to have a reaction. That would be out of character for him. There's no two ways about it

His father was the most powerful Jedi who fell into darkness, but was able to use that strength to pull back to the light just long enough to destroy his Sith Master and destroy the empire and save his son. That's what it got him. It was a long ****** road but it was what happened nonetheless.

"And for him not to have a reaction. That would be out of character for him. There's no two ways about it"

Dude, I have no idea what Luke you watched before these last 3 movies, but to believe that his reaction was normal character growth for someone like him, is SO incredibly depressing and cynical.

There are many more ways Luke should have reacted to that. Years of training, growth, plus his compassion and love, knowledge and wisdom, and most important of all, experience, all would how made him have pause about the vision he saw. A growing darkness in Ben equating to a growth in the dark side again, would have made him seriously think hard about the truth versus the meme he saw in his head.

But I guess that's why people respond to stuff like that. People are so quick to let memes and emotion rule their opinions. They just want to see a quick reaction to some outrage without putting any thought into anything.

We'll just have to agree (and I know you do no matter what you say from here on) that I'm right about what Luke really stood for and is, and you're right about the sad depressing mess that JJ/Rian turned him into.

 

[patrickivan]

Totally - Hamill clearly signed out and disconnected himself from it emotionally after TLJ. He was doing the minimum for his Disney Overloads in TROS as he doesn’t give a S**t anymore. I respect that.

I thought Hamill would have felt a little relieved to have Luke not be a depressed old man who ruined his life and made everyone sad for leaving. Although to little and too late, at least we got to see little bit of what Luke should have been in TFA and TLJ. A mentor willingly passing on his knowledge to help people. At least I hope Hamill got a little satisfaction from being that character after over 6 hours worth of the 3 movies.

 

[Noeland]

The truth??? It's a movie. Fiction.

Truth has nothing to do with it.

And yeah, I agree, lots of cringeworthy stuff in the new trilogy. Lots. I don't think Mark Hamill's performance in the new film was cringeworthy, but that wans't the point I was trying to make. It was just fan service to everybody who hated TLJ, and I would bet Mark was more than happy to perform that scene, given his issues with TLJ.

 

[Analyzer]

Looking back at the whole Skywalker saga, I think Obi Wan chose the wrong twin.

Scoreboard

Luke
1 Deathstar
0 successful trainees
1 Sith redeemed
considered turning the Dark Side
isolates himself to pout

Leia
3 Deathstars
1 successful trainee
1 Sith redeeemed
never considered turning to the Dark Side
after toppling an empire helps found a new government, then forms a private army when said government goes soft on controlling a new threat because she doesn't quit and never stops fighting to wipe out evil because its the right thing to do

It's almost like the Life of Brian. They got the wrong character

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

Star Wars has only been about "in media res" because the one standalone Star Wars film George set out to do was done that way to evoke the feeling of coming into the middle of a serialized story. If he'd actually intended it, at the time, to be realized as a serialized story, he'd've started at the beginning and gone ever forward. There would be story gaps between episodes, but minor. There would not be such huge gaps in story or character between one episode and the next that the audience has no idea what's going on or why the returning characters are utterly unfamiliar.

To get to where we started in TFA, we needed to have actually seen at least some of the story leading to that point. Doesn't have to be all of it, but when 86% of the ST is Mystery Box, that's bad writing.

Be that as it may, it's been a hallmark of the series with each film since then too. I'm not saying these films are perfect, I'm just calling out how they relate to and recall the things previous (loved) films do.

Not really...? The gap between Star Wars and Empire was a few years, long enough for the Rebels to have been on the run for a while and are just finally getting a new base established. We knew at the end of Star Wars that the Empire wasn't gone -- just the Death Star. We knew Vader survived. The opening crawl tells us he has ships and is chasing the Rebels. And also, apparently, in that gap, he found out who fired the final shot.

Empire to Jedi is even less of a jump. An indeterminate but not massive amount of time passes. The end of Empire was them beginning the op to get Han back from Jabba's palace, and the beginning of Jedi shows that in progress. The opening crawl also tells us the Empire is building another Death Star.

TPM to AOTC jumps a decade, but as with the SW to ESB jump, while there's content we could have seen in that span, we don't need to to grasp everything relevant. Anakin ended TPM about to be trained and starts AOTC having been being trained. Politics have been happening. Obi-Wan grew a beard. Padmé finished her term as Queen and is now serving as Senator.

AOTC to ROTS is problematic, as, while it's only a couple years, it jumps right over the Clone Wars. As the series showed us, a lot of very relevant stuff happened in there. As a result, Anakin's arc feels very forced (because it is).

The problems begin showing up in this era because of George drastically foreshortening the run-time in which he was allowing his story to be told. This includes the 19-year jump, now, from ROTS to SW, where his own original timeline puts the lie to that. His Clone Wars were originally over a decade of related conflicts (hence the plural). The Jedi fell into disfavor around then, yes, but Anakin's turn was later, and the Empire was later still -- five-ish years before SW, maybe. Luke was in his early 20s, Leia was 18, and they'd be revealed as cousins later on. I like to include Rogue One here, and Rebels, because those fill in the essential points jumped over -- the beginning of the Rebel Alliance (and George also should have kept the scenes in ROTS of the senators meeting to discuss what to do about Palpatine's power grab, and their presenting their declaration to him) and the battle where the Death Star plans were stolen, both of which SW's opening crawl refers to.

Currently, that's the most TFA-like content jump. If you're watching them in George's preferred order, for the first time, you're going to get to Episode IV and go, "Wait, how much time has passed? Civil War? Last I saw there was some opposition to Palpatine's emergency powers, but what? Battle? Princess Leia? Is that the baby we just saw born? Or another Leia?" and then start to fill stuff in along the way about how much time has passed -- Leia refers to being from Alderaan, which jibes with Bail taking in Baby Leia, realizing that this Luke is the baby we had just also seen, so Owen and Beru (and, later, Obi-Wan and Tarkin) are significantly older, etc.

It's still bad writing, even if George did it first.

I never said the writing was great, but at the end of the day I am a Star Wars fan and these movies are still Star Wars, even if not the pinnacle of the series.

Me, too. If I didn't care, I wouldn't critique. And even though each one should've been a trilogy in its own right, I like the ST better than the PT, for the most part. I also hope, like Clone Wars, Solo ends up being a cinematic pilot for a series so we can see where Qir'a goes from there, and I would dearly love some live-action versions of Brian Daley's Han Solo adventures to show us some of what Han's up to prior to meeting him in Mos Eisley. I treat it and Rogue One, despite my issues with them, as Episodes 3.1 and 3.2, respectively.

I'm looking forward to having more than The Mandalorian and Resistance to fill in what happened between ROTJ and TFA...

 

[cboath]

That picture , doesn't even come close to the truth.

Let's try this instead.

'Uncle Luke is going to use the Force to see what's bothering his nephew, and why his slipping towards the Dark Side. When he does, he's sees a vision of his nephew destroying people he cares about, and is faced with incredible darkness. Luke is going to draw is lightsaber out and think about killing his nephew, to save his loved ones. But he quickly snaps out of it and comes back to his senses. But it's to late, Ben reacts to what he sees.'

That is the truth. Not your version, not Luke's first version, not Ben's version.

Fail.

If i had a vision of my nephew killing my sister (i have both, fwiw), i'm not going to kill my nephew. Not even going to cross my mind. I'm going to tell my sister first and foremost and discuss what to do. The only time i'm even remotely attempted to act is if it's literally to stop him 'in the act'.

Same applies to luke. You don't just kill one loved one to save another/others. Not on a maybe. Which is all a force vision is, a maybe.

There is NO logic where this makes sense for the character. Period.

 

[Timmythekid]

Also finally got around to seeing it yesterday. Ooof. That was rough, really rough, and it starts with wanting to scream "OH BULL....er...PUCKEY!!!!" at the very first line of the crawl. There's just....SO much wrong with it that I don't even really know where to begin trying to figure out why it's so bad. It's like certain pols who just spew such a sheer volume of bad that you eventually throw up your hands and are more bemused than angry with them. A lot like that in fact. So,. what's good?

- It looks very nice
-HAN. The only point I had something approaching an emotional response to the images assaulting my eyeballs. Genuinely teared up for a second.
-the section on the Star Destroyer was mostly fun (barring the long-distance duel), but it's what we should have been doing in the first two movies. It's way, waaaaaaay to late to start telling us "AND THEY'RE ALL THE BESTEST OF FRIENDS WHO GO ON ADVENTURES TOGETHER!!!!" in the second half of the last act.
-The score wasn't....terrible? I guess?
-....nope, I got nothing else.
-Adam Driver? He's pretty decent in it.

What's not?
-"We need a thing to find a doohickey to find a place to do a thing."
-"Oh noes! They're totally dead! Ha ha, sike! No they're not - 5 minutes later and they're fine." It got so bad that I leaned over to my 11 year old ("worst movie I've ever seen") when Snap (?) died and whispered "Don't worry, he'll be fine!". I was about to do the same when Ben gets thrown off the cliff, but thought "no, he totally is, isn't he? Sigh". The movie toys with the idea of consequences and just won't commit to anything. It's. The last. Saga movie. Have the balls to kill some characters off without resurrecting them moments later, and give this thing some kind of weight.
-Force pickpocket. This has just gotten out of control stupid. "That's not how the Force works!" indeed. So much stupid Force nonsense has piled up over the last two films that it feels like there are now no limits, no cost, and therefore no consequences to anything, and nothing matters.
-Force healing is a thing you can do without dying. Except when you can't. Just....ugh. Whatever.
-Palpatine. Sure, you saw him explode in a blue fireball; sure that fireball was shortly thereafter followed up by the detonation of the entire station...but he gets zapped with his own lightning in this movie! No way he's coming back from THAT! Yep, dead dead dead, totally dead now. What do you mean you no longer believe me?
-"Stuff only the Sith know! Like....erm....CLONING! What do you mean 'what about the Clone Army of the Republic?' - why are you making up words you strange person, and how did you get in my bathroom?" JJ, for crying out loud, you even had a line addressing cloned soldiers in TFA!
-Leia. Oi vey. I get they did their best with what limited material they had, but it just doesn't play well. It's painfully obvious Carrie isn't reacting to the situations she's been composited into, and her performance far too often boils down to one word of dialogue from her, then cutting away to other characters who say things like "You're right general Organa, that does mean that...." in exposition or to fill in what Leia should be saying. It's clumsy and broke the film for me every time she's onscreen.
-Rey Skywalker. Rey takes everything from Luke in this movie. She steals his ride, his bucket, his saber, his childhood home (which has no relevance to her so....?), and his name. Get the Force outta here with that. You earned none of this.
-Lando. So tired. So old. So slow. So irrelevant to the movie.
-Deo. D-no. Pointless.
- Hyperspace skipping. Heck, ANYTHING to do with hyperspace. JJ clearly doesn't like the idea of travelling anywhere taking any time at all. He did it in ST, and he's done it in both of his SW's. We've seen that hyperspace still takes time - hours? Days maybe? Unclear, but it's not instant. Travelling through hyperspace also takes time to calculate. The way I hear it, without precise calculations you could fly through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova, and those calculations take time. No? You just throw the switch again and again as fast as you can now and jump from the surface of a planet, or inside a ships' hangar? Sigh.. Okay, fine I guess.


Sigh.....there's just so much more, but I don't have the energy to try and address all 2 1/2 hours of just...wrong.

 

[Joek3rr]

Fail.

If i had a vision of my nephew killing my sister (i have both, fwiw), i'm not going to kill my nephew. Not even going to cross my mind. I'm going to tell my sister first and foremost and discuss what to do. The only time i'm even remotely attempted to act is if it's literally to stop him 'in the act'.

Same applies to luke. You don't just kill one loved one to save another/others. Not on a maybe. Which is all a force vision is, a maybe.

There is NO logic where this makes sense for the character. Period.

But then again, you're not dealing with the Force or the Dark Side. And who's to say what your initial reaction would be. Sure after you got over shock of what you saw.

You don't kill one loved one to save another Someone should have told that to Luke in ROTJ......

 

[Joek3rr]

His father was the most powerful Jedi who fell into darkness, but was able to use that strength to pull back to the light just long enough to destroy his Sith Master and destroy the empire and save his son. That's what it got him. It was a long ****** road but it was what happened nonetheless.

"And for him not to have a reaction. That would be out of character for him. There's no two ways about it"

Dude, I have no idea what Luke you watched before these last 3 movies, but to believe that his reaction was normal character growth for someone like him, is SO incredibly depressing and cynical.

There are many more ways Luke should have reacted to that. Years of training, growth, plus his compassion and love, knowledge and wisdom, and most important of all, experience, all would how made him have pause about the vision he saw. A growing darkness in Ben equating to a growth in the dark side again, would have made him seriously think hard about the truth versus the meme he saw in his head.

But I guess that's why people respond to stuff like that. People are so quick to let memes and emotion rule their opinions. They just want to see a quick reaction to some outrage without putting any thought into anything.

We'll just have to agree (and I know you do no matter what you say from here on) that I'm right about what Luke really stood for and is, and you're right about the sad depressing mess that JJ/Rian turned him into.

It wasn't strength that allowed Anakin to return. It was love. The love of his son for him. And his love for his son.

Luke has progressed. He is wiser. ROTJ Luke would have killed his nephew before snapping out of it. But, and this is important, no amount of training, or wisdom, will EVER make any immune to the Dark Side. Fear, anger, aggression, hate, Luke will always struggle with these. More so then some, because he's gone down that Dark path before. And because of his father, the Dark Side has a strong affection for him and his family.

Correction....George/Michael/JJ/Rian

 

[Timmythekid]

Okay, but two things:

1)Luke wasn't in 'shock' after seeing something horrifying. He was worried that Ben was being influenced by Snoke and could fall to the Dark Side. At that moment, Ben is still a student in Luke's academy, and he's asleep. There's no immediate, horrifying shock that Luke is reacting to there. he gets worried, then deliberately goes to the bedside of his sleeping nephew to murder him. That's deliberate and cold, and isn't any Luke I know.

2)ROTJ Luke is the character who responds to all of his mentors going "Dude, your dad's gone. He's evil. You need to go murder his metal butt." with refusing because he is convinced Anakin can be saved. He later responds to Palpatine's constant goading to strike him down (dude really should stop that), Palpatine...the embodiment of pure malevolent evil, the guy who is gloating that he's about to kill all of Luke's friends, with "No.", refusing to fight, and ultimately tossing his weapon away rather than risk falling. Heck, when he has the option to just kill Jabba's butt dead, he still gives Jabba multiple chances to walk away. I just cannot see ROTJ Luke slaughtering Ben in his sleep because, again, he's worried that Ben might...might fall.

 

[HMSwolfe]

Heck, when he has the option to just kill Jabba's butt dead, he still gives Jabba multiple chances to walk away.

It’s actually this viewpoint that kind of salvaged the opening of ROTJ for me, at least from a logical perspective. I mean, at first it seems like just an overly-convoluted scheme to get Han back, but when you think about it as Luke trying to approach it as diplomatically and peacefully as possible (like a Jedi would), it makes a lot more sense. He only resorts to violence when all other options have been exhausted.

 

[vader45]

But then again, you're not dealing with the Force or the Dark Side. And who's to say what your initial reaction would be. Sure after you got over shock of what you saw.

You don't kill one loved one to save another Someone should have told that to Luke in ROTJ......

Bingo. It's the Dark Side rearing it's ugly head. It's still there and still tempting. Untill the force is gone the dark Side will forever be a shadow looming over.

 

[vader45]

Adding on...emotions are a part of what makes people human. People reacr and get mad happy or sad. And anger and throwing a fit is very tempting when one is frustrated or mad. I know first hand. I get angry real fast in certain situations. It's part of being human and Luke is human.

No emotions you get:

Michael Myers, a killer who has no emotion or remorse and just does what ever he wants.

 

[Joek3rr]

Okay, but two things:

1)Luke wasn't in 'shock' after seeing something horrifying. He was worried that Ben was being influenced by Snoke and could fall to the Dark Side. At that moment, Ben is still a student in Luke's academy, and he's asleep. There's no immediate, horrifying shock that Luke is reacting to there. he gets worried, then deliberately goes to the bedside of his sleeping nephew to murder him. That's deliberate and cold, and isn't any Luke I know.

2)ROTJ Luke is the character who responds to all of his mentors going "Dude, your dad's gone. He's evil. You need to go murder his metal butt." with refusing because he is convinced Anakin can be saved. He later responds to Palpatine's constant goading to strike him down (dude really should stop that), Palpatine...the embodiment of pure malevolent evil, the guy who is gloating that he's about to kill all of Luke's friends, with "No.", refusing to fight, and ultimately tossing his weapon away rather than risk falling. Heck, when he has the option to just kill Jabba's butt dead, he still gives Jabba multiple chances to walk away. I just cannot see ROTJ Luke slaughtering Ben in his sleep because, again, he's worried that Ben might...might fall.

That's not even remotely what happens in the movie. Not even close.

The chain events go like this....

Luke senses the Dark Side in Ben. One night he goes to confront him. Ben is sleeping. So Luke decides to see what's going on. THAT is when he gets his vision. THAT is when Luke, horrified at what he saw, reacts, thinking he can end all before it happens. An action, he IMMEDIATELY, and instantly regrets. Luke does not go into Ben's hut with the intention of killing his nephew.

Yes Luke, does eventually throw away his lightsaber. But not before first trying cut off the Emperor's head. An act which would complete his journey toward the Dark Side. And not before attacking, blinded by fear, anger, and hate(the Dark Side), his father whom he wants to save. His father whom he loves.