Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker General Movie Discussion

Honestly, just goes to show the randomness of a small sample size. I have seen TROS 4x in the theater...opening night there were cheers and claps from the minute the Lucasfilm Logo appeared and throughout the movie. The next 2 showings just an average quiet theater experience, and then on the 4th showing the audience was like the first night with lots of clapping. Opening night I expect that sort of thing, but was very surprised on my 4th viewing as the movie had been out for almost a month.

And fwiw, the one time I saw Endgame (which was a lot of fun and opening week) the theater was silent the entire time and one woman in front of me fell asleep. Go figure.

 

The Blast is going on with this book?

 

A lot of BTS stills of TROS:
https://assets.adg.org/media/submissions/2019-12-27_11-27-04/SW_ADG_PDF.pdf

 

Loved this photos.
These huge sets are great. Sometimes I think they used CGI but in fact they are real scenarios.

 

I really like the forced perspective of that shot:


This technique was used quite often in the LOTR films.

 

Yes. I Thought they used the same trick in ANH too.

 

Love to look at the BTS photos. Makes me wish I talented enough to work on something like it.

 

These are WONDERFUL!

Holy cow, these sets are simply amazing!
I've read some say "they" were just phoning it in with TROS, and I can NOT fathom that perspective when looking at these.
This is absolute devotion out of love. There was no reason they needed to do a lot of these.

Like this? Normal movies would just whip this up in VFX, not make a full scale ship and set, and lift it with a crane, and THEN have VFX go back through it and remove all of the crane harness and cabling.



Cheers,
Jayson

 

Even though I think the CGI of TLJ and R1 was better than TROS, I have to say the amount of work is quite astonishing:

 

Especially considering they had 812 people doing VFX on this thing and about 100 people working on special effects, inside of that crazy Post schedule of editing and posting on the fly (not always in that order).

Keeping things straight in terms of where a shot is at ... who's got it, what stage is it at, where is it heading next, when do I get it, etc... and that all of this is happening non-linearly with hundreds to thousands of shots simultaneously because of the edit-on-the-fly method...Jesus!

I hope someone bought the VFX crews a party at the very least because I guarantee this one saw a ton of people falling asleep at the keyboard, and under their desks.

There's going to be a lot of production baby's from this film. lol

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I also REALLY appreciate that this film REALLY took rotoscoping to an absolutely insane level, because the VFX legacy of the originals was the advancement and pushing the boundaries of rotoscoping - it totally went for the fences in the originals, and this one did that again.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Damn shame to see the Star Wars' Skywalker saga end on such a sour note. This ST has been a mess. What a missed opportunity to have these last 3 movies be something really unique and special. Rise of Skywalker had some good things about it, but it was just a matter of too little, too late.

 

JJ Abrams when production had finished on TROS.

 

This trilogy just disappoints me beyond belief. :/

Force Awakens: A remake of New Hope, not as good as the original, but it did have some promising leads; likeable actors; the next movie could have retroactively strengthened this movie.

Last Jedi: Recognizes that Force Awakens was too predictable, so it tries to subvert all expectations. Rather than attempting to strengthen Force Awakens, it decides to kill off the story threads that Force Awakens established in favor of a soft reboot of the trilogy.

However, Last Jedi does not really subvert expectations in a clever way- instead, it basically amounts to a remake of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, with key story beats being inverted at certain junctions. For example, we get a remake of the Death Star 2 Throne Room battle, with Snoke on the throne, and Rey beholding the destruction of the Rebel fleet. Darth Vader's analogue, Ben, kills Snoke (Palpatine) saving Rey (Luke), and then Rian subverts the scene by having Ben stay evil. I do not know why Rian felt the need to retell Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi, but it feels like this entire movie was designed to critique what he felt were the flaws of Force Awakens.

Rise of Skywalker..... :/

I appreciate the work they put into the films, but overall this story was.... all over the place.

 

Cannot disagree with you in the points you make.

I too can't get past the feeling that TFA is too much of a ANH remake. There's a lot to like in TFA but I can't enjoy it enough to justify frequent re-watches.

Regarding TLJ, a movie I have a lot of problems with, but actually the one I prefer in the ST, it's as you say. ROTJ throne room 2, the parallel of the characters and even the battle of Crait feels like an inverted TESB's opening Hoth battle. Ultimately, there's also a lot to like in TLJ but also a lot I don't enjoy watching, like the entire Canto Bight + Star Destroyer infiltration scene. It doesn't feel like SW to me.

As for TROS.... sigh. The one I liked the least in the ST.

I still give the ST 6.5/10 with order of preference (from prefered) being: TLJ, TFA, TROS. However, I don't hide that this trilogy also disappoints me.

In sum, a lot to like in the ST. I too appreciate the work, and I'm grateful the movies existed. However, I feel somewhat disappointed with the ST as a whole. In contrast, I appreciated RO and SOLO more, for what they were. For the main saga, one has to expect more.

 

The Force Awakens: in my opinion the best movie in the sequel trilogy. Probably because, like many said, it is similar to A New Hope. But I liked to see the resistance and old characters of the original trilogy. New planets and I liked BB-8.

The Last Jedi: not really. The light speed is used in a stupid way. Since when going light speed can destroy a spaceship? Moreover, at the end of the movie, we see Kylo Ren battling with Luke. Well, if I was General Hux I would have ordered to use the fire to kill Kylo and become the new leader of the empire. But no, Hux didn't think about that and did nothing during all battle. Not to mention the battle with the pretorians. Stupid, Kylo and Rey would easily being killed.

The Rise of Skywalker: the return of Palpatine is meh... but ok, I can accept this. But now the Force can do everything. You can stop a spaceship to take off and even detroy it. You can heal another person and even resurrect someone. You can battle when you are in different places and even take an item which enables you to understand where the other person is. And almost forgot, you can destroy a full speed spaceship by jumping on it and destroy a wing tirh the lightsaber. But Kylo is alive and without a scratch. Come on, this is too much unbelivable.

 

TLJ: You think all the First Order officers with Hux would simply accept that order. Especially after they saw what they thought was Luke survive the barrage? They will simply commit mutiny with Hux?

TROS: Cant recall a scene where a ship is taken out via a lightsaber.

 

Hux is one of the most important commander. Snoke has been killed and Kylo is defensless when he battles against Luke. I don't know about a mutiny but Hux was able to insult Kylo in front of Snoke and hates the young man quite a lot. I don't see why not try to shoot him with all his forces.

In TROS remember when Rey jumps over Kylo's ship and cuts a wing with the lightsaber? That's the scene. It hard to believe that Rey could have made that jump and in that particular second and more unbelievable that Kylo is fully alive after the crash.

 

In TLJ Kylo is now acknowledged as the Supreme Leader and you expect that the officers with Hux will just take the orders to kill him? I am not talking about Hux not liking Kylo I am talking about the officers on the walkers taking the order from Hux to try and kill Kylo. Also wouldnt they worry that Kylo like Luke would survive and then kill them all.

How could I forget that, but why is that unbelievable. We have seen lots of acrobatics in Star Wars and people surviving explosions.

 

Something they did in Rise of Skywalker, that I liked, was that they seemed to explain why the Sith have the Rule of Two.

Palpatine suggests that he is "all the Sith," and that he will possess Rey when she kills him. Since the Rule of Two is predicated on the apprentice becoming more powerful than the master, and then killing them, this revelation explains why a Sith master would take on an apprentice at all. Sith masters weren't training their would-be murderers- they were training their new more powerful host bodies. The Sith just kept consuming each other, master possessing apprentice, forming a tortured amalgam of souls.

But recently, the novelization revealed what actually happened...

"Falling...Falling...Falling...down a massive shaft, the betrayal sharp and stinging, a figure high above, black clad and helmeted and shrinking fast. His very own apprentice had turned against him, the way he himself had turned against Plagueis...whose secret to immortality he had stolen.
"Plageuis had not acted fast enough in his own moment of death. But Sidious, sensing the flickering light in his apprentice, had been ready for years. So the falling, dying Emperor called on all the dark power of the Force to thrust his consciousness far, far away, to a secret place he had been preparing. His body was dead, an empty vessel, long before it found the bottom of the shaft, and his mind jolted to a new awareness in a new body -- a painful one, a temporary one.
"Although the Emperor had planned on Vader's inevitable betrayal, the moment arrived sooner than expected: "The secret place had not completed its preparations. The transfer was imperfect, and the cloned body wasn't enough. Perhaps Plagueis was having the last laugh after all. Maybe his secret remained secret. Because Palpatine was trapped in a broken, dying form."

This passage undermines everything I said lol. Apparently, Plagueis is the one who discovered that he could project his essence into a host body... Palpatine isn't all the Sith, he is merely the culmination of all of the Sith's teachings. That works in a similar way to Rey's declaration that she was all the Jedi, but I loved the juxtaposition of these two characters. The Sith attempt to cheat death by victimizing each other, and becoming a tortured whole, while the Jedi transcend death and are united as one, while still maintaining their individuality; the Jedi help each other, while the Sith destroy each other. Now that's all undone.

(It does suggest though that Snoke is Plagueis. The books that came out after Force Awakens stated that Palpatine heard a voice calling to him from beyond the Outer Rim. This apparently led him to Exegol.

In this paragraph from the Novelization, Palpatine recollects that Plagueis did not act fast enough to escape death, which we see is to transfer his body into a clone. That means that there are clone bodies of Plagueis hidden somewhere. Since Palpatine was drawn to Exegol, it seems to me that he found where Plagueis hid his spare bodies, and then Palpatine used them for his purpose...

IF
it weren't for the fact that the guide says that Snoke is just a synthetic manufactured thing lol.

This trilogy always hinted at cool ideas but always managed to find a way to do something else. -_-

EDIT:
For those who do not understand what they mean by the clone comment, they revealed in the novelization that the Palpatine we saw in Rise was a clone. It was an imperfect clone that could not contain his malevolent power. Also, lol, Rey's dad was a defective powerless clone of Palpatine lol

 

I agree with a lot of what you wrote, it's super cool that they added some lore about the rule of who and the sith. But why undermine it in the novelization!!? So stupid. I am a big fan of the trilogy as a whole, but you are so right in that they always hinted at cool ideas only to abandon them completely in some cases. It's a shame. I think the references about Plaeguis is a little dumb at this point too. The fans that really wanted him in the ST will probably think it's too little, too late. And the rest probably don't care.