Thoughts and Opinions on TROS' Story

That's something I'd totally agree with.

I mean, it would need to be entirely differently paced.

Maybe the third act of the first film could've focused on Kijimi, making a more epic scene of it- Rey and co boarding the Star Destroyer to save Chewie (whose death twist would've also benefited from more breathing time), while the Resistance leads a desperate attack on the arriving new Star Destroyer armed with planet killing tech.

The First Order fools with the Resistance a bit, giving us a bit of a battle, with Hux's double-agent status playing a part in this. Ultimately, Pryde realizes what's going on, kills Hux, and blows up Kijimi.

The Resistance retreat to lick their wounds, with Rey having just found out a terrible truth of her family.

The film ends in the ruins of the planet of Kijimi, and the ruins of all that has happened so far- Kylo leaving the First Order to find Rey, Pryde heading to Exegol, the Resistance standing among a dead world.

And then we see Lando and co. taking off from Coruscant with a fleet behind them, piloting something other than the Falcon, before heading off to rally another world.


Man, I liked the film, but writing something myself really makes me realize how much more I wanted out of it. That's dangerous.

 

It's only dangerous if you let it be. Otherwise it's just harmless fun.

If they made it into two movies, Ren spends the whole first movie as THE bad guy. He has the Resistance on the ropes. He's doing what Vader and Palpatine never could do. He's eliminating the last threat...Hux begins his subterfuge of Ren. Feeding the remnants of the Resistance information to keep them alive. You can really build things up that way.

This would also allow them to build up Palpatine as a threat, if they chose to keep him instead of just "Hey guys, he's back!"

 

All editors would like to have more time to work on a film; that's just a fact of the job and has no bearing whatsoever on the quality of a film's final cut.

 

I wanted to see this film twice before I reviewed it because there is so much to take in. I’m also a massive Star Wars fan, so most of the time I see Star Wars with rose tinted glasses and so don’t see the bad.

So let’s start with the bad. Its a mess. If anyone was left doubting if Disney had a plan for the sequel trilogy this film clearly ends the debate with a resounding No! Nothing feels thought through or properly planned out. Everything feels rushed. As such Rise of Skywalker tries to cram a movies worth of plot into the crawl, and a second into the first 5 mins. The galaxy had heard Palpatine’s voice, no explanation. Palpatine is kind of alive, no real explanation, Snokes a sort of clone? no real explanation. He has constructed something called the Final Order which is the biggest fleet of ships ever built under ice or something, no real explanation. That’s in the first 5 minutes!


If Force Awakens was JJ Abrams dialling his mystery box to 11. Rise of Skywalker shows of the other aspect of JJ Abrams story telling style. That’s breakneck speed. Make everything happen at a million miles an hour and then move on before the audience has a chance to question it. Lets not forget this is the film maker who brought us a Star Trek film were a killer mining ship from the future threatens the federation and Kirk becomes captain of the Enterprise by smuggling himself aboard twice and annoying Spock. Cohesive plots have never been JJ Abrams forte. This film shows that in abundance.


Thiers just so much that doesn’t really make sense, the dagger that shows a location on the Death Star to the way finder to Exegol(the secret Sith Planet). The Death Star has, only been there 30 years, so why would an ancient dagger show it, and only if you stand in the right spot, and then its just in the throne room anyway… I get that it was all just an excuse to have Indiana Jones in space like quest, but they could have made it make a tiny bit of sense. There are so many elements like this too. The Dyad between Rey and Ben is a great idea, but its used in such a throwaway manner at the end, Palpatine “ow you’re a Dyad, I can suck your life force, look I’m now fully back” all done within about 20 seconds of film time, your just left going “sorry what???” There is just so many of these convenience plot points, that it really makes it hard for you to suspend your disbelief and enjoy yourself. So much more is unnecessary or don’t add anything to the story, lightspeed skipping, Knights of Ren(their Ghouls or something?).


However, if you do manage to turn off your brain enough to just sit back and watch, there is a lot to enjoy. Firstly, it looks absolutely awesome! On pure cinematography this film maybe the best Star Wars movie ever made. The cube structure thing on Exegol is just pure sci-fi eye candy! That shot of Rey running underneath it is probably going to be a screen saver on my laptop for years.


You also get to see Kylo actually seem bad ass for really the first time since the opening scene of the Force Awakens, were he stops the laser bolt. Since then he has basically lost every fight and while we are told he is powerful we’ve never seen it. That changes from the opening seen. With Kylo basically laying waste too an army. He also kicks Rey’s ass in there final dual apart from Leia’s interference. Speaking of the dual on top of the ruins of the Death Star, it’s awesome! Dual of the Fates may still be my favourite lightsabre fight, but this was up there!


I personally liked for the most part how the handled Rey in this film. I know a lot of people liked that she was made to be a no one in the Last Jedi, for me though it didn’t work just because both the Force Awakens and the Last Jedi spent so much screen time building up the mystery of who she is, at the end of it just going she is no one felt a bit flat. I’m some one who wants pay off to mystery boxes in films, so what Rian Johnson did basically saying the mystery box was empty didn’t work for me. So I quite like that she was made a Palpatine, even if it again didn’t make much sense or wasn’t properly explained. But the idea that she is a Palpatine and the hero of the film, for me works really well. We also get that incredible scene where she shoots lightening out her hands shooting down the ship she thinks Chewie is on.


The Rey Kylo/Ben relationship was the best written part of the movie and incredibly well acted. The force skyping went up a notch and lent to a really cool lightsabre dual while they are in different locations. I’ve never been a Reylo fan, but their relationship in this movie won me over and I loved the kiss and almost wanted a happy ending so much so I was sad to see Ben die at the end.


Thiers lots of other elements I like. Hux hardly having any screen time made me very happy, the goofy nature of his character has made him my least favourite Star Wars character (yes including Jar Jar) so both times i’ve seen it I cheered when he was killed. I loved the visuals of Palpatine, his life support system thing looked properly creepy. Him showing his power at the end shooting lightening into the sky was just awesome. It would have been much cooler him being the main threat if he could do that rather than the contrived magically appeared fleet. The expanding of the Sith law, was also cool, who are all those people in the seats at Exegol, I’m fascinated, (though let’s face it it’s JJ so he probably has no idea). I liked D-0, he actually made me laugh and care about him in only a tiny amount of screen time and I’m someone who doesn’t think droids have been handled well in Star Wars since the Empire Strikes Back (with the exception of K2SO).


Many of the other side characters aren’t handled as well, though Finn and BB8 are definitely handled less slapstickly then the Last Jedi. Poe and Finn do however regularly feel like side characters in a way that Han and Leia never did in the original trilogy, which is really disappointing after how much I loved Finn’s introduction in the Force Awakens. Could be worse though you could be Rose, who to be honest might as well not bothered for how little she got to do.


The use of the original cast is certainly more reverential than the Last Jedi handled them. Lando is back, he doesn’t add a great deal to the story and I don’t think he was really needed but it’s nice to see Lando back. Leia is probably dealt with as well as could be expected considering, though it is very obvious the limited footage they have is being written around. Her part in Kylo’s redemption is also about as good as can be expected if maybe a bit forced. The flash back of her and Luke training was fun though.


Luke gets one scene, it’s quite cool, but never really having had the chance to spend time with Mark Hamill playing Luke as a Jedi master will always one of my biggest disappointments from this new trilogy. The fact that Luke only got one scene also for me pushes back on those saying that this movie was made to appease fans who hated the Last Jedi. The number one complaint about the Last Jedi was the use of Luke, if you were setting out to make a movie to soothe the anger about that film the first thing you would do is figure out how to give Luke a big part.


Harrison Ford even returns; I’m assuming that was the most expensive cameo in film history. There has been so much discussion on can Ben be redeemed after killing Han, but it was fairly obvious after teasing the good still in him for 2 films, they had to turn him and then subsequently die to atone for his sins. Having Han return as memory was probably the easiest way to do this, if his father who he killed says it’s ok, then its ok for the audience to be ok with it. The scene itself is well acted, quite touching and serves his purpose well. Though I think having Hayden Christensen come back as force ghost Anakin for this scene instead could have been fascinating.


The final act is again a mixed bag, having Ian McDiarmid back on screen as Palpatine is a lot of fun, the setting for his Rey show down is breathtakingly enough to take your mind off the weaker plot points. Having Ben turning up to help and taking out the Knights or Ren is entertaining. From there though things get very convoluted, but there are still loads of good ideas. I like the idea of I am all of the Sith vs all of the Jedi, the voices of Jedi past, is also a cool moment. At times though it does feel like JJ Abrams is just throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks.


The space battle above never really gets going, for me it isn’t up there with the great Star Wars space battles: Endor, Scarif and Coruscant. When all the back up turns up from the core worlds, again it all feels a bit forced or unearned. Though I will say this I bought into space horses more than I did Ewoks. Out of the 3 trilogies final acts though, Rise of Skywalker certainly lags behind Revenge of the Sith and Return of the Jedi. The final scene on Tatooine again feels a bit unnecessary, I get the twin suns shot is iconic but we don’t need to constantly recreate it. Rey’s Yellow lightsabre was cool though.


Over all though I guess the trilogy ended as well as it could considering they rushed the first film into production, went in without a plan, went crazy of nostalgia and mysteries before handing it over to a director who just wanted to turn everything into subversion. They then fire the final films director and rewrite the script and rush production. So expecting a cohesive story was never on the cards after all that.


It’s hard not to review the trilogy as a whole when reviewing this film. I’m not going to lie I’m a bit disappointed, there was so much potential so many directions they could of gone in. How cool would it have been to see Luke’s academy, his students facing a new threat either from within or from the unknown regions. They could have done Plagueis. they could of done a civil war among Luke’s students, the options were endless they had a whole galaxy of stories to play with. The fact they decided not to work out a story and end up basically following a similar story to the original trilogy except with a subversion or remix in the middle chapter is beyond disappointing.


Star Wars fans have a bad reputation at the moment, and there is no question many of them have taken things to far, or used what there disappoint in the films as an excuse to be abusive, sexist or racist. Those people aren’t bad fans, they are bad people and that has nothing to do with Star Wars. Real Star Wars fans have a right to be angry though. Disney has bought this property and then with minimal planning rushed out a trilogy that fans have been wanting to see for over 3 decades. Even if you love this new trilogy, you should be appalled that Disney and Kathleen Kennedy took that approach to something that means so much to so many. Fans have a right to be angry, though they do not have a right to be abusive.


Back to the Rise of Skywalker, like I said considering what lead up to this point it could have been a lot worse. As it is we are left with a film, that is convoluted, bonkers, visually stunning and regularly really fun. The nearest film I can relate it to is ‘Valerian and they City of a Thousand Planets’. If you can turn your brain off, ignore the overly convenience of many of the plots and that a lot of it doesn’t make sense and sit back and enjoy the beautifully looking sci-fi film in front of you then you will probably have a lot of fun. I so happen to really like Valerian, so I had fun with this film… It just could have been so much more!

 

This is your opinion, and I disagree.

There was no "overall arc-outline" for the Trilogy, yes, but none of the story points that emerged through the process of letting the storytellers behind each individual movie tell the story how they wanted to caught those involved in each individual film off-guard, and The Rise of Skywalker definitively proves that you don't need an overall arc-line in order to tell a cohesive story by doing things that build on its predecessors while simultaneously recontextualizing their individual narratives and tying everything together.

 

You say you disagree but then you agree there was no "overall arc-outline". Which is what I was saying, sorry if I didn't make that clear.

I wasn't saying you can't enjoy the movies because there was no plan. I'm also glad they felt coherent for you, while I had a lot of fun with Rise of Skywalker it didn't feel coherent for me.

 

^ My contention is that there is a demonstrable and fact-based coherence to the Sequel Trilogy that wasn't contingent on there being a pre-established "arc outline" that all 3 film directors and 4 writers/co-writers followed.

 

One of the over-arching thematic aspect I love in TRoS is that of memory.

Memories of the saga itself, with all the other films being referenced and included in various levels of the film (thematically, visually, narratively, structurally).

In the story, and in characters, you have these things all tied together:

- Rey’s fractured memories of being left/sold on Jakku as a child as her parents left on that ship as she tries to piece together her sense of self.

- Ben’s memory of his father Han, telling him truth after the revenant Palpatine has revealed his years of deceptions and lies.

- Significantly, Threepio’s willingness to both sacrifice his memory to help others, whilst leaving only a translated Sith message. Later, Threepio’s memory is restored by his best friend Artoo, exemplifying both the other theme of not being alone (the “faith in your friends” the Emperor derided Luke for in ROTJ), as well as beautifully echoing the Sith/Jedi differences in terms of voices. Threepio contains millions of languages... voices you might say, which are replaced by the one, red-eyed Sith message voice. The Sith message is a lone, secret voice, whereas Threepio’s usual, millions of voices are restored later because he had friends.

- The Sith version of memory is to build a one-man army in a dark spirit that then passes into another body, full of the Sith who have come before, clinging to an unnatural existence ‘cheating’ death. The power is heavy, burdened, and centred on a throne made of rock, at the bottom of a temple underground. Oppressive, secret and twisted.

- The Jedi version of memory is a collective unconscious of enlightened voices that Rey calls upon from the stars, the Force, that surrounds us and binds the galaxy together. Open to helping anyone who will listen, harmonious to life, containing the identities of past Jedi, who accepted physical death as a natural part of life.

- The First and Final Order... featuring Allegiant General Pryde... who remarks that as he served Palpatine/the Sith Emperor in the past, he serves him now again. The head of a navy, with a strict organisational structure, flummoxed by the eventual opposition...

- The Resistance, yes, but also just ... ‘people’. People with memories of the Empire, like Lando, Chewie, Wedge. But also newer people like Rose, Jannah, Finn and Poe, who have all had their own journeys and memories to get to this point.

And as the film reaches its conclusion, Rey takes us back to the place the films really started, and we remember. Rey remembers her two Jedi masters, Luke and Leia. An old woman recalls that it’s been so long since anyone has been there, in a matter-of-fact manner, but we know we haven’t been there since ROTJ or ROTS, depending on which order you’re watching or considering the films... Who is this old woman? Is this a Rey from the future? Or Rey’s grandmother? Or a no-one with no part in this story? A memory or a premonition? The end of the story or the beginning? Or maybe all of those things and none of them. Nothing’s impossible.

In one direction, the ghosts of the past, memories, buried with respect and love, like the two lightsabers. In the other direction, a twin sunrise, future possibilities, accompanied by BB-8. Rays of light in the sky, towards which our Jedi heroine Rey Skywalker walks.

 

Thank you for clarifying your comment, That is of course a completely valid opinion, while clearly their was no over all story arc planned out in advance, you can of course feel that the different writers made up a coherent story as they went along.

I personally don't get that feeling when I watch these films, but if you do that's great for you.

 

I think he used whatever it was the rey did to get to the ruins and then went back and stole a ship or whatever...

 

It just occurred to me that Poe and Finn are critical of Rey leaving her friends to do the fighting while she's training to be a Jedi instead.

I'm surprised there isn't more reaction to this. It kind of vindicates people who felt that any absence by Luke from the fight was regrettable, but didn't agree with people who would have been fine with everyone being "desperate" for his involvement if there were "plot" reasons(excuses) like, for example, Luke learning how to force head-butt death stars into oblivion from half a galaxy away, rather than there being profound personal, emotional fallout which Luke had met an impasse at resolving, and found himself crippled with fear of the consequences of further error.

 

Omg, if I had the ability to write and express as well as you did this would have been my review of TROS! And I even agree with the "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" analogy. I've seen TROS twice and I'd just say that I make your words my own.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to express yours thoughts! I have not much more to add with respect to the overall opinion on TROS' story.

Let me guess, you're also a die hard fan of the OT, feel the PT is 'Ok', you loved Rogue One, think Solo was good but not great and the ST is a 6.5 or 7 out of 10, that the ST feels derivative and TROS had the potential to be so much better?

 

Nope. You want it to be this way. Just like you want the books to be cannon etc.

ROS ignored many aspects of TLJ, most obviously Rey's backstory.

That is an objective fact. "you have no place in this story" to "you're a Palpatine"

I didn't like her being a nobody either, but you can't just pretend away what was said in that scene. Or the theme of the entire friggin movie, which is anyone can be a hero and Rey finding a place/family/belonging

Stop ignoring/making up stuff.

 

I've neither ignored things nor made things up, but nice try.

 

Thank you that's really kind of you to say! I've got to be honest I didn't expect anyone to actually read it as it a bit long. Also nice to hear some one else has actually watched Valerian!!

You have pretty much got my taste in star wars nailed, I grew up watching the Original trilogy on repeat and jumping around my mum's house pretending to be Luke Skywalker. Though I would probably describe myself as a die hard fan of the prequels as as well. I'll be the first to admit their flaws, but ive always thought the story and imagination and worlds they create, not to mention kick ass lightsaber battles far over shadow the issues with the films.

I also yes utterly adore Rogue One. I really like Solo to, not as much at the OT, PT or Rogue One, but still really enjoyed it. The sequal trilogy just hasn't landed with me in the way the other films have, I think they shot themselves in the foot not planning them out in advance. I also think going so all in on nostalgia and mystery box with force awakens has really hurt them as time has gone on. Then they followed that by going balls to the wall with everything needs to be subverted in the Last Jedi and that made the situation worse. Considering all that though, and the obviously rushed production of Rise of Skywalker, I had a lot of fun with the film, even if it is a bit of a bonkers mess at times.

But then to be honest with star wars, im desperate to love it, so If I can find away to love it I will.

 

The final film in the Skywalker Saga being titled "Return Of The Sith" sounds like an extraordinarily bad idea.

 

Apparently ILM never created a Force ghost version of Ben. It's either intriguing or very stupid. Intriguing that they have a way out to use him again in future stories if need be. We know force teleportation is thing. I don't think it has to necessarily kill you either. That's probably wishful thinking though... why wouldn't Rey not want to see Ben?

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment...isual-effects-secrets-revealed-200000081.html

 

IIRC JJA never makes Director's Cuts, because what we see in the theater is the director's cut.

Because he had to finish what anakin started saving the one he loves (Out of Selflessness instead of selfishness)

Do they really set that up or does it just happen because of the shear amount of rhymes.

That's why we have twin suns.

Probably because he wouldn't be there in time and the massive blast of fire would have killed him anyway before the remains of the resistance would have had a chance to flee. You just don't go out alone to face the First Order with a laser sword.