No one reads my journal...

[eyelessgame]

... so it's an excellent place to post spoilers.

OK, so Rise of Skywalker.

I go to Star Wars movies to enjoy a rollicking space opera, to hopefully not have my intelligence insulted much, and to watch the bad guys lose. By that standard there is literally nothing not to like in this movie.

Like with TFA and TLJ, I had at least a dozen moments of "Ah, well, yes, I liked this scene when I saw it in the original trilogy, so - sure, why not, let's watch it again." But in this one, more than in the others, they were really conscious and deliberate about it, and often the reprises had a point.

Though a character named Ben turning to the audience and pretty much admitting that the writers changed their minds about a character's parentage and that that's why he lied about it in the last movie is a reprise I probably didn't have to see again.

I was a little disappointed that Rose had such a small role. Would have liked to see more of her.

Just as with TFA, the Poe and Finn banter just makes the whole thing a blast of good fun and without those two this wouldn't have been even half the movie.

It was made for the fanboys. It's all about payoff, callback, closure. They hit all the points. There's nothing approaching even the superficial depth (if that makes sense) of Yoda's lessons to Luke in ESB. It doesn't try to be deep. It doesn't try to change your worldview. It's a western. You walk into the theater, 150 minutes later the bad guys have lost but good and you're smiling and you got to be a kid again and didn't have to think too hard. There is a place in this world for movies like that. (Ahem, James Bond, anyone?)

The movie's pace is really something. There's really no time to waste anywhere. There are a lot of abrupt cuts where I actually would have liked to see the spaceship land, people get out, have a little more transition - but the direction trusts you to keep up.

There's a little eyerolling combination of deus-ex and obvious foreshadow (which is odd because they're kind of opposites) - but the fact that you can predict that the cavalry will come around that hill is both, well, solid story structure and also loses a little bit of the suspense because it only happened because it had to happen since otherwise the good guys would lose. It is not a movie that tries to subvert your expectations, not if you are used to how Star Wars characters act.

I found the core storyline - Rey and Ben's arcs - pretty satisfying, actually. They didn't do what too many lazy stories do - the good guy and bad guy meet up multiple times, and each time till the last time the bad guy gets the upper hand because he's better at it, and in the climax the good guy finally wins because Reasons. The good guy won because the pieces were all finally in place and the bad guy really didn't quite get it. It was well set up.

Nothing will make me feel eleven again - so it's not ANH - and nothing will blow me away like ESB did when I was fourteen, so it's no ESB. But I might like it better than RotJ, and certainly better than any other Star Wars movie - not that there's a whole lot of competition. It's up there for me near Rogue One, because it's not quite as well-crafted but it's a lot more fun and you walk out with a much bigger smile.

I understood, but never really shared, the TLJ love some people have - and the assholes who hate TLJ because of the strong female roles are, well, assholes. But TLJ doesn't really belong very comfortably in the Star Wars universe, and really doesn't work well thematically as a sequel to TFA - similar to how I felt about Solo, TLJ would have been better off as its own movie. You could feel TLJ squirming in the uncomfortable confines of the setting. RoS is a Star Wars movie down to its DNA; it hit the Star Wars notes and - like a good Bond movie - it was exactly what I came to see.

It almost completely ignored The Last Jedi. But I think it had to - as I have said before, that movie ignored too much Star Wars canon. (The clearest nod to TLJ was that Finn and Poe came up with a plan for the climax that was simply not going to work, not without help. But they got the help this time, I guess because it was the third movie of the trilogy instead of the second. Like I said, deus ex and obvious plot structure both.

I might go read some of the critical reviews now - I understand reviews were mixed - but honestly given (a) the anchor-weight of the prequels and (b) the jarring juxtaposition of TFA and TLJ it had to reconcile, it hit all the notes it needed to hit, and I had a lot of fun in the theater.

Comments

[jayfurr]

But was it as good as another science fiction film of the era, "Repo Man"?

[eyelessgame]

oy. What's better, T-bone steak or chocolate cake? Space opera is a very distinct subgenre, into which Repo Man does not fall.

[jayfurr]

Oh, absolutely. I was just messing around. (It's long been a peeve of mine that Repo Man was overlooked at the time because the studio had absolutely no idea how to market it; it wound up on several "Best Of 1982" lists assembled by critics nonetheless.)

I gave up on the Star Wars series after Phantom Menace. It was *so* bad that I said "George Lucas doesn't need any of my money". And from what my wife told me (she saw the remaining movies in the prequel trilogy) I didn't miss much.

As for the last three movies -- I might have been willing to go if they'd done something new or interesting, but it seemed like they were just continuing on in the "and next week, in the next exciting chapter of Formulaic Space Opera" vein, and not really interested in doing any real world-building or exploration of the implications of the Force...

I always wondered what "The Force Awakens" actually meant, anyway. Did something noteworthy happen with the Force in that movie that I somehow missed out on?

I don't deny that there can be a pleasure in eating a Big Mac when that's what one's in the mood for; it's not fair to compare a Big Mac to a perfectly prepared New York strip. So it's fair for people to enjoy the whole nine movies (plus Solo, plus Rogue One, plus any others I missed) even if they weren't my cup of tea.

But at the end of the day -- "Starkiller Base"? A Death Star that can fire across the galaxy and still hit its target, little things like galactic rotation, planetary orbits, and the speed of light notwithstanding? They seriously couldn't do better than that?

[jayfurr]

Should have said "George Lucas doesn't need any MORE of my money". :)

[cyrano]

The thing is the Starkiller *drains a sun in order to power itself*. You kill an entire system before you've even fired, and arguably the actual weapon is pretty weak sauce compared to a whole solar system.

[eyelessgame]

Oh, absolutely. I went to them for formulaic space opera. What I wanted was formulaic space opera, competently told. (I compare it to Bond. Bond is, in general, Spy Opera, competently told. That's why you go to a Bond movie.)

The Star Wars prequels were so incompetently done as a matter of storytelling and plot that I could not enjoy them.

I enjoyed the sequels because above all else they had characters I could care about, who had motivations and personalities and development and story arcs, who got to go around to many different planets and space stations and use hyperspace and use light swords and blasters and spaceships and droids in the service of their motivations and personalities and development and story arcs.

The formulaic repetition of earlier story elements was ... not my favorite part of them.

Redlettermedia explained exactly what it is. The last four minutes of this video. https://youtu.be/ORWPCCzSgu0?t=359

It's about lightsaber duels, contrasting the ones in the prequels with the ones in the original trilogy. It is in a way a touchstone for the quality of the storytelling.

And as far as I'm concerned, Rise of Skywalker's big lightsaber duel between Rey and Benkylo - while not the climax of the movie - was much more like the ones in the original trilogy than the ones in the prequels. There was something going on under the surface. You understood what they wanted, what they were fighting for. The fight between them was important to both their character arcs. The conflict was about more than the fight.

Yeah. Starkiller Base was over the top and unimaginative. IX is at least tying together things from before, which means it can sidestep the question of whether it's stealing from earlier movies, because of course it was, that was the point.

(The execution of VIII was more interesting, sort of, but, as I said in the past, VIII took a giant shit on the space opera itself, which is why I didn't much care for it. YMMV.)

But going bigger and badder and pretty much doing the same thing was pretty much what EE Doc Smith did with the sequels to Lensman - every Lensman novel went further over the top each time with how big and badass and overwhelming the big fight at the end was. I can't fault Star Wars for using Lensman as its touchstone, any more than you can fault a sword-and-sorcery opera for ripping off LotR.

[jayfurr]

I didn't read the Lensman books; never got around to them. But I did read Doc Smith's _Skylark_ books -- and in them, the titular ship kept getting upgraded by each alien civilization they ran into. They'd meet some new aliens, the aliens would magnanimously transmute the metal of their hull into some strange element, handshakes and high5s would be exchanged all around, and off they'd go to the next alien civilization. Or so I seem to remember -- I read them in middle school. :)

[eyelessgame]

I think I gave up after the fourth Lensman book, when they destroyed the bad guy planet by effectively teleporting two other similar-sized planets, one to either side of it, with momentum-preserving teleportation such that they crashed directly into the planet from opposite sides, destroying it. But I'd certainly gotten the idea by then.

[jayfurr]

And yet, Doc Smith's contributions can't be overstated. Space opera had to come from somewhere. And there's a room for space opera, just like there's room in printed fiction for Cordwainer Smith and Stanislaw Lem. (Unfortunately, I can't see either of those worthies translating well into film.)

[cyrano]

Oh good. Here I can splah about spoilerous things that I remember striking me during the film. (Unless I take a notebook or something, I won't remember all of them.)

Ever since Force Awakens when Finn picked up that lightsaber, I wanted Finn or Poe to be at least Force sensitive. So it was nice that the Force was with Finn, and he was one with the Force.

[cyrano]

So what was up with DEO? That entire plotline about gaining his trust paying off with finding out where Exical was, and the Very Next Thing that happened was Rey showing them where Exical was and how to get through all the dangers.

[eyelessgame]

That might have been a flaw covered up (for me, anyway) by the pacing. There were a bunch of moments that didn't really have the time to be developed - like frex not really having any time to go through some emotional angst over Chewbacca.

I'm wondering if a whole sequence got cut that might have shown DEO's information, but then the information wasn't useful the way they wanted, or whatever. There were a lot of setbacks/things tried that didn't end up working out in the movie.

There were some time and space questions. It was hard and twisty and tricky to get to Exical. Got it. Actually showed the long flight there. But then at the end of the big conflict, the MF picks up Finn and they go fly home (with a quick cut) and get home to whereveritwas to go see Leia (and find she's dead) and then they cut back to Kyloben still standing on the wreckage staring off into space until Han spaceghosted at him. And I was thinking "he stood there a hell of a long time."

[eyelessgame]

My son said that one review said, accurately, "this movie wanted to be a miniseries." It was edited to within an inch of its life to fit within 2:30 and could have easily contained six hours of material.

[cyrano]

Another plot line that got dropped without comment: Rey, I never got to tell you this important thing! And I'll never tell you.

[eyelessgame]

I thought it was utterly obvious what he was going to say and it's kind of satisfying that he didn't say it... nor have to. But perhaps a slight yearning gaze during all the hugging would have been a payoff we should have gotten.

[merlinofchaos]

JJ said that he wanted to tell Rey he was force sensitive and ask what he should do.

Lots of people want him to have a crush on Rey and I actually don't like that. Finn already has his thing with Rose and Poe and why does he need a THIRD crush?

I'm actually ecstatic that nobody on the Resistance side had a crush on Rey. We don't need everyone to always have a crush on the main protagonist.

[valjiircher]

I pretty much agree, but I thought both Anakin and Ben should have been ghosts with Luke and Leia at the end on Tatooine. And I found the plethora of reprises annoying after a while.

[eyelessgame]

The only thing I wish they'd added was old Ben's voice among all the voices in Rey's head - "The Force will be with you. Always."