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2019/12/20 02:58:23
Subject: Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - a review. Warning possible spoilers.
I never saw the Star Wars original trilogy at the cinema, however I grew up watching it on TV, Christmas was Star Wars (and The Great Escape) here in the UK during the 80s and early 90s before the invention of Sky and digital TV.
I have been a Star Wars fan ever since.
I, like may fans, didn't like The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi. I mistakenly went to see TFA at the cinema, and skipped TLJ until it came out on BluRay.
Yesterday, on UK general release day (?), I went to see Rise of Skywalker at my local Cineworld.
I went in mostly cold. Having not really paid attention to any of the hype, I did however watch the trailer where it showed the Star Destroyer coming out of the water.
I was a little miffed however with Cineworld, I booked seat F12, one of the two seats smack bang in the middle of the audio coverage, for that perfect audio experience. However my local Cineworld is setup so that if you sit in the audio sweet spot the screen is far too close and it's difficult to see the edges without taking your eyes off the middle of the screen! Couple that with the screen seeming too dark (brightness/contrast needs to be adjusted I think) and the fact that the movie appeared to have a grain on it, I wasn't all that satisfied with Cineworld's showing of the movie.
However, this is my mini review/thoughts of the movie itself -
Spoiler:
The movie starts out promising, much force there is with this one. It was good to see Darth Sidious return - rumours/details of his survival (cloning etc) have been in the expanded universe for decades. Although questions of how he survived still go unanswered - it's a case of "look everyone The Emperor is back!". Largely gone is the moralising and social commentary from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi that irked so many of us, so that is another plus point.
However there are, again, too many additional characters shoe horned in for no particular reason other than, it seems to me, to give "new" actors a leg up (the leader of the "tribe" of Imperial Stormtrooper defectors for example), Poe's has a (lame) backstory shoe horned in, because. And some things don't seem to be very well thought out, many things seemed tacked on, and there are many things that annoyed me, for example -
Again Snoke isn't explained. Apparently Palpatine created him or something...
Nothing really happens in the "space battle". People are flying around, fighters/small ships get destroyed, but it's a general mess and it seems like it's there as a tacked on event with very little of the main goal (to destroy the Sith fleet) actually being worked towards or achieved.
The "command" Star Destroyer is forced to "reboot", so that comms are broken with the rest of the fleet (a major goal in the "space battle") far too quickly and easily, with just a few thermal detonators (?) shoved down an access hatch! That's then followed up with Finn and his new buddy (the female leader of the Stormtrooper deserters), destroying the "command" Star Destroyer, that they're standing on the outside of, with some kind of gun battery (turbo laser or ion cannon?) that they magically hot wire, and then conveniently getting rescued by Lando and Chewie in the Falcon when said Star Destroyer starts to disintegrate!
The Death Star, as we know was vaporised in RoTJ (regardless of which SFX version you watch), and yet wreckage, quite a large chunk of it, including Palpatine's throne room, is conveniently located in an ocean on a planet in the Endor system?! That whole bit where Rey goes to the wreckage of the Death Star annoys me, it introduces a "tribe" of Stormtrooper deserters riding around on some sort of "horses". For no reason. They don't need to even be there. Rey gets to the Death Star wreckage on her own!
Rey is still that "perfect specimen of womanhood", but I guess given they established that in TFA that was never going to go away. At least now they've, conveniently, explained it away by telling us her lineage...
Kylo Ren is still a poorly acted bad comedy version of Darth Vader, and then he kind of does an Anakin Skywalker at the end...
Palpatine's "death" is confusing. He states that if Rey kills him, his spirit will enter her and he will be reborn, yet despite being killed, somehow his spirit does not enter Rey (or Ben Solo)...
Maybe I'm getting old, but the whole film is just too busy, too disjointed, too many pointless characters, too many "fan service" cameos (Wedge appears in a gunner seat of the Falcon in the final "space battle", yay! /sarcasm), and too many questions are able to be be asked but remain left unanswered.
There's also a lesbian kiss at the end of the movie. Blink and you'll miss it, it's a non-event (which is a good thing). But, it was put in, just because, WOKE. I find it unnecessary, seeing as it's two non-entities who have no bearing on the plot, although one of the women does have a line or two, she's one of those blatant random characters shoe-horned in for no particular reason that we seem to have to suffer these days, but the media and activists on both sides have unecessarily latched on to it and we know it was just put in there for that reason...
It's not as bad as TFA and TLJ, as far as movies go in general it's a half decent movie, and it serves at least in part as a memorial to Carrie Fisher. Is it as good as The Original Trilogy. No. And I wish they'd re-release those in the cinema so I can experience them in the cinema.
What I'd like to see now is a few movies covering events between RoTS and a ANH, Rogue One was a half decent start, and a movie or two between RoTJ and TFA detailing the rise of "The First Order", Darth Sidious's survival, and dare I say it Ben Solo's downward spiral to become Kylo Ren.
Wouldn't mind a series of movies where it's in the future from RoS, the Jedi order is re-established, and a new republic is in place, although I'm not sure what the story would be about, perhaps the rise of the Sith again...
Or Disney could just stop.
This message was edited 18 times. Last update was at 2019/12/20 03:35:45
2019/12/20 03:37:24
Subject: Re:Star Wars Rise of Skywalker - a review. Warning possible spoilers.
