Rise of Skywalker - Movie Review
Apr. 5th, 2020 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatAnd a break from our previous programming to discuss a movie. I finally saw the last Star Wars film or rather the last one in the George Lucas series of films featuring the "Skywalkers" aka "The Skywalker Sage". It FINALLY popped up "On Demand" - so I rented it for $5.99 from Optimum. I have it until Tuesday. 48 hour rental. Gotta love technology. (I was beginning to wonder if I'd have to subscribe to Disney + to see it. Although I may subscribe anyhow - just to see all the old movies and animated series - which I find insanely comforting. I wonder if Darby O'Gill and the Little People is on it? That's the musical with a very young Scean Connery that I saw as a kid at school way back in the 1970s.)
Anyhow, Rise of Skywalker wasn't quite as bad as I expected. I kind of enjoyed it actually. It was for the most part, a fun, thoughtless, fluffy fast-action piece of entertainment. The kind of thing you lose yourself in for a bit and forget later. (In short the perfect distraction for well anyone who feels like they are stuck in the psychological horror flick from a mundane hell.) So, as a result,it held my attention. (I had a lot of fun snarking at it, and rolling my eyes at various parts.) Being spoiled for most if not all of the plot points, most likely helped. (I knew who Rey was for example.) Also the fact that I came in with VERY low expectations mainly because practically everyone on my correspondence list that saw it - either disliked it a great deal or were ambivalent. My co-workers kind of enjoyed it, except for Chidi who prefered Last Jedi.
If you want a fun action movie, with lots and lots of action, a simple plot structure, some banter, and lovely special effects and visuals - this is your movie.
It does help if you've seen the other movies -- otherwise I think you'd be lost. This is NOT a stand-a-lone flick. It also helps if you weren't heavily invested in the thematic scope of Last Jedi and the side characters Last Jedi developed or in love with that movie.
I sort of fall in the middle regarding Rise, in that I enjoyed it for what it was - a JJ Abrahms film. From a critical angle? It's not a very good movie. The plot doesn't quite track from Last Jedi. Although to be fair, Last Jedi doesn't quite track from Force Awakens either. There are moments in it that are played as high drama, but are well, just plain silly. I rolled my eyes or grinned at the cheesiness. It was weirdly comforting.
The special effects are uneven - mainly due to the fact that they made the decision to intersperse Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia throughout the film, in some shots, it looked like Carrie, in others it looked like a CJI version of Carrie and felt off somehow. This kind of skewed the effects. At various points, I got thrown out of the story by the feeling of looking at obvious CGI. Try as we might - it's still not quite possible to digitize a human in a way that looks real to the naked eye. But I was expecting this - from various reviews that I'd read, so it came as no great surprise.
Before going into spoilers, I'll state this - I agree with rosegriffiths, who stated in her review of the film, that Rise kind of has some of the same problems as Last Jedi but in another way. Where Jedi had something new to say, Rise kind of repeats what was already said in the first trilogy of films (and better said in those films for that matter). Where Jedi's plot was overly busy and at times difficult to follow because its doing too much at the same time, Rise's is almost too simple and difficult to follow - because it doesn't quite track with what came before, and it like Jedi kind of loses the characters in the mix. But, I kind of cared more about the characters in Jedi than in Rise, which felt sort of rushed, while Jedi had better and more isolated character moments. In this way the two films sort of remind me of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Empire did a better job of getting across the character moments, while Return was a bit too focused on wrapping up the plot and I kind of lost the characters in the mix (also Return like Rise was a bit too silly in places for words.)
* As previously stated, the plot doesn't quite track. Rey being a Palpatine didn't work for me. Mainly because I saw all the films and it was pretty clear Palpatine did not have offspring. Also, it felt contrived. Rian Johnson killed off Snoke in the second film, so they had to bring back a big villian in the third film so that Kylo Ren/Ben could redeem himself. I'm not sure this was necessary - there were other things, more interesting and surprising things they could have done instead.
Also, I kind of liked the fact that Rey was not the descendant of anyone in particular. An outsider. At the time I saw Jedi, I was admittedly disappointed she wasn't Luke's daughter. But now, I think it works better if she's just Rey. This felt a bit ret-conned. And I found myself rolling my eyes at Palpatine's screen-chewing villainy. Palpatine was never an interesting character in my opinion - he seemed kind of cliche. I liked Vader better - Vader had complexity. Kylo Ren, was too whiny and built well. I never understood why he turned to the dark side. And there was ample opportunity to explain it.
That was my problem with all the films. Force Awakens sets up two back story mysteries: 1) What happened to turn Ben Solo into Kylo Ren, send Luke off to the ends of the galaxy, and break up Leia/Han? and 2) What is the meaning behind Rey's vision - which appears to happen at the same time as Ben's turn to the dark side. And why was the Millenium Falcon abandoned on Tatooni?
We're kind of told, but not really told at the same time. Also they kind of retcon it, which makes it confusing. Last Jedi tells the story one way, then Rise retcons it and tells it another. This annoyed me, because it was so well set up and teased in Force. But Abrahms didn't have a plot outline for all three films or even a plan apparently. He just handed it over to Johnson to do with it what he will, then took it back and did his thing. The films all together, as a result of this, feel a bit like one of those choose your own ending books? Or that old game where one person starts a story, hands it to the next, and then the next? Or a collaborative fanfic with no leader or show-runner. (I wrote a collaborative fanfic once and that's exactly what happened. Not everyone was on board with the plot, so people kept changing the things the previous writer wrote that they disliked. I kept trying to fix the discrepancies and keep everyone happy. It was like herding a bunch of cats. I will not do it again.)
Last Jedi explains that Luke took on more than he could chew with Ben Solo and lost him to the Sith. Ben went rogue and killed everyone in the school and took off with the First Order. Distraught and overwhelmed with guilt - Luke takes off for parts unknown and burns the books of the Jedi. Leia and Han had apparently argued over what Luke was doing, and the loss of their son drove a wedge between them - with Han leaving and Leia resuming the fight. Rey's role in all this is unclear, as is her connection to these events. Jedi hints that she wasn't involved much at all. Her parents were smugglers, she got dropped off on Tatoonie around the same time all of this happened, and was abandoned there when they were killed.
Rise for the most part keeps the Ben Solo story intact, except Luke didn't burn the books or Rey somehow saved them. What Rise adds is that instead of just being the child of random smugglers, who coincidentally left her on Tatoonie around the same time Luke's school fell apart - she's actually Palpatine's granddaughter and was left there for her own protection. I guess it does actually work - Jedi is vague enough about it, for it to work.
It just wasn't that satisfying.
* Poe and Finn kind of get lost in the series. Poe's character arc doesn't make a lot of sense. Partly because he doesn't get enough screen time or development. We have too many characters - and that's part of the problem. Finn gets a bit more than Poe - but in this film he's kind of relegated to Rey's sidekick, with a crush on Rey - which I thought had kind of gone away a bit in Jedi. Finn's arc got a bit lost after Force Awakens, where it was in far more prominence. Force did a better job with all three characters than the latter movies, mainly because it had less characters to keep track of.
They do explain Poe a bit more than they had in Jedi.
* There are some interesting new faces, who would have been more interesting if they'd gotten a bit more screen time. Keri Russell's Zora who is a previous love of Poe's, and Lupito's former Stormtrooper that bonds with Finn. Rose is kind of put on the back burner, while she'd taken center stage in Jedi.
* Leia got a lot of screen time, but doesn't say or do much, mainly because Fisher is dead and they had to use all sorts of tricks to get around it. I will admit that her final scene with both Ben and Rey was a tad moving. But clearly they had to bring back Harrison Ford to have the final scene with Ben, but it would be harder to do it with Fisher. (I don't know what the original plan had been - except that this was supposed to have been Fisher's film.)
I did like the last scene between Han and Ben, which had some nice parallels to Luke and Vader, or even Ben Kenobi and Anakin.
* The Palpatine plot felt a bit silly. As did Kylo Ren (Ben) and Rey's final confrontation with him. I preferred Jedi's confrontation scenes. Also the fight sequences in Jedi were better filmed.
Overall a mixed bag. It felt very much like an amusement ride of a movie. But there were some good moments here and there and overall, it was easier to follow than the previous effort from a plot perspective, if not as well done in regards to fight sequences and isolated character moments. Jedi was better on a character and thematic level, Rise better on a plot and overall action level.
Anyhow, Rise of Skywalker wasn't quite as bad as I expected. I kind of enjoyed it actually. It was for the most part, a fun, thoughtless, fluffy fast-action piece of entertainment. The kind of thing you lose yourself in for a bit and forget later. (In short the perfect distraction for well anyone who feels like they are stuck in the psychological horror flick from a mundane hell.) So, as a result,it held my attention. (I had a lot of fun snarking at it, and rolling my eyes at various parts.) Being spoiled for most if not all of the plot points, most likely helped. (I knew who Rey was for example.) Also the fact that I came in with VERY low expectations mainly because practically everyone on my correspondence list that saw it - either disliked it a great deal or were ambivalent. My co-workers kind of enjoyed it, except for Chidi who prefered Last Jedi.
If you want a fun action movie, with lots and lots of action, a simple plot structure, some banter, and lovely special effects and visuals - this is your movie.
It does help if you've seen the other movies -- otherwise I think you'd be lost. This is NOT a stand-a-lone flick. It also helps if you weren't heavily invested in the thematic scope of Last Jedi and the side characters Last Jedi developed or in love with that movie.
I sort of fall in the middle regarding Rise, in that I enjoyed it for what it was - a JJ Abrahms film. From a critical angle? It's not a very good movie. The plot doesn't quite track from Last Jedi. Although to be fair, Last Jedi doesn't quite track from Force Awakens either. There are moments in it that are played as high drama, but are well, just plain silly. I rolled my eyes or grinned at the cheesiness. It was weirdly comforting.
The special effects are uneven - mainly due to the fact that they made the decision to intersperse Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia throughout the film, in some shots, it looked like Carrie, in others it looked like a CJI version of Carrie and felt off somehow. This kind of skewed the effects. At various points, I got thrown out of the story by the feeling of looking at obvious CGI. Try as we might - it's still not quite possible to digitize a human in a way that looks real to the naked eye. But I was expecting this - from various reviews that I'd read, so it came as no great surprise.
Before going into spoilers, I'll state this - I agree with rosegriffiths, who stated in her review of the film, that Rise kind of has some of the same problems as Last Jedi but in another way. Where Jedi had something new to say, Rise kind of repeats what was already said in the first trilogy of films (and better said in those films for that matter). Where Jedi's plot was overly busy and at times difficult to follow because its doing too much at the same time, Rise's is almost too simple and difficult to follow - because it doesn't quite track with what came before, and it like Jedi kind of loses the characters in the mix. But, I kind of cared more about the characters in Jedi than in Rise, which felt sort of rushed, while Jedi had better and more isolated character moments. In this way the two films sort of remind me of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Empire did a better job of getting across the character moments, while Return was a bit too focused on wrapping up the plot and I kind of lost the characters in the mix (also Return like Rise was a bit too silly in places for words.)
* As previously stated, the plot doesn't quite track. Rey being a Palpatine didn't work for me. Mainly because I saw all the films and it was pretty clear Palpatine did not have offspring. Also, it felt contrived. Rian Johnson killed off Snoke in the second film, so they had to bring back a big villian in the third film so that Kylo Ren/Ben could redeem himself. I'm not sure this was necessary - there were other things, more interesting and surprising things they could have done instead.
Also, I kind of liked the fact that Rey was not the descendant of anyone in particular. An outsider. At the time I saw Jedi, I was admittedly disappointed she wasn't Luke's daughter. But now, I think it works better if she's just Rey. This felt a bit ret-conned. And I found myself rolling my eyes at Palpatine's screen-chewing villainy. Palpatine was never an interesting character in my opinion - he seemed kind of cliche. I liked Vader better - Vader had complexity. Kylo Ren, was too whiny and built well. I never understood why he turned to the dark side. And there was ample opportunity to explain it.
That was my problem with all the films. Force Awakens sets up two back story mysteries: 1) What happened to turn Ben Solo into Kylo Ren, send Luke off to the ends of the galaxy, and break up Leia/Han? and 2) What is the meaning behind Rey's vision - which appears to happen at the same time as Ben's turn to the dark side. And why was the Millenium Falcon abandoned on Tatooni?
We're kind of told, but not really told at the same time. Also they kind of retcon it, which makes it confusing. Last Jedi tells the story one way, then Rise retcons it and tells it another. This annoyed me, because it was so well set up and teased in Force. But Abrahms didn't have a plot outline for all three films or even a plan apparently. He just handed it over to Johnson to do with it what he will, then took it back and did his thing. The films all together, as a result of this, feel a bit like one of those choose your own ending books? Or that old game where one person starts a story, hands it to the next, and then the next? Or a collaborative fanfic with no leader or show-runner. (I wrote a collaborative fanfic once and that's exactly what happened. Not everyone was on board with the plot, so people kept changing the things the previous writer wrote that they disliked. I kept trying to fix the discrepancies and keep everyone happy. It was like herding a bunch of cats. I will not do it again.)
Last Jedi explains that Luke took on more than he could chew with Ben Solo and lost him to the Sith. Ben went rogue and killed everyone in the school and took off with the First Order. Distraught and overwhelmed with guilt - Luke takes off for parts unknown and burns the books of the Jedi. Leia and Han had apparently argued over what Luke was doing, and the loss of their son drove a wedge between them - with Han leaving and Leia resuming the fight. Rey's role in all this is unclear, as is her connection to these events. Jedi hints that she wasn't involved much at all. Her parents were smugglers, she got dropped off on Tatoonie around the same time all of this happened, and was abandoned there when they were killed.
Rise for the most part keeps the Ben Solo story intact, except Luke didn't burn the books or Rey somehow saved them. What Rise adds is that instead of just being the child of random smugglers, who coincidentally left her on Tatoonie around the same time Luke's school fell apart - she's actually Palpatine's granddaughter and was left there for her own protection. I guess it does actually work - Jedi is vague enough about it, for it to work.
It just wasn't that satisfying.
* Poe and Finn kind of get lost in the series. Poe's character arc doesn't make a lot of sense. Partly because he doesn't get enough screen time or development. We have too many characters - and that's part of the problem. Finn gets a bit more than Poe - but in this film he's kind of relegated to Rey's sidekick, with a crush on Rey - which I thought had kind of gone away a bit in Jedi. Finn's arc got a bit lost after Force Awakens, where it was in far more prominence. Force did a better job with all three characters than the latter movies, mainly because it had less characters to keep track of.
They do explain Poe a bit more than they had in Jedi.
* There are some interesting new faces, who would have been more interesting if they'd gotten a bit more screen time. Keri Russell's Zora who is a previous love of Poe's, and Lupito's former Stormtrooper that bonds with Finn. Rose is kind of put on the back burner, while she'd taken center stage in Jedi.
* Leia got a lot of screen time, but doesn't say or do much, mainly because Fisher is dead and they had to use all sorts of tricks to get around it. I will admit that her final scene with both Ben and Rey was a tad moving. But clearly they had to bring back Harrison Ford to have the final scene with Ben, but it would be harder to do it with Fisher. (I don't know what the original plan had been - except that this was supposed to have been Fisher's film.)
I did like the last scene between Han and Ben, which had some nice parallels to Luke and Vader, or even Ben Kenobi and Anakin.
* The Palpatine plot felt a bit silly. As did Kylo Ren (Ben) and Rey's final confrontation with him. I preferred Jedi's confrontation scenes. Also the fight sequences in Jedi were better filmed.
Overall a mixed bag. It felt very much like an amusement ride of a movie. But there were some good moments here and there and overall, it was easier to follow than the previous effort from a plot perspective, if not as well done in regards to fight sequences and isolated character moments. Jedi was better on a character and thematic level, Rise better on a plot and overall action level.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-06 09:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-06 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-09 01:30 am (UTC)Of course, if they wanted us to have a clear sense of where that whole idea was going, they would have put it in the final version of the film, rather than having various LucasFilm people saying what it could mean. *sigh*
This was definitely a better movie if you were spoiled silly for its contents. Easier to enjoy the good bits and easier to look past the bad bits.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-09 02:01 am (UTC)But it didn't bother me as much as it would have - if I'd seen it in the theater. Also you warned me about it way ahead of time - so I was able to deal with it.
It's as if all the writer's really cared about was Ben Solo's arc, and Rey's in support of that. Rey becomes sort of Mary Sue in a way - she is too powerful. SuperJedi. It's almost laughable in places. I mean, now Jedi's can heal? I found it touching, but also silly.
That's the main problem with the films - too much emphasis on Kylo Ren/Ben Solo without enough of his back story. It was the same problem they had with the Anakin Skywalker arc - too much emphasis on Anakin, without enough development to make me care about Anakin. I will say this much for Kylo Ren - Driver is a better actor than Hayden Christian, and JJ Abrahms a slightly better director than Lucas.
But, you don't want to put that much focus on the villain. The reason the original triology worked is the villain was more in the background, a threatening, mysterious menace, that we got glimspes of. While the focus was on Han, Leia, and Luke. This trilogy makes the same mistake the Phantom Menace trilogy did - it puts the focus on the villain and Palpatine.
I'd have developed Poe, Finn, and Rey more and pushed Kylo Ren et al to the background.
That said, it is a better trilogy than Phantom Menace, but nowhere near as well done as the original films, and it won't take off in the fandom like the originals did. In fact I think it kind of alienated a lot of the fans, and split the fandom.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-10 08:44 pm (UTC)I would agree. Ironic that Abrams tried so hard to copy what worked in the original trilogy, but ended up with something that copies mistakes from the prequels.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-10 10:55 pm (UTC)It's all about the writing. Also, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher ghost wrote most of their own dialogue and scenes in Star Wars, Empire and Jedi, which also made a huge difference. Ford once quipped to George that "people don't talk like this George" and Fisher agreed.
Neither George nor Abrhams are really writers - they get more interested in the directorial thrill-ride and special effects. Rian Johnson isn't that great a writer either - but he is better than George and Abrahams. And Kasadan is primarily a screenwriter - Silverado, Big Chill, Star Wars, Empire...
It's very hard to save a movie from bad writing. Oh? CATS has come available on "On Demand" - I'm flirting with it. Except that I've never been overly fond of the original musical, so maybe not.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-11 02:22 am (UTC)Kasdan's best work was in the past, but if they had gotten him as a writer for the whole sequel trilogy, I think it would have been for the best. He may not have wanted to do it, however; I know that the rumor mill says that one reason Rian Johnson made The Last Jedi is simply that too many writers knew the risks of jumping into a partially completed trilogy that didn't have a plan... so they said no.
CATS the movie will certainly be a train wreck. If you think you would enjoy that, go for it. Plenty of people have, uh, found the experience to be unique. Heh.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-11 02:39 pm (UTC)But if he'd done all three - it would have been less sloppy.
however; I know that the rumor mill says that one reason Rian Johnson made The Last Jedi is simply that too many writers knew the risks of jumping into a partially completed trilogy that didn't have a plan... so they said no.
That's kind of what happened with the prequels. George Lucas tried to get his friends to direct and/or help write it - and they all said no.
I don't know if I want to see a train wreck of a movie or not...I'm on the fence. CGI tends to annoy though. So maybe not.