32 thoughts on “The Rise of Skywalker – Spoilers Welcome

  1. I caught that kiss and the camera stayed on them for five seconds max. ?

    As for the rest, I was surprisingly satisfied. It was very much in the space opera tradition, so I guess the critics were disappointed that Rise wasn’t Godfather-level quality or didn’t experiment with tropes the way Last Jedi did. But we did have cosmic good versus evil, hopeless love, overcoming superior forces with pure gumption, and so on. I give it a solid B.

  2. The background crowd scene same-sex kiss was so easy to miss and so isolated in its imagery that it’s almost more offensive to me than nothing. (And what does anyone bet that the scene will be carefully edited out of versions of the movie marketed in Certain Countries?)

    But even more offensive to me was the Rey/Kylo kiss. (I actually groaned when it appeared.) Because that relationship was far more interesting as an “unwanted psychic bond between enemies who understand each other” than as anything that could resolve into a romantic gesture. How much more of a vague attempt at redemption would it have been if Kylo had given his life (force) to do the healing without any conventional “reward”?

    But that’s not what I’m hear to talk about. I’m here to talk about What Happens Next? Not in the movie series, but in the in-story timeline. Here’s what I posted in rot13 on another thread before I was aware this one existed:

    Maybe it’s just the present political climate, but the joyous celebratory conclusion had me thinking: so what happens next? How do you take a completely devastated interstellar civilization and rebuild not only the economy and infrastructure, but a form of governance that will not either produce or be vulnerable to the next Star Dictator who comes along? How do you do that with a band of leaders who have spent their entire lives as part of a semi-anarchic and yet hierarchical military force? Where do you get your models from? Your norms?

    And that’s apart from the glaring question of how the economics, demographics, and logistics of the Final Order actually worked in the first place.

  3. As I responded over there in ROT13, I have come to the conclusion that the Star Wars universe is an awful place, which was awful for all but a tiny minority during the Old Republic or at least the part thereof that we saw on screen, then got even more awful under the Empire, did not markedly improve during the New Republic, as seen in The Force Awakens and The Mandalorian, and then got worse again when the First/Final Order took out the New Republic. Somehow I sincerely doubt that things will improve for good now, cossidering that this is a universe which has not had a functioning democracy in more than fifty years. And indeed I suspect that in ten or fifteen years, we will see a new generation of brave rebels led by the survivors of the old rise up to defeat a new autocratic system. In short, the Star Wars universe is permanently screwed. Which is a pity, because it is inhabited by some wonderful people, which is why we keep watching these movies.

  4. What irritated me in the last movie were all this new introductions of the force with absolutely no explanation or thoughts about the implications. Suddenly Han Solo appeared as a ghost. Items could be teleported across the universe without any effort, one jedi was all jedi for no obvious reason, Palpatine was cloned or not or who the heck know how he appeared. He seemed to be able to keep an enormous amount of zombies on an ice planet. Where did they come from? A few items had been ok, but together it was too much.

    Not really interested in What Happens Next as I saw this movie to get some kind of ending of this storyline so I can ignore Star Wars from here on. The movies have been a bit to manipulative for me, the nostalgia works when I see it, but then I get irritated afterwards.

  5. It’s possible that Han appears as a Force ghot, because he always was Force sensitive and just flew under the Jedi’s and Sith’s radar due to growing up as a street kid during the end of the Old Republic/beginning of the Empire. After all, Han is an excellent pilot and has extremely fast reflexes, something that often is an indicator for Force sensitivity in the Star Wars universe. He even briefly handles Luke’s lightsaber in The Empire Strikes Back, at a time when we’ve never seen anybody who was not Force sensitive handle one. Though it’s still a mystery how he managed to appear as a Force ghost, something that only trained Jedi (and high ranking Jedi at that – after all, there are many Jedi who never became Force ghosts) are able to do.

  6. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it possible moment. Was that an out of costume Anthony Daniels as one of the pilots towards the end of the battle?

  7. @Heather Rose Jones

    And what does anyone bet that the scene will be carefully edited out of versions of the movie marketed in Certain Countries?

    Apparently, it is censored in Dubai but remains in Chinese screeings.

  8. I thought it was clear that Han was there purely in Kylo/Ben’s imagination and that Ben/Kylo was well aware of that. Not only did Not Han not look like a Force ghost, but didn’t he even say something along the lines of “I’m just your memory”?

    I completely did not notice the Token Girl-Girl Background Kiss. I was tempted, when Finn and Poe met at the end, to yell “kiss him, you fool!” at the screen.

  9. Memories having dialogues as if they were ghosts is even more stupid, so I can’t accept that statement from the movie. It just makes it even more of a mess.

  10. I just went to see this last night —

    Personally, I thought it did well enough as a wrap-up. Was it classic cinema? No — but heck, it was worlds better than the prequels, so I don’t think there’s all that much cause for complaint.

    Yes, there was plenty of cause for eye-rolling at various ludicrous plot elements. No surprise there. Yes, I was annoyed at the blink-and-you-miss-it kiss. Yes, I was irritated that after all the will-they-or-won’t-they rumor mongering about Poe and Finn, they gave both Poe and Finn such obvious potential opposite-sex romantic partners — and that they carefully paired Poe off with a white woman and Finn with a black woman (can’t have any icky miscegenation, after all!).

    I did not mind the Kylo/Rey kiss. It was a classic doomed-romance-tragedy redemption. Kylo-Ben could never have redeemed himself enough to justify the two of them being together, and both of them knew it.

    Oh, and they completely wasted Kelly Marie Tran, which was a shame.

    On the good side — good action, good swordfights, plenty of touching if sometimes stepped-on emotional beats. They certainly did try to pack a lot into their allotted time; I agree with whichever reviewer said that the movie could have benefitted from being longer!

  11. I thought Poe, Finn and Rey made a wonderful open minded poly-couple together. Such is my head-canon.

  12. @Hampus —

    I thought Poe, Finn and Rey made a wonderful open minded poly-couple together. Such is my head-canon.

    Ha — I was thinking the same thing when they shared that hug!

  13. I took Han to be from inside Kylo Ren’s head rather than a force ghost. The objects shifting between Rey and Ren is unexplained (aside from the vague dyad assertion) but heck, it’s magic and was done well. I was more annoyed by the new star destroyers having a new planet exploding weapon – it added nothing.

  14. Finally saw it (delayed for reasons). I didn’t mind Han being inside Ben’s head as that’s an idea that shows up elsewhere, but I was surprised by the steep improvement in power technology: busting a human-habitable planet took a 10-miles-across sphere in SW IV but now a standard star destroyer packs enough power to do that (perhaps not quite as spectacularly, but that wasn’t just a hole borer or it wouldn’t have caused a blowout 90 degrees away from where it went in). The mind-to-mind bond turning into a space warp for material objects (and light-saber beams) was also more magic than I could swallow. It felt like they were trying too hard to top everything they’d done before, and let the plot go hang.

    And I agree with Heather and Cora about the galaxy being screwed; apparently it’s possible to rope so many economies into a tyranny that a fleet that size can be built in trivial time, so why won’t somebody else do it in another couple of decades?

  15. And while we’re at it, who was the woman with the Darth ?Sidious? — style pair/quarterstaff lightsabers that Rey runs into in the Death Star wreckage? Is Rey hallucinating her own defeat?

  16. @Chip —

    And while we’re at it, who was the woman with the Darth ?Sidious? — style pair/quarterstaff lightsabers that Rey runs into in the Death Star wreckage? Is Rey hallucinating her own defeat?

    That was Rey battling her evil side, like Luke fought his in whichever-the-hell movie that was. (Yeah, I’m not a total Star Wars geek, so shoot me. 😉 )

  17. Chip Hitchcock on December 26, 2019 at 3:45 pm said:
    apparently it’s possible to rope so many economies into a tyranny that a fleet that size can be built in trivial time, so why won’t somebody else do it in another couple of decades?

    Palpatine had a very long time as Emperor to squirrel away resources on Exogol (which is so nearly an anagram of google that it irritates me)

  18. OK, now that I’ve seen this film I agree with Contrarius that it was OK and got the job done and was better than episodes 1-3 and the last third of RETURN OF THE JEDI but not up to STAR WARS or THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

    My question: did I see people fighting on the deck of a starship in space (and horses!) without spacesuits? How did they breathe?

  19. Also, it is canon that Palpatine sent many expeditions into the Unknown Regions with little result. Gee, I wonder where they went?

  20. Martin Wooster on December 26, 2019 at 6:14 pm said:

    My question: did I see people fighting on the deck of a starship in space (and horses!) without spacesuits? How did they breathe?

    The ships were in the atmosphere. The aim was to destroy them before they got into orbit.

  21. Speaking of the hairy horses — I hated those! All these marvelous muppet and CGI critters, and then they had to break out horses in yeti suits???

  22. @Contrarius

    and that they carefully paired Poe off with a white woman and Finn with a black woman (can’t have any icky miscegenation, after all!).

    Most people pick romantic partners of their own race. That Poe and Finn were paired with women who were like them isn’t necessarily a result of the writers making some point about miscegenation.

  23. @bill
    In the Star Wars universe, there have been implied relationships between people of different species and – at least in the case of Lando and his droid co-pilot from Solo – humans and droids, so humans in the Star Wars universe adhering to US-norms about interracial dating is a little odd.

    Not that I mind Poe/Zorri and Finn/Janna. Though I do find it a bit disappointing that a trilogy which had romantic sparks flying literally in all directions (I just rewatched The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi and there are so many romantic possibilities between so many characters teased there) ends with longing looks, a kiss before dying and a three-way hug.

  24. @bill —

    Most people pick romantic partners of their own race. That Poe and Finn were paired with women who were like them isn’t necessarily a result of the writers making some point about miscegenation.

    Oh please, Bill, I’m really not in the mood for straw men. I never said a word about the writers consciously making any points about anything.

    And what Cora said.

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