Let's get the easy stuff out of
the way. As most of you that read my reviews already know, I am a die-hard Star
Wars fan. I read the books, I watch the shows, read the comics, watch talk
shows about Star Wars. You could say I'm into it a bit. Also, let's get this
out of the way: I love (yes current tense) The Last Jedi.
Ok, so now that I've already
got you angry and yelling at me for my opinion, let's continue to make you mad.
Last night I went to view Star Wars 9: Rise of Skywalker. I came out
very...unsure of my feelings. I have never been privy to simultaneously some of
the greatest Star Wars I have ever witnessed, and some of the absolute largest
pile of garbage that might exist in any medium. Let's start with the positives.
Finally, a "Skywalker
Saga" film acknowledged, accepted and embraced many parts of the lore
canon created in books, comics and games. Many, many times there was moments
that I was giddy with the "Oh my god! I can't believe they included that!"
times. It made me genuinely feel vindicated for reading a lot of the other
source material available. Finally, I felt like when they (Lucasfilm) said back
in 2014 that (paraphrasing), "Everything made from here on out matters. It
all connects." Unfortunately, there have only been a select number of
times in the recent franchise movie history that this was actually true. The TV
shows, comics and books always seem to connect well to the movies and to each
other, but the movies tend to act like the rest don't exist. So for that, thank
you so much J.J.
The battle scenes we
excellently planned out and executed. Very reminiscent to battles within Return
of The Jedi or Revenge of the Sith. Could they have been better? Yes.
Everything has room for growth and expansion, but overall, well done, to an
end. We'll get there.
We have the return to light
saber battles! Admittedly, I've been missing the sabre battles in the last two
episodically movies. They return with a vengeance, but, like most of the things
I will talk about here, they falter. Although we get the fight scenes we've
wanted since Episode 7, they are very underwhelming versus what we have become
accustomed to with Episodes one through three. Even the Vader versus Luke fight
in Return of the Jedi held more weight to me, and here begins the issues with
the movie.
To me, this movie had no heart,
no soul, and no roots to call its own. This movie seemed to be devised
specifically to appease the Last Jedi haters. Time, and time, and time again a
scene, character or something pops up and almost literally says, "HI!
Remember me? I'm still here! I'm cool! This is what you wanted right?” Wrong.
Not all of us just wanted to see Luke. Not all of us wanted the story to be as
predictable as it was useless to the overall saga. Things happen in the movie
that was telegraphed all the way back in 2015 with The Force Awakens, and not
small things. Basically, the movie was telegraphed. There certainly was an
"EMERGENCY BREAK GLASS" feel to the movie throughout its entirety.
For all the moments that were unique, new, special and awesome, there were
easily two moments of "remember this", "oh yeah here's
this", "this was obvious, wasn't it? Like you knew we were going here
right?", and "yeah, we ran out of ideas along the way".
One of the greatest strengths
and weaknesses this film has is reuniting the trio of Rey, Poe and Finn. As
awesome as it was to see the three together again (Kinda' for the first time
really), it felt extremely forced in most scenes. Finn spends most of the time
looking around for Rey like his misplaced car keys, while Poe can't seem to
figure out whether he should be in charge or not, and Rey wants to do her own
thing, but continually sets herself back to stay with the group. In The Last
Jedi, we saw the character arcs of Poe, Finn and Rey go forward; they all grew
within the movie to be strong in their own rights. In ROS, They backpedal a
bit to reinforce each other, but not stand out individually anymore. I'm sure
that will work for some fans, and obviously, this was an attempt to build them
up to be similar to the original three (Luke, Leia and Han), but for me, it
fell flat usually. It was nice to see that over the years between TLJ and ROS,
the trio grew closer together as friends, and that did come across generically.
Let's talk a minute about the
uselessness of Kylo Ren and the Knights of Ren in this movie. I'm not really
sure why either is in it. The Knights of Ren did not do anything I expected them too and had little to do plot-wise.
Kylo Ren's arc from TLJ falls flat almost immediately in the movie, and the
best part, his character doesn't seem to mind at all. I know if it were me, I
would.
This movie also didn't explain
why some of the things were happening very well, sometimes not even at all. As
an avid fan, that bothers me. I went to see it with my girlfriend who likes
Star Wars, but is admittedly a general fan, and even she came out scratching
her head about a lot of things.
This movie had so, so much
potential and opportunity to reunite the Star Wars fandom, but unfortunately,
apparently, the story isn't as important to the Star Wars community as seeing
someone move something with the force, or killing someone with a lightsaber.
Disney likes to make money. So if that's what the fans say they want to see,
far be it from them to not do it. For me though, this movie just fell so far
down in so many ways. I haven't been angry about a movie in a long time, and I
was last night. Say what you want about TLJ, but it took chances. It was bold.
It may not have given you the answers you wanted, but as a film, it didn't need
to either.
ROS will undoubtedly do well in the box office, and initially, I'm
sure it'll do well with fans. However, I feel like when we look back on it five
years from now, people won't remember this movie as a masterpiece, as much as
a commercial to see Disney products. I agree that a portion the Star Wars fandom
needed some emotional stroking after TLJ, but ROS pets you on the head until it
goes into the scalp.
Overall score: 5 out of 10 stars
Pros:
- Lots of connective tissue to
other Star Wars content
- The humour is good, and almost
spot-on for a Star Wars movie
- The action scenes are
extremely well done
- The score is absolutely
amazingly conducted and placed
Cons:
- Character developments made in TLJ are basically ignored
- There are many, many things
done without reasoning
- Many scenes are jarringly cut
or spliced together
- Way, way, way too much fan
service
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