Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker - Reviews & Discussion

[ctg]

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I enjoyed it lots. And Han was in it! I had no advance idea and was delighted.

 

[ctg]

The Original Star Wars IX Script Has Allegedly Leaked. And It's Much Better Than 'The Rise of Skywalker.'

Read Colin Trevorrow's vision for the finale of the saga, which is far more coherent than the movie J.J. Abrams made.

www.esquire.com

 

[Parson]

@ctg .... Interesting "leak." It sounds good but I don't think it's necessarily any better than the one that came down the pike. It sounds like something the hard core Star Wars fanatics would have loved, but the general public likely not as much.

 

[ctg]

It sounds good but I don't think it's necessarily any better than the one that came down the pike. It sounds like something the hard core Star Wars fanatics would have loved, but the general public likely not as much.

Maybe. I felt that the article writer was biased and frankly, we don't know the whole story. They have not talked about the other scripts, but it's evident again in the film that there has been a lot of material that ended up on cutting room floor. That is same in the previous films as well, because it feels that there should have been more, but there wasn't, because it was too much. Maybe that is Star Wars problem?

It creates so much images, so many fantasy in the SW universe with every iteration that it makes me wonder how far Disney can control on what's canon, and how the story continues to evolve?

As a long time SW geek, it's hard for me to go back and see what's really general audience, when SW is one of the most known products. Everyone has their own ideas, feelings and opinions. What they don't know is the deep knowledge. The stuff that has been produced but not seen by everyone. It is going to be even greater divide, because not everyone can see Mandalorian or other stuff. The animated Clone Wars is still a bit of mystery for the most.

So, you see, it comes to this question about what it could have been if had not been this? The geeks want to know and they are going to argue about it for a long, long time.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Well I for one prefer the film to that version. The only thing that strikes me as better is Rose Tico getting her own storyline as opposed to her redundant role in TROS (I find it deplorable that the hate she got in TLS apparently influenced the production of this movie - or rather toxic fanboy misogyny influenced it). Why we needed a hobbit and a possible love interest for Finn because they bottled on the gay inference is beyond me.

CTG is right; for those who don’t watch Rebels or CW and so on some things might be a mystery to them in the latest instalments.

I think the fan base need to realise Star Wars is now transmedia not just movies.

pH

 

[Parson]

(I find it deplorable that the hate she got in TLS apparently influenced the production of this movie - or rather toxic fanboy misogyny influenced it).

I totally agree that it was deplorable. I'm such a bystander I had not even heard of this until it came up earlier in this thread? (or at least lately on Chrons) I don't know that you can make the one to one analogy though, because one of the truths about TROS is that it seemed really crammed full of things; and PERHAPS giving Rose a scene seemed too much? At any rate I loved Rose in The Last Jedi. I think because she seemed so utterly believable as a relative nobody who plays an important role.

 

[Star-child]

(I find it deplorable that the hate she got in TLS apparently influenced the production of this movie - or rather toxic fanboy misogyny influenced it).

I did not like what happened to the actress, but I have to wonder if the nasty boys were just voicing what many people thought: This is a silly little character.

Which actually puts Rose in good company with the equally useless and absurd Poe and Finn. The three together are like Jar Jar's Angels. A real demonstration of just how little any of the modern filmmakers understood the power of the original story - Rey being an exception.

I think the fan base need to realise Star Wars is now transmedia not just movies.

This is probably a question like "what is fantasy?" because Star Wars is either every novel, toy, cartoon, comic, movie, public service message and Muppet Show guest appearance - or it is a handful of films (whichever ones the fan wants to accept as 'genuine'). The willingness to toss out "canon" means there isn't any, really. (Schrodinger's Greedo - depending on when you observe Greedo he is either a victim or an aggressor.) Disney could remake I-III and it would be like how the Wookie Holiday Special ceased to exist.

I would be happy to only retain two and a half films worth as the real Star Wars.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I always i feel : How sad to be so upset about something that comes from your own expectations of someone else’s creative vison.

I was six when I saw Star Wars. I recognise my expectations as a 47 year old are different.

And I love jar jar

 

[Star-child]

I always i feel : How sad to be so upset about something that comes from your own expectations of someone else’s creative vison.

I'm not upset, and I doubt the motivation for horrible trolling is disappointment but some sort of power/group loyalty thing. Those people are living in a virtual Lord of the Flies environment.

 

[Phyrebrat]

(Just to be clear, @Star-child I wasn’t aiming that comment about upset fanboys at you)

No spoilers, but... the reveal at the end of The Manadalorian will be lost on those who haven’t seen the Clone Wars or Rebels animations, and the Easter egg in Rogue 1. Compréhension of the narrative will be unaffected but so much of Star Wars has enjoyment values predicated on Easter eggs, I think it’d be a shame to miss out.

Whilst I’m a great defender of the prequel and sequel trilogies, Etc, I must be honest and say I found the Resistance animation dreadful, not least because the ‘Jar Jar’ character’s humour is clearly based on Asperger’s behaviour which is grossly offensive.

pH

 

[Parson]

As someone who is not steeped in anything but the original movies (and most of those I only saw once before this past month) I had no idea about the reveal at the end of The Mandalorian (until @ctg pointed it out to me). I had to look up what "Easter Eggs" are, but yes I had picked up on a number of these especially after I rewatched Rogue 1. All of those things are/were lost to me, but it did not stop me from enjoying the movies.

Related:

I just finished watching all 9 of the Star Wars movies and Rogue 1 (I belong to Disney+) and I was really surprised to discover that when I watched in narrative order (as opposed to the order of the release) that the first 3 hold up a lot better than I remembered. I think I was watching them originally trying to see how they would lead up to my beloved "Star Wars" of 1978, rather than looking at them as movies in their own right. Sadly, the original "Star Wars" wasn't as wonderful as I remembered. obviously the special FX looked really poor (unlike what they looked like to a person whose only experience to FX was pre-1978) and the plot was much more prosaic than I'd remembered. (As I give that a think .... It's probably because in my opinion, movie making at the time was dominated with weird counter-cultural and/or drug induced psychedelic craziness, and here was a story that I could understand, relate to, and cheer.)

I'm now working through some of the animated Star Wars material. Opinion so far: Juvenal but not bad.

 

[Star-child]

I am coming to despise Easter eggs and origin stories. Nostalgia is the lowest form of sequel.

 

[IAmTR]

@ctg .... Interesting "leak." It sounds good but I don't think it's necessarily any better than the one that came down the pike. It sounds like something the hard core Star Wars fanatics would have loved, but the general public likely not as much.

I consider myself a "hard core Star Wars fanatic" and I for one would have had my blood boil at the Tor Valum part. If they introduce Palpatine's master as anyone but Darth Plagueis/Hego Damask, in the new canon I'll just be done with Star Wars forever.

 

[KGeo777]

The term "rotten tomatoes" comes from the old theater tradition of the audience members in the lowest economic class (the groundlings) tossing rotten vegetables at the stage if they didn't like something about it. It is rough but it is democratic.
The Rose Tico criticism is just rotten tomatoes in the 21st century.
They put a performer or character with limited target audience appeal (aka lack of merit) into a ridiculously-advertised mass-media product--couple that with technology-the internet--where one can express an opinion relatively easily and anonymously--and you can do the math.
If only 1% of people who saw the mass-market film really disliked the character-and had easy access to her contact information to express their view--even 100 people contacting her to express their displeasure, would be enormously demoralizing. It was probably many more than 100. And she probably had much less enthusiastic fans to counter the negative.

It's unfortunate but predictable. Disney's managers selected a director who idolizes Woody Allen to make a Flash Gordon-inspired escapist adventure film--it is just not logical. It will alienate--Mark Hamill knew this. He warned them.
Disney co. can't accept criticism-so they have to blame the audience.

While no doubt there are people who are obsessive about media products (something encouraged by Disney and the other media companies it must be pointed out--as they shrink the available alternatives for entertainment), they are a tiny number. People cannot be forced to like entertainment that they find to be poorly made or too alien to register with them.

I remember the studio behind the Transformers franchise advertised one of the films--the third-with the slogan "It ain't Shakespeare."
They chose to attack the audience for suggesting the films were poorly made and written--once again, the studio hired a pair of writers (Orci and Kurtzman) who said their dream was to make Waiting for Godot style films. Why were they doing fantasy then?
And Shakespeare story elements were salt of the earth--he wasn't seeking to be pretentious or elitist, so it was a dumb defense strategy--only showing ignorance of art and literary history.

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

The Rose Tico criticism is just rotten tomatoes in the 21st century.

The reasoned, argumented criticism referring to the poor writing skills of Rian Johnson might well be the rotten tomatoes of the 21st century. The trolling that called the performer out for being an Asian woman and threw a ton of abuse at her for her physical appearance has nothing to do with the tradition of rotten tomatoes and everything to do with blind stupidity and hate.

once again, the studio hired a pair of writers (Orci and Kurtzman) who said their dream was to make Waiting for Godot style films. Why were they doing fantasy then?

Because they were offered a big tentpole blockbuster that would generate tons of money and allow them to then pitch a more personal, Waiting for Godot-style project. Hollywood and more generally the entire film industry at large is filled with people who want to write, direct, produce smaller, more high-brow films but who are all ready to jump on the first Ninja Turtles, Marvel, Transformers bone that gets thrown their way, and with good reason. Even if you hate the genre, that's the genre that is making the big bucks and can allow you to make your dream project happen. It's the only way to make a living these days.

 

[Star-child]

The reasoned, argumented criticism referring to the poor writing skills of Rian Johnson might well be the rotten tomatoes of the 21st century. The trolling that called the performer out for being an Asian woman and threw a ton of abuse at her for her physical appearance has nothing to do with the tradition of rotten tomatoes and everything to do with blind stupidity and hate.

A ton of thrown abuse is more like hurled rotten fruit than anything else. If Rose was a cool and attractive character her ethnicity would be no more of an issue than Lando's.

It isn't her fault she was cast poorly, but she's feeling it just like the Jar Jar actor.

Rian Johnson, on the other hand, got to make knives out.

 

[Phyrebrat]

A ton of thrown abuse is more like hurled rotten fruit than anything else. If Rose was a cool and attractive character her ethnicity would be no more of an issue than Lando's.

It isn't her fault she was cast poorly, but she's feeling it just like the Jar Jar actor.

Rian Johnson, on the other hand, got to make knives out.

That’s a very limited understanding of racism and ‘othering’. Why, in your opinion is Rose not cool or attractive?

The Rotten tomatoes history lesson speaks of socio-economic engagement. I hardly see how it’s relevant to rampant western racism.

 

[Star-child]

That’s a very limited understanding of racism and ‘othering’. Why, in your opinion is Rose not cool or attractive?

The Rotten tomatoes history lesson speaks of socio-economic engagement. I hardly see how it’s relevant to rampant western racism.

I'm not presenting a treatise on the basis of racism, or 'othering'. I'm saying that Kelly Tran's character was disliked for reasons that have nothing to do with her race, and acting on that dislike took the form of a variety of epithets - some racial. I'm sure she also got body shamed, but we don't say that the agenda of anti-fatists is to blame. While both are unacceptable, there is a difference between hating someone because of their race and using a racial epithet to hurt someone you dislike for other reasons.

I think Kelly Tran is cool and attractive. I think that Rose Tico, like Poe and Finn, is a silly, foolish character that doesn't match the more handsome and competent aesthetic of Han, Luke, Chewie, Leia and Lando. If Rose Tico was a Jedi played by Lucy Lui, her Asian female character would have been a non-issue. Racism is not logical. Just look at all the casual racists who adore black athletes.

The flip side of this is that the Rose Tico character casting decision seems so out of place that some people are going to assume that it was made for reasons other than presenting the best possible Star Wars recreation experience - like a racial political agenda. And such agendas tend to also fire up the kooks who then react by going in the opposite direction and doing the one thing that horrifies the people with the agenda - bigotry.

It is a fundamental error to presume that the root cause of every racist act is racism. If two drunks get in a fight and one uses the N-word, that doesn't mean the fight started because of racism. But there is a tendency to view all racism as the root cause of all of its effects.



The rotten tomatoes example just illustrates that an audience tends to channel their dislike of bad scripting, casting or direction at the person playing the part rather than the mysterious director behind the curtain. It has nothing to do with socio-economic anything, but just that stupid people tend to act out inappropriately to things that they and their betters dislike. I can dislike Rose Tico for the way the character appears and acts without there being any racism involved in my feelings, and that somewhat disproves the theory that criticism of her is based solely in racism.


Please don't attempt to read some sort of agenda on my part. I'm just agreeing with @KGeo777 that racist effects aren't always due to racist causes. Rose Tico is a cute teddy bear in a story about monsters. She didn't work. I'd enjoy seeing Kelly Tran in something that uses her qualities to positive effect.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Anyway, I think we're moving way off topic - let's get the thread back specifically onto discussion of the film, Star Wars: Rise of the Skywalker.