STAR WARS: "Rise of Skywalker" **SPOILERS**

The narrative pretzel began the moments of "No,I am your father" and "there is another" in Empire. Those things required some quick contrivances and retcons in quick order so Obi-wan doesn't come off as a liar and dirt bag ("A certain point of view" ) and to tie up a bombshell Lucas dropped on the audience to set up another trilogy he changed his mind on ("Leia! Leia's my sister!".) Those two creative choices are when it spiralled into chosen one prophesies,family dynasties and soap opera. For both better or worse,from a...ahem... certain point of view.



Star Wars was indeed originally intended to be a tribute to Saturday morning serials. You weren't supposed to know everything coming in to that movie other than "here's the good guys....here's the bad guys...here's an adventure...go!" The idea was that you had just come in on the fourth chapter of one of those things and there would be more adventures you wouldn't see,but you were seeing a slice of a serial. It may have had mythological underpinnings and such,but it never was meant really to be more than that. Then it became a smash hit. Suddenly what was a one-off self contained slice of the past with a modern sheen became something that eventually George himself figuratively and literally lost control of and Disney is still struggling to control.



Thanks for the compliment. (at least I think it is a compliment!) Honestly through I do feel upon second watch it's still worth seeing. As someone said above,it's very much a sentimental love letter to Star Wars and I think the harried pace and such of "here's the bad guy,here are the good guys...here's an adventure...go!" In some way is an appropriate bookend to that first film. It feels somewhat disconnected from the last one for obvious reasons, but i think was truly designed to be a stand alone in some ways while tieing up the threads of other films. It really does feel like a return of sorts to the pulppy,silly,slightly ridiculous and preposterous and don't think too hard and just go with it vibe of the original 1977 picture while wrapping up the behemoth soap opera it grew to. Some would argue the later it was a mixed bag on, but It succeeds on the former I feel. It's a fine line.

I think it really depends on what you want from Star Wars. If you are a lore hound who expects every piece of lore across all Star Wars media to be adhered to strictly and think lore is paramount,this film will probably give you a stroke and anger you. If you are someone who doesn't need every "I" dotted and every "T" crossed and just want a fun adventure in the tradition of that first film but with heavy nostalgia,you'll have a great time. I think depending on where you are at between those two extremes will determine how you will feel walking out.

After all,"your focus determines your reality".

 

Yep!

It's one she built herself, probably from pieces of her staff. We don't know how long it is from the end scene with our heroes celebrating to the epilogue on Tatooine. It could be days or even months. In that time she probably used the texts Luke collected and currated to find a yellow kyber crystal and built her own lightsaber. In Star Wars lore it's supposed to be the final rite of passage in becoming a Jedi as building your own.

 

It is indeed a compliment, meant in the most courteous sense, believe me.

Y'know what? Feck it... l have very real reservations about the logic (or lack thereof) of Palpatine returning, but it's the last SW film - and it is for me, whatever Disney does in future! - so I'll finish what I started all those years ago and just go see this damn thing... hell, I might even enjoy it... and let's face it, SW needs to be seen on the big-screen...

 

If they can bring back long dead Emporer Palpatine, I'm sure an X-wing would be able to fire up with no problems.

 

I hope you genuinely enjoy it.


If not...well you still have Episodes IV-VI.

 

Doh, the bad reviews continue...

'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Gets Franchise's Worst Cinemascore

and even J.J. Abrams acknowledges them:

J.J. Abrams Responds To ‘The Rise Of Skywalker’ Critics: “They’re Right” – Deadline

'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' - The 20 Weirdest Things that Happened in Episode IX

In fairness, it's at 57% from critics and an 86% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, plus a 54 on Metacritic.

To me, the worst thing you can say about it is that it's a very convoluted story that goes all over the place, and they spend a lot of time negating what went on in Last Jedi. But I don't think it's a bad film. Looking forward to seeing it again in a few days.

As one wag said: "hey, at least it's a lot better than Cats!"

Wait -- I thought they were supposed to buy them at that mysterious guy's store in Diagon Alley. Whoops, wrong franchise.

 

Made of advanced non-corrosive materials that we can only dream about.

 

I’d put it below ROTS but I forgot it lol. Certainly my least favorite OT film but it’s got some great moments and has some real cinematic space to explore the end compared to Skywalker. It’s one I’ve never cared for much but it’s grown in my esteem.

 

I thought the dagger with the map to find the Palpatine-homing-device thingy was pretty lame and an obvious toy franchise prop. I mean, who knew where the little glowing pyramid was and then decided to forge a dagger with a map engraved into it that anyone could read? Bonkers. Ray should've simply found the pyramid compass by using her own perceptive force.

 

It’s an entertaining film but it certainly didn’t feel like a true finale. Same feeling for the prequels, I’d love to see an edit of all three movies into one film.

 

Luke had the seals replaced after all the time he spent #!*?% drying it out on Degobah.

 

I think it's hilarious how the Fandom Menace usual suspects are calling a 374 million worldwide haul and 176 million opening weekend a "colossal bomb"but the YouTube click baiters are having literal joygasms over it given the number if recommended videos in my YouTube feed.

It's worth noting that it does fall above Disney's own public projections so I doubt Disney is panicking right now. I still think it hits a billion and change like Rogue one but it's too early to tell. Next week will tell the tale I think.

 

I have lots of thoughts I'll lay out in another post, but as for the integration of Fisher into the film, I felt it was not done well at all. A lot of folks are saying we should just cut the filmmakers slack, that they did the best they could. That may well be the case, but when the “best” result comes out like this, it’s perhaps better to rewrite something that kills Leia off screen between films.

Despite JJ Abrams talking about the ample outtake footage they had to work with, and how they found miraculously apt lines from Fisher to use, the exact opposite comes across in the film. The film makes clear that they took *very small* snippets of random Fisher lines and then awkwardly wrote lines around hers that would *technically* work, but really make little sense. As a result, Leia comes across as someone just standing around, popping up occasionally to offer quick platitudes that don’t matter. Her responses felt perilously close to a Magic 8 Ball to me.

They did work one out-of-context Fisher line (something along the lines of "tell me something good") into a slightly funny bit where the guy comes up with bad news, they insert Fisher's non-sequitur line, and then the guy responds with an over the top "oh, okay, everything's just fine!". I'm mangling the actual lines, but that bit was slightly funny.

But really, the Fisher stuff was *far* from seamless. I'm actually stunned they didn't have more deleted scenes/lines to work with.

Also, visually the stuff looks weird. Abrams insisted they weren’t going to use CGI, and I assume he only meant they would not create a Leia from CGI from scratch and re-dub new lines. That may be the case, but a lot of weird digital manipulation is happening with the Leia footage. She looks gaunt and weird, and in some shots it looks like they’ve rotated her face into a different position than the original footage was, resulting in a weird sort of flat, almost “2.5D” sort of look. It also sometimes looks like her head is too big for her body, like they used a body double and glued her head onto it.

 

Apologies if this was already sufficiently hashed out, but the Luke/Leia "ROTJ-era" training scene sure looked like CGI faces to me. They weren't bad, but they certainly looked digitally manipulated to me.

Which makes their insistence on not CGI-ing Fisher for her main scenes a bit more perplexing. I always figured the problem with CGI-ing older Leia was not the visuals, but the fact that it would be very hard to find someone to do an accurate impression of Fisher's older voice.

 

I thought Luke looked very good on that scene, but not Leia.

 

Again, I'll have a fuller review of ROS in a separate post, but I re-watched TFA and TLJ again at home after seeing ROS, and I'd say *both* of those hold together better as *films.* I'd say Johnson's "The Last Jedi" is the best *film* of them all, despite story choices that some fans clearly didn't like.

While I'm still stewing on ROS, while I acknowledge there are certain specific points where he's clearly doing an anti-The Last Jedi, I'm a bit surprised people are so adament that the entire ROS film is *that* heavy on undoing Johnson's work. I don't think *that* aspect is that severe. I'd argue JJ Abrams ignores a lot of elements of TFA as much or more than Johnson did with TLJ, and in many cases it's not something where Johnson's film negated Abrams's ability to work stuff in.

I think some of the things in ROS actually remind me of TLJ as far as the director seemingly being forced to integrate characters they don't appear to have *any* interest in. I never thought Johnson wanted Phasma in the TLJ, but shoehorned a quick scene in there perhaps at the behest of someone else (which I thought was a bummer; Phasma is a potentially interesting character). Similarly, Abrams *clearly* had no place for Rose in ROS, relegating her to the myriad of Star Wars film characters, often underlings at rebel bases, burping out a few background lines and nothing more. Weirdly, though, it almost seems like Abrams didn't even want to work in the Knights of Ren, but did anyway by simply plopping them into the story with no explanation or development.

 

The box office stuff is all relative. Good or bad, the studio's *own* projections aren't usually very useful. They almost *always* low-ball the expectation (only occasionally biffing it when a film truly super-bombs and even the low-ball estimate is too high).

People are too fixated on box office, and nobody seems to have any motive to report box office numbers in a fair, contextualized fashion.

I called this ROS box office reporting eons ago. I figured it would still make hundreds of millions, but under-perform the previous two. Thus, this would allow for *either* type of clickbait headline. "ROS Smashes Competition Opening Weekend!"...or..... "ROS Opening Weekend Lowest Ever for New Trilogy."

I think if you had asked Disney after TFA came out, they would have guessed (and obviously certainly hoped) for better box office for Episodes 8 and 9.

But Disney isn't losing money on TOS (though, they *will* be shutting off a nice extra secondary revenue stream of selling the film to cable and streaming services due to holding the film for their own Disney+ service). But it'll still get near or pass $1 billion worldwide, and will sell well as a rental and physical and digital purchase. The film being out also unlocks the ability to do the already-planned huge 9-film 4K boxed set (complete with NO original versions of the original trilogy!). ROS opens up plenty of revenue.

If I had to guess, it'll get just around $1 billion worldwide, whereas back in 2015, they probably would have though/hoped it'd be more like $1.5 billion or more.

 

I could've done with even less cobbled together Leia scenes. Just seems kinda corny when she appeared (in the previous films of this trilogy also) all dolled up to look as young as possible and moving around like a wax dummy. Same goes for the Harrison Ford scenes also - too wooden and stiffly acted.

 

Your post has highlighted some of my own feelings about these last 3 films. I always enjoy going to see the latest Star Wars film but what I have struggled with is that as a series of films they don't seem to have any direction. Part of the reason may be that there isn't a cohesive sense of authorship across the 3 films. As you say, each film director seems to be working in opposition to the previous film.

When I watch the Lucas directed films I get a sense of a story unfolding but with episodes 7,8 and 9 I find I keep asking myself "where are they going with this?". Did they actually decide what the story was going to be across the 3 films or are they making it up as they go along?

The one Disney Star Wars film that I do find myself returning to is Rogue One.

Just my personal take.

 

I think the last three Sequels,each on their own are good to great,entertaining films. None of them approach the rewatch factor of the OT films,particularly EMPIRE (which I never tire of) but are all generally superior to the prequels. I also think TFA was tonally the Star Wars film that Lucasfilm needed to make after the prequels,and that TLJ needed to take chances and change things a bit while this one needed to be a bit safer and tie all three trilogies together,which it just about does.

However I think we all can agree that if you take this trilogy as it's own,without the previous trilogies ,as a linear story...it just doesn't quite work. Say what you will about the Prequels as movies in of themselves,as a three act story with a beginning,middle and end ,it works. The originals also work and are individually good to great movies. These three have a decent first act,a so-so middle act and a messy convoluted third act that spends a lot of time undoing and recontextualizing much of that second act.

I have more thoughts about all this,but I think this trilogy could have benefited from the JJ Abrams,Rian Johnson,Colin Treverow and Laurence Kasdan getting in a room together over a couple weeks to hammer out a strong outline where everything was going beyond the general arcs involving Rey and Kylo Ren,which was about the only consistent thread through this trilogy.

 

Classy tweet from Rian Johnson

Rian Johnson on Twitter

 

I have to say, even though I liked the film overall, this film is very much a narrative pretzel. Large, salted, and with melted cheese.

Nobody smart is calling the movie a "bomb" per se, but I think there is cautious concern at Disney because the movie opened worse than the last few films. $175M domestic is a little lower than expected -- I think they privately assumed it would hit $200M -- plus the word of mouth is not overwhelmingly positive:

‘Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker’ Box Office To Hit $193.7 Million In First Week – Deadline

It also went down from Friday to Saturday, which is not a positive sign:

"According to industry estimates, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker had a steeper Saturday than expected with $48M, -47% from Friday (plus previews)’s figure of $90.2M, which now puts the ninth-quel’s opening weekend at around $179M+, $14.7M lower than what industry sources were seeing Saturday morning. Disney is calling the weekend at $175.5M. Imax drove $18.4M of the pic’s ticket sales stateside, becoming the large format exhibitor’s third best Imax opening in December. Now before the Greek chorus of Deadline commenters smell blood, here’s what’s going on. First of all, that number is still the third best opening ever for December, and no other studio but Disney has clocked a 3-day opening weekend in the winter month north of $100M (plus the Burbank, CA studio owns the month’s top four best openings of all-time)."

I think we'll have a clearer picture this coming weekend. If it drops 60% or more, then they have a problem. I think it will still limp to $800M -- hardly a bomb, by any measure -- but I'm not as confident now that it'll go past $1 billion. These things are always a crapshoot, and you never really know what factors are at play.

I still liked the film (but didn't love it), and I look forward to seeing it again in Dolby Vision on Friday.

 

Do we know how much the film cost?

 

I think there were two schools of thought at Lucasfilm about Episode 8: 1) they wanted a big audience-pleasing film that told the story and made a lot of money; 2) they wanted to go into a different direction because of all the complaints that The Force Awakens was too much a retread of what we had seen before. But I think Rian Johnson's Episode 8 took such a hard left turn, it was more revolutionary than they expected and had a lot of fan backlash, including criticism from Mark Hamill himself.

Well, it's nice to imagine that, but I think all the other guys had other things to do, and I think Abrams was determined to right the ship and get it in the direction he had planned essentially by himself. He still says he did not have a clear idea of what a second or third film could do after The Force Awakens, but I think privately, he was taken aback by Last Jedi. But Abrams has been a gentleman and has not criticized any of the Star Wars films at all, and has even complimented Rian Johnson several times. I think that's all you can do in Hollywoo: don't slam the previous guy who had your job, just buckle down and let your own work speak for itself.

It cost $300 million (which seems to be the new peak for huge blockbusters), but the tax credits brought it down to as low as $250M, depending on who you talk to.

 

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I've seen estimates anywhere from $400-600 million total counting marketing it. To be fair though we'll probably never get a clear picture of it.

Edit: I see Vidiot beat me to it.