Star Wars Discussion Here [SPOILERS]

[panthaleon]

Rise of Skywalker was a very dumb movie. I do not recommend spending theatre money to see it

[panthaleon]

Every time they did something potentially interesting, they immediately reversed it. This movie had no confidence in itself which, given the response to The Last Jedi, is unsurprising but disappointing.

[panthaleon]

That would have been a better ending. Also would have made the title make sense.

[panthaleon]

My favorite part was Finn mentioning 'needing to tell Rey something' the times, with no payoff. Because it's very important they Rey and Ren have a very heterosexual romance with a kiss payoff or else the audience might be confused about why there was even a woman

[panthaleon]

I mean but it's not a payoff if one party is not involved in the payoff, and instead gets some romantic out of nowhere. This was also important because we can't have any ambiguous homoeroticism in our lead males. Fun and Poe both needed random female women to show up to make it very clear they were two straight bros that weren't gay.

This wouldn't bother me so much if there wasn't a throwaway background kids between two unnamed female characters after the climax.

I also personally found the themes to be an incoherent mess. Why is Rey a Palpatine? What does that say? Thematically she mirrored Kylo Ren as a no one with nothing contrasted with the Pinnacle of space royalty.

Or was the theme that you're not your lineage? That doesn't really make sense either because Kylo Ren did decide to turn back to his lineage and turn good.

Maybe the theme was fascism only succeeds because it scares you into thinking you're alone, but if you work with your friends you can defeat it? That's kind of a dumb theme because that's not really how fascist states have worked, and also that wasn't really a theme of either TFA or TLJ.

It's just really sad that RoS looks so clearly like the result of a rewrite because people reacted with such hostility to TLJ, as Star Wars fans can't handle new characters unless they're related to the old ones, and prefer walking the same plot beats at opposed to new ones.

I'm just really disappointed because I feel like the takeaway continues to be 'never do anything new. Never challenge the fans. Make the same movie over and over.' But I guess if you really liked the original trilogy, it makes sense you would like TFA and RoS

[panthaleon]

Did we even know Palpatine had a kid? Like who cares about the timeline? Narratively this comes out of nowhere just because people apparently can't handle a strong character that doesn't come from original trilogy lineage.

And again given that she is supposed to be the foil to Kylo Ren, what does that say thematically about them? The villain being a hero's descendant and vise versa is cool, but that was not seeded or foreshadowed at all in the rest of the trilogy.

The twist is just really cheap and unearned.

[panthaleon]

But zor how would we know they're straight if they don't get female girl love interests?

[panthaleon]

Aronis hitting us with that good shit.

Can I also say the dagger was the stupidest thing? Apparently it fixes the 'ploy hole' of why the death star is shaped stupid, but it only works if you're a few hundred yards away. You know a few hundred yards away from that thing that is supposed to fly in space. Also it just points to the throne room next to which is a vault. Why is the dagger a compass? Why does it belong to a random fucko bounty hunter? Why couldn't the good guys have just crept onto the death star and found the Emperor's throne for the wayfinder?

Instead they had to find the McGuffin texts to point to where Luke was looking for the McGuffin bounty hunter, only to find the McGuffin dagger which can't be translated until they find a McGuffin mechanic, who then leads them to the McGuffin planet where they find the throne room inside of which is the McGuffin wayfinder. Why is this movie just a series of uninterrupted fetch quests?

[panthaleon]

Just because they're setting up the same tired romance from the first movie doesn't mean an audience is required to find it interesting or narratively compelling. Literally everyone saw Reylo coming, but that didn't make it elicit any fewer bored groans.

Like what if instead of pairing off the male and female leads, we break from the mold of 'angsty damaged bad boy does a good and wins the female' and instead they have some sort of sibling love arc. That would have been less stupid.

[panthaleon]

Yeah you can't really talk about race in media just as like a neutral trait. These were characters who were written by writers who wrote Finn away from Rey and towards random new black character. Like this is kinda a real and valid critique.

[panthaleon]

Also just because trope knowledge tells us that the sadboi will get the girl at the last minute doesn't mean it's a good storytelling beat

[panthaleon]

No Reck how could you not love the random no homo love interests??

[panthaleon]

She explicitly said that she wanted nothing more than to like this movie

[panthaleon]

I feel like you will find a lot of the folks who are disappointed by Rise of Skywalker will tell you that they went into it sincerely excited to see how the trilogy ended. For a lot of them, because they really liked The Last Jedi.

Like you can enjoy whatever movie you want, but it seems kinda fucked to just round up valid complaints about thematic incoherence, bizarre pacing, and any other nonsense as 'well they must have just gone in wanting to find a reason to dislike it.'

Idk genuinely the only stances I've heard for liking RoS are "I wanted a conclusion and I got one" and "it fixed what The Last Jedi ruined"

[panthaleon]

I mean like I'm more than happy to discuss the thematic failings of this very dumb movie with very dumb decisions.

However since you're doubling down, I might also encourage you to look at the context of using one video from a female content creator and jumping around to round her down to some fake fan cashing in on Star Wars outrage. Especially describing her as petulant and grating. Like I don't really care to unpack everything here, but Jenny Nicholson has been remarkably consistent with her many many videos about star wars both on this channel and the other channel she was on doing a show about star wars. Talking about her merch and calling her a fake fan just looks tacky.

[panthaleon]

I mean this isn't super relevant except that it looks the same as the classic "real Star Wars fans would have liked this movie, so anyone who didn't like it either isn't a real fan or wanted to hate it."

And this is relevant because I think this was a very bad movie, but I don't want to risk being purity tested over whenever I have the proper background to make critiques

[panthaleon]

I might also say that you're taking a real aggressive approach at the end of your post there, my dude. Please remember you're a moderator and that carries with it some certain standards of behavior.

[panthaleon]

I also went into this movie with expectations. I wanted it to be good and thematically coherent!

[panthaleon]

Oh that gay kiss was the worst rainbow capitalism pinkwashing. Like you don't get progressive points for a couple of faceless background extras after you go out of your way to shoehorn in super straight female love interests for your very heterosexual male leads. That kiss made me madder than any of dumb stuff.