Time for my full review of Rise of Skywalker.
Or at least, for now. Keep in mind that I’ve only watched one review so far, and I have many more to watch, so as such my opinion might, and most probably will differ a lot say… three months from now.
First off, I gotta say that this is one of the best animated movies I have ever seen. It’s clear that the production value of this was just huge. It’s incredibly gorgeous to look at. Every single scene is so magically animated that it can almost distract your mind off of how bad this movie actually it.
Almost.
On the same note, Leia is animated beautifully. Other than a few angles from which is obvious that it is just CGI, she looks just perfect, as if Carry Fisher was actually there. God rest her in peace.
Now here’s a thing: I don’t like Luke in TLJ. But I kinda like him here. I know, he is there for only a few scenes and only to give Rey a speech, but at least he seemed more similar with his OT self. What I didn’t liked, however, was Anakin’s complete absence. If you wanted to make this movie part of the Skywalker saga you supposed to have in it the one character that links all the movies: Anakin Skywalker. The first two trilogies were more or less his story, and if you want to continue his story, you have to have him in it. This is one of the reasons as of why I think the ST is unnecessarily: it doesn’t add anything to the main character of all of the other movies. I mean, he was kinda there, he had a few lines at the very end, like _ Balance the Force like once I did_, and Hayden Christensen actually voiced him (which is just awesome, I loved him as Anakin and I just need more of him), but it wasn’t the same. He should have been the character, he should have been there. Maybe instead of Han Solo we got Anakin, or Han and Anakin, or maybe instead of Luke we would have got Anakin or Luke and Anakin. The entire movie I was waiting for a wide shot in which Anakin’s force ghost to materialise, but that never came, and to be honest this might have been the biggest disappointment for me, and literally my biggest problem.
Actually, let’s talk a little bit about the Jedi of the past scene. In that scene we get Luke, Leia, Anakin, Luminara Unduli, which I am sure literally nobody asked for, we got Ahsoka, and that is very cool, the movies finally acknowledge her, we got Aayla Secura which again: who has ever asked for her, we got Mace the Man Windu, and that is by default a plus, we got Obi-Wan and God please make me strong I can’t wait for his show, we got Yoda, which really it would have been a huge mistake to not have Yoda, Kanan Jarrus, Qui-Gon which I never thought I’d even see again, Adi Gallia. Don’t ask who she is, cause I have no idea.
We got a ton of cool Jedi, so if you had the ability to call in so many good actors for this project, why don’t go A L L in? How about this: when Rey is struck down by Palpatine, he readies himself to throw one more last shot, but suddenly BANG the Force ghost of Anakin Skywalker stops him with his lightsaber.
“This is not possible!”
“Emperor…” says Christensen as he prepares his sword with his kinda weird but in the same time charming way of portraying Anakin. “Everything is possible with the power of the Force.”
And then the movie goes all Endgame about it and suddenly the Force ghost of Luke and Leia show up. Then Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Yoda, Mace, Han Solo, everybody shows in and all attack the Palpatine from all the sides, in a huge battle that destroys the entire temple, lightning after lightning, force blasts, boulders thrown in all directions, and at the end, at Anakin’s signal, Ben Solo, the last Skywalker rises his lightsaber again Palpatine, duelling with him to the death, then Rey shows up and the three fight while all of the weird cultist in the background sing Duel of the Fates.
At the end Palpatine looses, obviously. It might have not been the best ending, but holly banned word-molly would it have been epic! MUCH more epic than the cheap, Journey to One live action adaptation that we got instead. I mean really, what is the difference? At least give me an actual fight between Palpatine and Rey, something of actual substance, not something that would make me brake the keyboard while ranting about it!
Kylo actually had an arc in this whole movie, and at least for now I found him at least a little more likeable. Like, I kinda like the scene he had with his father, tho it doesn’t really made that much of a sense. The final scene when he heals Rey, then kisses her, then they smile, then he dies was just stupid. Where did he even have the power to heal her? As far as we are aware, he wasn’t able to do such a thing, so how did he healed Rey?
Rey was awful as always. She is easily the worst main character in the entire SS. She was such a big Mary Sue for the entire freaking movie. Midway through the movie I just couldn’t stand her anymore, I just wanted her to shut up with all of her intuitions and plans and so on, all of them turning out to be right. She was completely able to do everything: to wield the lightsaber, to fight everybody, to pet giant snakes, to shoot lightings, to attract ships from the sky, to pilot everything, to revive the dead. Clearly she doesn’t need anybody to help her, even tho she carried an entire band with her the entire movie.
Fin was Fin and he seemed OK in this movie. I kinda liked the whole thing with the other rebelled Stormtroopers, tho I still think he should have died in TLJ.
Poe is a lost character. Like, let’s be honest here: TLJ completely ruined him as a character, and now he only continued the same path. Everybody takes him as a fool, even his girlfriend! At the end he only asks for a kiss and she still refuses him! Why? He saved the entire galaxy? What madness he has than that he still is not eligible for a kiss?
The whole C-3PO thing was stupid, but others have already said why.
Hux, just like Poe, is a lost character. I kinda like tho the scene in which he says that he is the spy, and everybody was like “NO WAY!” in an extremely humoristic way, like that was genuinely the reaction my cinema had at that part. It was just so weird. Like yeah I guess he had a motivation, but still.
Maz had no place in the movie. Zorri also wasn’t all that important. Rose also had no place in this, and she was unbearable in the few scenes she was in. They didn’t had the guts to kill of Chewbacca, tho granted my reaction would have been “THEY KILLED OF THE LAST LEGACY CHARACTER!!! HOW COULD THEY!!!” so yeah…
Lando was nice. He was like this laid-back, drugged, plot device of an uncle that always showed up to mediate the situation, I liked him.
And then there’s Palpatine, and I need a lot of comics that would explain me how the hell Palpatine survived. The guy fell into the centre of a planet, which then exploded, and crash landed on a nearby planet. How do you survive this, with only getting blind? The movie never explains it, and it just assumes that it happened, and not only that but it tries to tell us that somehow he not only survived, but created a fleet of death stars that can now destroys the entire galaxy. Mate, if you have so much power, just frikking use it already and take over the galaxy! What would Rey do? What would the Resistance do? They wouldn’t be able to do anything!
I kinda liked the explanation that they gave for Snoke, but it was so last minute! And what is the reason behind making him so scared, so old?
The explanation of Rey’s parents was cheap. Palpatine never had any wife in the prequels, and if he had, his son would have been very old by the time of the events presented in the flashbacks. And no, I am not going to believe that Palpatine had a girlfriend after he got scared by Mace Windu.
Not to mention that he doesn’t say anything about his son. Mate, he is your son! The movie presents nothing about the relation between the two, which we by default should have learned about! You can’t throw it all on the back of the comics!
The way he dies, again, is horrible, but the performance and everything is still pretty nice, although he was completely unnecessarily, forced, and shouldn’t have been in this trilogy to begin with.
This whole trilogy shouldn’t have existed to begin with.
Also, the galaxy should have turned into Estonia, where the women heavily outnumber the men. All the men must have died on the sides of the Resistance and the First Order, to the point in which the two sides now have to recruit women, because this is the only logical explanation I can find for the fact that suddenly there are soooo many women in both of the sides, out of the blue, with extremely limited teasing.
Overall, this is a bad movie. A very very bad, boring movie that I don’t think I will ever revisit in the near future. I hope it flops, and I hope this will be the last in this long series of mindless blockbusters that Hollywood kept pumping on us this entire year.
Is it worse than TLJ? God no. Than AotC? Hm… Nah. Than TPM? I’ll go on and I’ll say maybe. TPM actually attracts me, while RoS does not. And so the final movie in the Skywalker saga is, at least in my books, the third worst Star Wars movie ever. Don’t go see it. Wait till it appears for sale or on Disney+. It really doesn’t deserve your money. I literally had no actual memorable experience out of it.
Except for one: in my theatre there was this couple dressed as Han and Leia from the OT. If you have the guts to come to the theatre to watch a Star Wars movie dressed like that in the Balkans, then you by default have my full respect.