Star Wars Episode IX, The Rise of Skywalker, available on home video

[Bolt]

Been playing BF2. Apparently it's canon. " Storm troopers only land 77% of their shots.." says the imperial turncoat. I think it's more like 33%..

[kajnrig]

7 hours ago, derex3592 said:

Then Luke looses his hand.

"Go, Hand, go!" Luke whispers urgently as he releases the harness on his hand. In an instant, it shoots through the halls of Cloud City, scrabbling on five spindly finger-legs. At an intersection, it pauses, raises index and middle fingers into the air to smell, then squirts a bit of blood from its stump forearm for Luke to follow before darting down another hallway. This way, definitely this way. It would know the smell of Wookie anywhere.

[Petrov27]

9 hours ago, derex3592 said:

I think that's what makes Empire SO much better and the best film of the franchise.  You really feel like all the heroes are actually in danger most of the film.  There's a sense of Vader is actually PISSED and some bad things are going to happen.  He's choking officers out left and right.  You know when Luke runs off half cocked he is going to get his ass handed to him by Vader.  Vader is fighting him one handed at the beginning of their fight in the carbon freeze chamber. 3PO gets blasted into oblivion and Lando betrays our heroes.  Then Han gets turned into a popsicle!  Then Luke looses his hand. It's a darker toned movie and I can't imagine having been in the theater when it opened, walking out going "DUDE! WHAT?! DAMN!"  

 

......I now need to watch ESB this weekend...........to remind what a GREAT SW movie is like.

 

Ha was there when it opened and yes there was major WTF when those credits rolled - like THATS IT!?! YOU ARE LEAVING US THERE FOR THREE YEARS? None the less the movie was awesome on about every level but was the first movie I had ever seen that left things at such a state at the end. I wonder if the internet had been a thing back then what level of sh!t storm that cliffhanger would have generated?

[Black Valkyrie]

 

Forced myself to watch it, pile of garbage. 

 

[Black Valkyrie]

 

 

 

[Dynaman]

Plans is too strong a word.  The mass of disjointed ideas a writer comes up with and discards along the way is more like it.  Sort of like when Lucas says he originally planned a Trilogy - well maybe but that is in no way what ended up on the screen - even with the original trilogy.  

[pengbuzz]

On 1/2/2020 at 7:25 PM, kajnrig said:

"Go, Hand, go!" Luke whispers urgently as he releases the harness on his hand. In an instant, it shoots through the halls of Cloud City, scrabbling on five spindly finger-legs. At an intersection, it pauses, raises index and middle fingers into the air to smell, then squirts a bit of blood from its stump forearm for Luke to follow before darting down another hallway. This way, definitely this way. It would know the smell of Wookie anywhere.

it runs off by itself? Would that make it Hand Solo?

[eXis10z]

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

it runs off by itself? Would that make it Hand Solo?

 

[sh9000]

https://comicbook.com/starwars/2020/01/01/star-wars-poe-dameron-original-trilogy-connection-origins/?fbclid=IwAR1eyWTBQttJnF1Z-L1bNPQYpTIOy_U6Bq8f5lv7xWOefUE9Dfe2cBfFJkw

[Dynaman]

12 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

it runs off by itself? Would that make it Hand Solo?

Nah - but it could be Evil Dead 2 material...

[Bolt]

8 hours ago, sh9000 said:

https://comicbook.com/starwars/2020/01/01/star-wars-poe-dameron-original-trilogy-connection-origins/?fbclid=IwAR1eyWTBQttJnF1Z-L1bNPQYpTIOy_U6Bq8f5lv7xWOefUE9Dfe2cBfFJkw

I'm sure we're gonna get flooded with backstories now. 

[Seto Kaiba]

On 1/2/2020 at 7:25 PM, kajnrig said:

"Go, Hand, go!" Luke whispers urgently as he releases the harness on his hand. In an instant, it shoots through the halls of Cloud City, scrabbling on five spindly finger-legs. At an intersection, it pauses, raises index and middle fingers into the air to smell, then squirts a bit of blood from its stump forearm for Luke to follow before darting down another hallway. This way, definitely this way. It would know the smell of Wookie anywhere.

Wasn't this almost literally the start of an episode of Red Dwarf?

EDIT: Yup... S5E3 "Terrorform".

Edited January 4, 2020 by Seto Kaiba

[Dynaman]

Well - this will be the only Star Wars film I did not go see in the theater.  Not really a knock on the film since the audience score is good.  It will almost certainly be out by mid March and I can wait that long to watch it comfortably at home.  Anyone else decide to pass on it till then?

[levzloi]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Wasn't this almost literally the start of an episode of Red Dwarf?

EDIT: Yup... S5E3 "Terrorform".

Best show ever!

[jvmacross]

3 hours ago, Dynaman said:

Well - this will be the only Star Wars film I did not go see in the theater.  Not really a knock on the film since the audience score is good.  It will almost certainly be out by mid March and I can wait that long to watch it comfortably at home.  Anyone else decide to pass on it till then?

Just go.....you should be able to get a whole theatre to yourself by now....matinee during a weekday so you just pay just a little more than a rental

Edited January 5, 2020 by jvmacross

[Seto Kaiba]

19 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

Just go.....you should be able to get a whole theatre to yourself by now....matinee during a weekday so you just pay just a little more than a rental

Pick up a double feature... go see Cats first, then no matter how bad you feel The Rise of Skywalker was it'll seem like solid gold by comparison. 

[Bolt]

TROS is worth seeing on the big screen.

If you go see Cats. Bring a glass of milk so you have something to cry into.

[azrael]

7 hours ago, Dynaman said:

Well - this will be the only Star Wars film I did not go see in the theater.  Not really a knock on the film since the audience score is good.  It will almost certainly be out by mid March and I can wait that long to watch it comfortably at home.  Anyone else decide to pass on it till then?

 

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Pick up a double feature... go see Cats first, then no matter how bad you feel The Rise of Skywalker was it'll seem like solid gold by comparison. 

Or just save your money and avoid both, like a plague. If you have to go, go with a girlfriend/spouse/significant other and go watch Little Women.

 

[azrael]

3 hours ago, Bolt said:

TROS is worth seeing on the big screen.

[Bolt]

Aww.. you big hater

 

[Roy Focker]

Saw it and is it safe to write about spoilers out in the open now?

The movie isn't that bad but that doesn't mean it is good either.  It is a mess.  Doesn't feel that connected to episode 8 or even 7.   I've been reading all the spoilers and web articles explaining all the things in the movie that confused people.  Knowing the answers in advanced I avoided this confusion myself but in order to understand what's going in a movie you shouldn't had to read a comic book first, play video game first, read a novel first, watch a cartoon first, listen to a podcast first with a writer, etc.  Secondary media is fine when you really want to know the origin story of a background character.   Knowledge of secondary media shouldn't be a requirement for understanding the movies themselves.

I didn't like The Last Jedi but at least it felt like a sequel to The Force Awakens.  Rise of Skywalker didn't feel like sequel to either movie.  Ignore your decades of nostalgia and this movie will suffer.  I think you could take Episode VIII, IX and edit them together to make good movie.  

[Thom]

53 minutes ago, Roy Focker said:

..

I think you could take Episode VIII, IX and edit them together to make good movie.  

And I really hope somebody does that! Ep 8 felt like a black hole where all the anchors for the plot fell into. It feels like a trilogy without a middle arc.

That being said, I really liked TRoS. With what we got, I felt it ended on a far better note than we could have expected. Taken without the baggage of TLJ and it's a good film.

[Chronocidal]

On ‎1‎/‎4‎/‎2020 at 3:47 PM, Dynaman said:

Not really a knock on the film since the audience score is good. 

Depending on the source, I think the audience reactions have been tampered with.  Rotten Tomatoes specifically is littered with thousands of nearly identical one sentence posts all within minutes of each other, all giving 5 stars.

I'm not sure what other sources may exist though, so I haven't researched any of that myself.

Edited January 6, 2020 by Chronocidal

[renegadeleader1]

22 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

Depending on the source, I think the audience reactions have been tampered with.  Rotten Tomatoes specifically is littered with thousands of nearly identical one sentence posts all within minutes of each other, all giving 5 stars.

I'm not sure what other sources may exist though, so I haven't researched any of that myself.

I'm no conspiracy theorist, but it does raise an eyebrow when the audience Rotten Tomatoes score hasn't budged at all since release. It's currently sitting at 86% with over 80,000 reviews, the same 86% it was at with 8,000 reviews, 800 reviews, etc. Logic dictates that it should have fluctuated at some point, but it hasn't.

 

As for all the one line indentical reviews? It's almost as if in all those accusations by studios that incel neckbeard basement dwellers were review bombing to affect scores they found out they could hire PR companies to game the system in their favor instead.

[kalvasflam]

I wonder though how much would gaming a system like that cost.  After all, there is a diminishing point of return there somewhere.  Unless....  oh no, Sideshow has farmed out fake reviews to overseas and made a bunch of scripts for Rotten Tomatoes....  

Edited January 6, 2020 by kalvasflam

[Seto Kaiba]

7 hours ago, renegadeleader1 said:

I'm no conspiracy theorist, but it does raise an eyebrow when the audience Rotten Tomatoes score hasn't budged at all since release. It's currently sitting at 86% with over 80,000 reviews, the same 86% it was at with 8,000 reviews, 800 reviews, etc. Logic dictates that it should have fluctuated at some point, but it hasn't.

 

As for all the one line indentical reviews? It's almost as if in all those accusations by studios that incel neckbeard basement dwellers were review bombing to affect scores they found out they could hire PR companies to game the system in their favor instead.

FWIW, there is a nontrivial disparity between the "Verified" reviews and "Unverified" ones... to the tune of about 8%.  With or without, it's still broadly positive.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that Disney and Kathleen Kennedy were so desperate to put one in the wins column after Solo and The Last Jedi that they paid bot farms to spam positive reviews, even though The Rise of Skywalker was "Too Big to Fail" as the culmination of decades of Star Wars's cultural Stockholm syndrome.

 

50 minutes ago, kalvasflam said:

I wonder though how much would gaming a system like that cost.  After all, there is a diminishing point of return there somewhere.  Unless....  oh no, Sideshow has farmed out fake reviews to overseas and made a bunch of scripts for Rotten Tomatoes....  

Not much, really.  You can buy hundreds of Likes for your social media platform of choice from bot farms in China, Russia, or the Middle East by the hundred for about the cost of lunch for one at McDonalds.  It's a well-known bad habit of studios to do things like spending their own money to buy out entire showings of their own films to boost their opening weekend numbers, because a theater full of no-shows still counts as tickets sold.  It wouldn't be a significant spend for any studio to add, on top of that, bot farm reviews from "Verified" viewers by supplying bot farms with the ticket info for those no-show screenings.

[azrael]

"Buying Likes" is, unfortunately, too easy for anyone and anything. MetaCritic appears to show less of a disparity between "critic" reviews vs "audience" reviews so that does beg the question with RT. But this has long been an issue with sites that allow user posting. Putting any faith behind a system which can be easily spoofed is misguided. 

[jenius]

Everyone I know who has seen it has said "It was pretty good" usually with lots of caveats. Basically it was "fun" not "brilliant". I'd probably put myself in that same group. I think too many folks around here have sour grapes in their popcorn containers. 

[Chronocidal]

Honestly?  It had fun bits.  I want to call it decently entertaining, but this movie needed to be split into two separate movies to ever have a hope of even trying to tell a complete story.  A lot of people have said the leaked plot points actually made for a better and more coherent movie, because they actually fleshed out a lot more details, but there was a ton of material removed that never made it to the final cut.

The question of whether the explanations contained in the cut material would actually make a better movie is up for grabs though.  Part of me suspects that attempting to plug the Maw-sized cluster of plot holes would have actually been a detriment.  Leaving some of the nagging questions unanswered at least lets people fill in the blanks with theories they like.

I don't know.  The movie had some good points, but it felt like an empty joy ride full of nostalgia-bombs that were strategically placed to distract you with so much material at such a fast pace that there was no time to think about anything going on.  The overall story arc works on a basic layer, but there are so many little incomprehensible problems with all of the little details required to hold up the plot that I think it collapses under the weight.

This movie wasn't like the prequels, where you had a coherent story acted badly, but it wasn't quite the opposite either?  It felt passably acted, with a rough outline of a series of plot points strung together with wads of chewing gum pulled from under tables in a restaurant.  Sure, it was held together, but the connecting tissue was nasty, and you really didn't want to touch it.

[kajnrig]

I'll say this, though: For the past week or two now, I've been obsessively choreographing in my mind a battle between Some Dude with an extra large lightsaber claymore and Some Girl with a lightsaber polearm. It's been years since I last did that. So... I mean it's got that going for it, I guess.

[danth]

20 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

distract you with so much material at such a fast pace that there was no time to think about anything going on

That's is all JJ Abrams can do. That and lens flare. 

[kalvasflam]

Like others have expressed here, it would've been better if they concentrated on Kylo and Rey story and just shoved TLJ and TROS into a single movie.  Cause the rest of it was practically stuff we didn't need to see.

Alternatively, a movie about Top Gun Damron and focused exclusively on his flying antics would have been ok too.  You can in fact think of a movie where it's about Poe vs an ace Tie Fighter pilot that culminates in the ultimate dog fight at the end where Poe finally kills the antagonist.  That might be watchable.  Heck, make the Tie ace Finn's older brother.  Who is pissed that the younger bro was swayed into joining the evil rebellion. 

 

Edited January 7, 2020 by kalvasflam

[Chronocidal]

30 minutes ago, kalvasflam said:

Alternatively, a movie about Top Gun Damron and focused exclusively on his flying antics would have been ok too.  You can in fact think of a movie where it's about Poe vs an ace Tie Fighter pilot that culminates in the ultimate dog fight at the end where Poe finally kills the antagonist.  That might be watchable.  Heck, make the Tie ace Finn's older brother.  Who is pissed that the younger bro was swayed into joining the evil rebellion. 

 

You can't have that without adding another competent fighter pilot to the plot, which is more than these movies were willing to do.  How are they supposed to keep believably screaming in your face about how awesome Poe is if they add someone he might possibly struggle against?

Edited January 7, 2020 by Chronocidal

[jenius]

Phasma should have been an Ace pilot! She should have been killed while dog fighting Poe due to interference by the Falcon 

[Bolt]

That would have been very cool. And a much more glorious end. Instead of the copy cat Boba Fett death.