Star Wars - Rise of Skywalker

[zico]

4/10. Some really good visual special effects, usual silly storyline, and all the old favourite characters.

First film I’ve seen where the opening explanatory captions just leave you more confused. Apparently the First Order is changing its name to the new Final Order, the dead evil emperor may still be alive or maybe not and there’s Ren and Rey. Well thanks for that.

The film then gets some lead characters to tell us the plot, which is that Ren has to kill Rey to win the Evil Empire plus a shiny new fleet of planet-destroying ships. There’s the obligatory starship being chased through a canyon scene, and the equally obligatory aliens with lardy bodies and fish heads. Some special effects (particular the characters) fit in with the original 70’s Star Wars feel (mainly the silly costumes) while others are bang up to date.

Star Wars then goes all East Enders on us, as it appears that all the evil people in the galaxy married all the saintly people, and they all have kids and grandkids with magical Jedi/Force/Whatever powers who are all secretly related to each other. But did they inherit baddy genes or good-twoshoes genes? All the main characters get to agonise over this in the breaks between the CGI fight scenes. Yet again, the fights scenes have people shooting laser pistols, laser bow & arrows and laser grenades, but the laser swords are more powerful than all the above. As ever, the stormtroopers are really bad shots and never hit anyone they're aiming at.

Rebels are all located in a campsite in the jungle where huge spaceships can land without even disturbing the trees. Quite a few characters from previous films come back for a brief spot back in the limelight (generally as ghosts or memories). Spaceships are either in space or just very high up, depending on whether or not people are jumping from one spaceship to another.

You won’t be surprised to find out that for the climactic scenes, the good guys are hopelessly outnumbered and obviously doomed. To make matters even worse, it turns out that killing the chief bad guy will only mean that he wins, and also if the bad guy kills the good guys, he wins. It all seems hopeless for the good guys. Surely this time, finally the Evil Empire will come out on top, because the reinforcements will never make it in time or the good guys won’t turn the tables. I won’t spoil the suspense by telling you what happens. My favourite bit of the film is the very end shot, which is quite witty.

[gryffron]

I'd give it 6/10. This one was much better than Last Jedi.

Best scene: Cavalry charge on a spaceship

Probably best for the kids though. The action scenes were great as usual. The plot - what?

Moral - Don't ever be a rebel. The govt lives in shiny starships whilst the rebels have to live in real dumps!

Gryff

[zico]

Yes, I forgot about the cavalry charge on the spaceship.
The plot seemed to revolve around supposedly intelligent adults not being able to work out whether they were nice people or evil people.
In Star Wars, the Evil Empire seems to lose every time, but at the start of the next film, they're always somehow back on top.

[Howyoudoin]

Finally watched it. 5/10 for Star Wars fans. 4/10 for non SW fans.

A few great cameo and a few really cringe ones.

I wasn’t a fan of Adam Driver in the previous film but he holds this one up all on his own.

I still don’t know why humans dress up as robots. Does anyone?

The sequel trilogy was better than the prequel trilogy but not by much.

Disappointing.

HYD