Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Lando!

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

Meh..............Nice to see Lando is back though.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Yeah, nothing will ever be as great as the original trilogy. I'm a bit concerned were just gonna throw in a bunch of force ghosts in a cluster fuck of shit and giggles because we can type thing. But seeing Lando pilot the falcon again was gold. Having Palps back doesn't make much sense. How does Rey have 1000 generations within her? Did she Kyle Katarn it up in the Valley of the Jedi? Might as well have Dassan in there. Also another Blue saber? Kinda lame... I was hoping she'd go Bastila Shan with a double sided since she always used a staff before she starting using the force.

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

Unless they changed the reasoning with the new Disney Lore double-bladed lightsabers were pretty much an extreme rarity in the SW universe at this point in time (the only real user being Darth Maul at this point in time and the Inquisitors from Rebels) so I'm not overly surprised she stuck to a traditional lightsaber (again not entirely sure what's considered canon anymore but I do know in legends double-bladed sabers were not in use (Maul only chose it after learning of Exar Kun and his mastery of the weapon) and they were never really a big thing with the Jedi as a whole so Rey probably never found the schematics in the information she took from the tree (if I remember correctly double-bladed sabers were developed by the Sith much like the original lightsaber was)).

With the new canon a blue saber is perfect for her and I'm assuming she took the crystal from the remnants of Anakin's destroyed saber before she left the ship (if it wasn't the reason the saber exploded in the first place) since, at this point in time, finding a kyber crystal would be extremely difficult since Palps pretty much made it illegal to own them and without prior knowledge she wouldn't even know where to find one (fuck this new lore though, makes it harder to explain this stuff). Plus it'd have to be a pre-used crystal as with new lore a crystal only gets it's color by forming a bond with the user and there are only two real colors that we know of coming from this (blue and green, there are no explanations for the other colors outside of red and white in canon atm (which is only brought forth by making a crystal bleed (red) and healing a bleeding crystal (white)). Unless this movie takes place quite a few years after The Last Jedi there is no way Rey would of had time to sufficiently bond with a crystal to bring it's color out (but based on her actions her blade would be blue regardless).

Palps being back makes sense if they're going the Dark Empire route here but I'm just assuming he's a force ghost (as much as people would have you believe Sith were capable of becoming force ghosts, just not in the same fashion as Jedi). Then again we might be seeing him back in his prime inside a clone body (that or his ass was Snoke all along and moved his essence into another body after Snoke's death). I'm assuming he's going to be the thing pushing Bitch Vader forward (yea I renamed him) towards a new goal.

Rey had over a 1000 generations of Jedi text and lore in her possession when she left Luke so it's nor far off to say she has that in her if she read the texts (which I'm sure she did as there is no other way for her to build a lightsaber unless Luke's ghost stuck around to teach her, we'll know more once the movie and more trailers come out).

My only real question is why are we calling this Rise of Skywalker? Are we implying that Rey is actually related to the Skywalker lineage in some way? I've been seeing theories on Twitter that she might actually be the same as Anakin being born directly from the force using him as a template (meaning old Palps continued his Master's research). Does Bitch Vader come crawling back to the light side after not getting his way becoming what he was meant to be? Did Han and Leia have another kid they never mentioned to anyone or did Luke get lucky one night only to result in a child he never knew of? This name choice confuses to fuck out of me and it's the only real reason I'll watch this movie (I still treat the other two as AU movies having nothing to do with the actual SW canon) when it comes to DVD/BD (again I refuse to see it in theaters).

Edited April 13, 2019 by Strider Hiryu

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I bet it's called Rise of Skywalker because it'll be revealed that Rey actually is a Skywalker, maybe even Luke's kid. The second movie did leave enough openings to fill in gaps for this third movie. When we see luke in the second movie he was living a hermit life like Yoda was on Dagobah and the flash backs we saw were of Luke middle aged. It could be revealed that before or during the establishment of his jedi academy he fell in love, maybe with Mara Jade from the books, had a kid, had a falling out with Mara, maybe never even knew of she was pregnant.. Lots of speculation here. Lol.. but they could make it happen in the movie. It would make sense for her to be a Skywalker, same with Kylo. And if palpatine is back they both may have to team up and rise up against him.. but then again it looked like kylo was reconstructing his Vader style helmet. And I could be completely wrong.

The original trilogy and the prequel trilogy was all about the Skywalker lineage. It would only make sense for this movie to continue that. And all good things that come to an end always tie back into the beginning somehow. By bringing palpatine back and focusing on a Skywalker defeating him would bring the entire collection of movies to a good end. Then any squeals after that could have more free range.

I did read that the next trilogy will be set in the old republic and I'm very glad for that. Instead of having to focus on specific blood lines or only a handful of force users we'll get movies with a variety of jedi, aliens, completely new plot lines, etc. 

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the Old Republic being the setting for the next trilogy. While I'm glad they're going with it I'm scared about what they'll consider canon going forward because as it stands I really like the current, legends continuity we have with KoToR and TOR (I say legends because we're not entirely sure what current Old Republic stuff is even considered canon as of right now). It'll be a huge miss for me if they write out a lot of the currently established characters (like Revan or Vitiate (the Sith Emperor (though he's dead now it'd suck if they completely wrote him out)).

It's pretty much been established that Rey isn't Luke's kid (and it's pretty unlikely Mara is canon anymore though it'd be cool if she was) but I wouldn't be surprised if she is somehow related to the Skywalkers (technically Kylo is a Solo with Skywalker blood so the only living Skywalker we know of is Leia though it's been established her role won't be as big anymore due to Carrie's untimely passing). Then again J.J. could be completely fucking with us and throw a huge curve ball at us. Who knows? With the way these movies have panned out so far there really isn't anything that could surprise me anymore (fuck Palps coming back is honestly par for the course now that Snoke is dead since we have no big baddie to face right now (Bitch Vader will never be anything comparable to Snoke, Palps, of good old Granddaddy Vader)). I was watching a youtube video today speculating that what we heard was actually a holo-recording of Palps that they find on the wreckage of the Death Star which could very well be (using it as a plot point for some sinister plan he was working on in secret before he up and died that Snoke was pursuing and Kylo will maybe finish, who knows).

[Sledgstone 8,672]

So that clip at the end.. Rey with the red lightsaber. I'm wondering if thats a clip just to throw everyone off and its just part of some vision that takes place in the movie, or are they really going to do some kind of role reversal and we'll have Rey turn dark side but somehow Kylo redeems himself? Hmmm..

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

The whole scene looks CGI and awful tbh, and why are the blades like Kylos? No one is able to make a stable red saber blade anymore? Its clearly some type of vision like when Luke went into the cave on Dagobah. Its pretty much why I didn't share the trailer. I've gotten a little tired of these misdirect trailers, they're so over done now you can tell when their just a misdirection. The Walking Dead has been the king of bullshit previews the past couple of years. I think thats where most my burn out comes from. I have a lot of friends that send me clips overly hyped about it to where I get annoyed and shit all over it, and then I turn out to be right. I won't even watch the "sneak peak" clips from Talking Dead. It's always some boring scene with a dramatic turn around to look at something with a surprised face... and then its nothing noteworthy when the episode comes on.

After reading about how JJ Abrams had a detailed outline of how the 3 movies were going to go, and Rian Johnson was like "nah fuck that I'll just do whatever I want", I hope they can make everything come together with this movie. I liked both movies, but it does feel like they just did things just to do them last flim with Snoke's death, and all the big show pieces. None of the villains have been really convincing. General Hux is a really weak character to where I didn't even remember his name from the first film until I saw him again in the next movie. Phasma was a SUPER interesting character but she feels wasted. I honestly think she could have filled a Boba Fett type bad ass role. Benicio Del Toro's character was interesting, but I feel like he died too if I remember correctly... So everyone except Kylo and Hux dies, lets throw Palps in... which I also don't have an issue with, but damn they could have set up the foundation for it in Last Jedi. I just feel like Abrams should have done all 3 films to keep the coherency of it all.

[Strider Hiryu 2,704]

You have to remember that light saber crystals were extremely hard to come by during the Empire's grip on the galaxy with Palpatine outlawing the ownership of such crystals (as well as lightsabers). Plus what crystals there were were under Palpatine's control and were used in the formation of new weapons (like the Death Star Super Laser which used kyber crystals to power and shoot it). I'm assuming that what we see is a vision Rey has sometime in the movie or that Palpatine finds a way to take over her body (a power he did have) and uses whatever crystal he can find to power the lightsaber. That or she's using the red crystal Luke had (yes he has a red crystal he found in his journeys that he wore around his neck) and is using it in place of a her blue crystal (though this is a stretch and I don't know if that crystal was cracked like Kylo's is or why you'd use a red crystal in place of a stable blue). All in all it's most likely nothing serious since I highly doubt they'd make Rey fall to the dark side. Then again who knows in this "Star Wars makes no fucking sense anymore" world we live in since Disney bought the rights. Plus, being totally honest, that's the most ridiculous and stupid lightsaber design since Kylo's and I've seen plenty of bad designs.

Quite honestly that little sneak peak kinda ruined my hopes of this movie being any good beyond the things that made the other two movies worth watching. The only real reason I'm going to see it once it hits streaming platforms is because I want to see how Palpatine plays into this, could really give a fuck less what else goes on in the movie (outside of Rey's development as a character). The last two films were such a disappointment considering all the lore they threw out the window to make them.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

 

[Sledgstone 8,672]

Looks like theres going to be some epic space battles.  

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Oof. I can't defend this one. Awesome special effects and action galore... plot is fucking terrible, story went totally off the rails. Defies all logic even in the Star Wars universe. Forced nostalgia, and technological inconsistencies.

Hot Take Key Words/Phrases: Shang Tsung, Fairy Tail Friendship Power, Power Level Over 9000, Star Forge without the Star Forge.

I don't have time right now, but ill spoiler tag everything I found wrong with this film.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Ah so where do I begin. From what I gathered after digesting this film for a week is that J.J. Abrams was truly unhappy with TLJ and basically tried to retcon it and cram everything he wanted it to be in that movie along with this movie in the time span of a single movie. What you have is a nonsensical film that moves insanely fast without much logic. There are a bunch of new characters that you have zero investment in. They started their plotlines too late in the game. This is where I believe Abrams crammed stuff in that was too late to be added. These characters probably would have been pretty good if they debuted in the last film and developed naturally. Instead they're just tossed in and given sizable roles for such minor characters. Now on to the spoilery stuff

Spoiler

Kylo Ren's turn was poorly done. While Vader's was just as sudden there was better and more believable precedent for it. It made for a nice final fight scene though

Also in TLJ neither Kylo nor Rey knew how they could communicate from long distances. This is never resolved. I mean I guess it could have been palps, but then he would have known Kylo was dealing behind his back the whole time. Plus I like how it turned into an inventory exchange system all of the sudden. wtf?

Finn wanted to tell Rey he was force sensitive. This plot line seemed to go no where, and if you didn't catch it at the end when he sensed her death, you were left wondering what he wanted to tell her in the sand pit. Finn's character got so screwed in this trilogy, The first trailer made it feel like he was going to be the main character instead you have a inconsistent character that bounced between semi serious to comic relief. He had 3 potential love interests that never really developed.

Apparently now Force ghosts can catch solid objects and lift X-Wings out of the water? C'mon, they might as well have defeated the empire themselves without live Jedi. Plus how the fuck can Luke's old ass submerged X-Wing work perfectly but the Falcon has to break down every flight? The whole series of events is where the movie started to lose me as it got even more fantastical later.

The first order now the FINAL ORDER! How unoriginal. How the fuck does old model Star Destroyers have death star cannons? the OPness is dumb. It took huge structures to generate that much energy and now they miniaturized it. But hey, good thing they used the same engineering as the aliens from independence day.. like to the T with the shields having to be down and everything.

The Palpatine thing I was giving a chance. But they had him hooked up like the villain from Michael Jackson's Captain EO, and then he Shang Tsung'ed the force from Rey and Kylo, grew his hands back, and then fucking force lightninged the entire rebel fleet... that was fucking dumb. I don't care how powerful the force was in any legends/EU book. No. They might as well played the Highlander song while he did it for extra cheese. But hey, Rey can kill her Grandad the same way Mace Windu tried too... I guess it's never explained why he can't stop using force lightning when a Saber is reflecting it. BTW who the fuck did Palps bang to have a kid that he just straight up had murdered... good thing we never knew their names, or anything.... just hey Rey, you're a Palp and everyone knew it except you! 🙄 I mean launching the Mandalorian ep early just to cover for Force healing like that was even going to be controversial was a head scratcher with all the other insane shit in this film. I guess I was expecting a sweet ass Saber fight, and when he pointed his hands to the heavens I was like "seriously?"

Honestly it would have been better if Rey died. The kiss was dumb, Kylo dying was dumb in how it happened. The Jedi and Sith going extinct for now would have been a better plot line. Instead Rey went to go drink blue milk with her bad ass yellow saber that she should have used rather than bumming everyone else's.

My favorite part of the film was Chewy getting the medal he deserved back in A New Hope. I smiled for that one. Lando was a nice touch too. I'm surprised they didn't kill him off like everyone else. Outside of that I rank this trilogy below the prequels. Both weren't great, but for different reasons. The prequels were more fun, and memeable. The lightsaber battles redeemed the poor acting of the prequels to me. The Saber battle between Rey and Kylo was actually the best part of the film but the choreography was not as exciting. I mean if she learned all those crazy force powers on the fly she should have been able to duel with a saber on a pro level too.

 

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I watched this yesterday. I was expecting a hot mess, but honestly this movie was much better than I thought it would be. Sure it had alot of its own issues, but it was significantly better than TLJ.

 

Spoiler

 

14 hours ago, DeathscytheX said:

They might as well played the Highlander song while he did it for extra cheese. But hey, Rey can kill her Grandad the same way Mace Windu tried too... I guess it's never explained why he can't stop using force lightning when a Saber is reflecting it. BTW who the fuck did Palps bang to have a kid that he just straight up had murdered... good thing we never knew their names, or anything.... just hey Rey, you're a Palp and everyone knew it except you! 🙄 I mean launching the Mandalorian ep early just to cover for Force healing like that was even going to be controversial was a head scratcher with all the other insane shit in this film. I guess I was expecting a sweet ass Saber fight, and when he pointed his hands to the heavens I was like "seriously?"

Spoiler

ROTFLMAO!  Highlander music!

I also completely thought about Independence Day when all those star destroyers had no shields and everyone had to attack the cannon on the underbelly.. wtf.

Ok, my opinions.. The movie moved insanely fast. Like I like a movie with a good pace, but even for me this movie was one drastic scene to the next for a solid 2 1/2 hours. That pace was crazy. It felt like 2 movies worth of content jammed into 1.. or 3 movies worth jammed into one if it was done at TLJ pace.

If felt like this movie almost negated TLJ and was a sequel to Force Awakens. TLJ could be almost skipped and you wouldn't miss much at all except how Luke died. I saw some people complain that Rose didn't get any screen time. And honestly she didn't, but it didn't really bother me. What felt odd about it, is that new woman character that showed up out of nowhere and was now doing all the action with Finn.. Its like they took Rose's job kicked her to the curb and gave the role to a completely different character and everyone seemed content with it. But at the same time, Rose wasn't a major character to begin with. I say that because if we deleted the Finn / Rose scenes from TLJ.. going to the casino, getting the code breaker, doing that battle on the salt encrusted red crystal planet place.. it wouldn't affect the overall outcome of the movie at all. And that was almost half of TLJ. All that character build up for Finn and Rose and all of it was dropped and was overall unimportant and felt like filler. Filler that could have been used to further the plot so the last movie didn't have to jam an entire epic ending into a 2 1/2 hour movie. ehh..

The plot of Rise of Skywalker was all over the place. Find this thing (dagger) that will lead us to a thing (sith wayfinder) that will help us find this other thing (sith planet). It felt like a half movie long fetch quest from a video game. And on that fetch quest a bunch of stuff happens and Kylo kept right up their asses which felt like a huge amount of confrontations just to eventually turn him good. There was some good throw backs to TLJ tho. Snoke said he was the one that connected them through the force, but at the end of that movie after Snoke was dead, they had one last connection still, so I guess it was established that even tho Snoke was dead, they were now linked forever I guess.. But it turns out Snoke was a puppet controlled by the Emperor.. so why the emperor didn't destroy that link.. I dunno. Maybe Kylo and Rey were keeping the connection going themselves subconsciously.. or we can all just say "the force works in mysterious ways". After Snoke was killed off so crappily in the last movie, having Palpatine reveal he created the guy to control like a puppet all along actually gives Snoke an actual backstory that only took about 30 seconds to explain. So it makes sense why Snoke wanted Luke dead so bad, why Snoke had no real backstory to begin with and if anyone knew it was Palpatine controlling Snoke from the beginning, the entire Republic and not just the Resistance would have been scouring the Galaxy for him instead of considering the First order just another remnant Empire cell.

Another throwback to TLJ was the Kylo / Rey... "when the time comes you'll take my hand" well that did happen, when they saved each others lives. They both reached down at each others hands after the healing. It felt like Abrams did a direct assault to Johnson from the last movie when Luke grabbed that lightsaber and said "a jedi weapon deserves more respect than that" but in the last movie, Luke himself tossed it over his shoulder like a dog poop bag into the garbage.

WTF moments.. I completely thought Rey killed Chewy.. wtf bullshit misdirect that was. All those star destroyers had miniaturized death star cannons... what like from force awakens? Really? they had a miniaturized death star cannon in that movie and it couldn't even vaporize a steel door. but these can blow up planets? REALLY?? The planet of the sith.. why they called it a different name makes no sense considering its established canon from the clone wars cartoon and Yoda went there in that cartoon so he already knew how to get there. But for some reason Rey coudn't focus her force enough at the beginning of the movie to communicate with any force ghosts, so the movie turned into that giant fetch quest. I was shocked when Rey kissed Kylo, I always thought of them as the quarreling brother/sister combo.

They can use the force to transport objects was a far stretch. And Rey looked completely dead at the end.. I'm guessing maybe she had the slightest bit of life left in her for Kylo to bring her back because fully resurrecting the dead is too far. Poor Leia. Luke was able to force project himself to a different planet and do a mock battle, but Leia yells to her son and dies from the exertion from it. I think this happened like it did because the movie got re-cut like 3 times after it was all filmed and Carrie Fisher died. She might have had a better role in that scene but they couldn't do any reshoots of her because of her passing. Although it was fitting that she got to communicate with him one last time even if it was only a single word. Also, the force healing. Its been done in the old books that aren't canon anymore, but alot of those healers specialized in using healing over combat if I remember right. But I guess anyone can force heal now. But I did like the fact that Rey said it transfers some of your life to that person when she healed that snake. So its more of a sacrifice move.. so, Kylo bringing her back from 99% dead would kill him off.. but Baby Yoda with a lifespan of 1000 years or so could easily fully heal people like a drop in the bucket with his life span. But in the old novels if I remember right, it wasn't like that.. those force users could just heal indefinitely but it would exhaust them like baby yoda. 

Palpatine force lightning all those ships. wtf. And also.. all those ships.. on both sides. How the hell did that many star destroyers get built there to begin with. No shipyard in orbit, just thousands of ships and fighters that were... built underwater? Maybe the planet was hollowed out and they made them inside the planet? wtf. Yeah.. where was the starforge?  All the rebel ships was less of a stretch to me. Everyone hated Palpatine so much that Lando only needed an hour or so to broadcast a signal to everyone.. Hey, Palpatine is a alive want to come kill him? And everyone literally everyone shows up. lmao. Still more believable than all those star destroyers.

I could go on about this movie. lol. I still think it was far better than TLJ, and the action scenes were amazing. Overall Disney dropped the ball on star wars though. It should have had someone with a solid vision like the marvel universe in charge of it controlling where the plot and character development was going. I will say tho, I liked the lightsaber fight choreography in Rise of Skywalker, because it actually looked like they were trying to kill each other. Look back at phantom menace, theres at least one youtube video that emphasized how bad those fights were. Most of the lightsaber swings in the prequel trilogy were all pointless and would never even connect. But in Rise of skywalker there was no pointless spinning and twirling around and foot swipes with a lightsaber, instead every swing looked like a potential killing swing.