Saw it last night and thought it was a great Star Wars movie, had a lot of fun watching it and will probably rewatch it (unlike the prequels or TLJ). Don’t have any problem with Palpatine bringing himself back from the dead, it already happened a bunch of times in the old Expanded Universe novels so I was expecting it to happen in the theatrical releases. I think they did about as well as could be expected with the way TLJ dropped the ball, and their biggest problem is that no one sat down and figured out a coherent story for the 3 ‘final’ movies. (I also think that they won’t be the last main series Star Wars movies).
I think that the obvious answer is that R2 started backing up C3PO’s memories BECAUSE he saw C3PO get mind-wiped back in Episode 3. R2 and 3PO might bicker constantly when they’re together, but R2 saw that happen once and decided ‘never again’. And I disagree that it’s a cop-out for someone in an action movie to take a ‘this might not work’ risk and have it actually work. They established that there were backups, but they might not be reliable, and then it turned out to work which happens all the time in Star Wars.
There should have been a 5-minute scene at the beginning with a couple we don’t recognize who are on the run. They’ve got some black market cloning tech they’re looking to sell, but someone is after them. They are trying to find a buyer on some shady planet, when the man recognizes a ship that has landed and says something like, “He’s never going to stop, and it’s not us he’s after. It’s her.” Then it’s revealed they have a young girl with them, a daughter with dark hair. The woman in great desperation says, “But he can SENSE her! There’s nowhere to go!” He grimly replies “I know a place.” Then we see a brief scene of them leaving her on a desert planet, woman is screaming and crying, the man is determined to go through with it. Camera zooms into the girl’s eyes and cuts to present-time Rey, and we realize this all happened 20 years ago.
It’s not a perfect explanation, but it establishes Rey’s parents as real people we have some knowledge of and connection to, instead of just pulling a relationship with Palpatine out of thin air.
I’d be fine with that as the second scene. The first scene should have been Kylo Ren visiting Palpatine. The whole 1 minute of Kylo killing a bunch of people for the Wayfinder was completely extraneous. Just show Kylo flying in with the Wayfinder - you didn’t need to explain how he got it.
Then when Kylo asked Palpatine about Rey, then show the parents running.
I rather liked it. For the first two thirds it was meh but the last half hour just worked and gripped me, there were some beautiful shots of the space battle from the Sith lair and of the new ships joining the battle. I liked the moment when Rey pulled out the second light saber and was moved when she called herself a Skywalker and of course the final shot with the twin suns.
Before that it was hit and miss. I found the Kylo-Rey dialogue scenes rather tiresome thought the moment when he pulls the necklace was rather clever and the light-saber battle was good. I agree the plot wasn’t the greatest: going to Place X and finding object A which takes you to Place Y etc. And if they had to bring back Palpatine, I wonder if they should have kept it a proper plot twist instead of revealing it in trailers and the opening crawl.
That could work too, but it would come right after Palpatine had said “You don’t know who she really is” so it would make it a little too obvious who the pursuer is. Maybe, not though, that could work.
The helmet was stupid and pointless to bring back. That was a petty choice by Abrams who didn’t like how Rian mocked Kylo’s wanna-be-Vader helmet. He should have let that one go.
If you’d gotten closer, you might have heard her say “Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?”
I sat behind a group of 20-somethings, and most of them had spent a lot of time and money on their costumes. After the movie, as I walked past, I wondered aloud how hardcore fans liked it. Got a grinning thumbs up from a well-dressed Obi-EwanMcGregor-Wan.
I have been thinking about the decision to bring back Palpatine and I think it makes a certain amount of sense. They needed a villain and once they killed off Snoke who else did they have ? It was too late to introduce a brand new villain. They could have made Kylo a full-fledged villain but it was pretty clear that he was set up for a redemption arc.
Once they brought back Palpatine it then made sense to make Rey his granddaughter. It sets up the whole theme of family being a matter of choice rather than birth which was well done IMO and gives the film its name.
What they should have done was give more backstory about Palpatine, his children and his resurrection by cutting the plot fluff and the uncompelling new characters. I also think Palpatine’s return should have been a reveal in the middle of the film.
I understand that Palpatine/Rey makes the whole film feel like a retread, which was also a problem in Force Awakens, but with the right execution I think it could have worked well.
I noticed they used more CGI ships in this one than ever before. What happened to relying on models? This resulted in some shots that just didn’t feel like Star Wars, where the scale seemed off. One shot in particular of an A-wing doing a slow dive down into the trees where the Resistance base was setup was very noticeable. There was another one with the Falcon lifting off from a forest near the beginning where the size of the ship kept changing depending on camera angle.
This movie and the new trilogy in general did something amazing: it made me appreciate the Prequels more. I always liked Revenge of the Sith more than most but now I appreciate the totality of the three movies even more. They were executed terribly and had terrible casting and acting but at least they were about something and had a story that was interesting and had something to say. Rise of Skywalker had none of those things.
Tbh, I hated the name. Though it did make me think Ben would survive and create something lasting as opposed to Rey adopting the Skywalker name.
During the movie someone called Rey our last hope, and I immediately though, whoa… that would have been a great name for the movie. Kind of dovetailing the (given) name for the first movie. ‘The Last Hope’ ending the saga started by “A New Hope”.