I was talking about this movie, not the last one, but “sensibility of a child” seems pretty much in Rise of Skywalker’s wheelhouse, so my surprise remains.
You don’t like good stories?
Understand something, we’re not arguing that this movie needed to be like Kramer vs. Kramer. We’re suggesting that all of the marvelous visuals and spectacle you enjoy can exist with well rounded characters and a cohesive plot that I enjoy.
I don’t doubt you! And there’s nothing wrong with having that point of view.
But can you grant that things like this are important to some of us, without it being a case of overthinking space wizards with laser swords?
Because if things are going to happen in a movie for no discernible reason “in-character” (to use another LARPing / roleplaying term) but only for “out of character” reasons, then I’m robbed of the joy of being able to empathize with the characters, feel anticipation or suspense about plot events, or plausibly anticipate how the plot will flow as I’m watching it.
If I’m watching a movie and I learn that Doug is deathly afraid of spiders, but he also loves his sister June, then I can look forward to the scene where those two things are going to tug him in different directions, and watch him either succeed or fail to put his nobler impulses above his fears.
Then if that scene comes up, Doug steels his nerve and reaches into the hole to push the button that releases June from the death trap, knowing that there’s a deadly spider hiding in the hole… And then he’s bitten! The music swells, he turns an agonized face toward the camera / June and gasps “I’m sorry”. June rushes out, crying, and catches him as he falls to the floor…
Then in the next scene Doug has a bandage on his hand as the two teenagers are in the library researching mummies, and the spider bite is never mentioned again. There’s no consequence to his decision except for a momentary bit of spectacle.
That’s just poor storytelling. It has nothing to do with whether or not a spider of species X biting a person of body weight Y would result in death, or sickness, or a mild rash. It has to do with how plots and characters work. Maybe in a comedy, where you’re deliberately playing against the expected through-line. But not in anything dramatic that expects you to care about the characters and their actions.
Again, this is just one aspect of movie-making, and it happens to be important to me, but if it isn’t important to you, you’re not wrong. Your tastes are not inferior, just different.
Rey chopped Kylo’s TIE fighter and it was destroyed with him in it! No, he’s fine!
Chewbacca’s dead! No, he’s fine!
C3-PO’s memory is wiped! No, it was backed up!
The only wayfinder was destroyed! Wait, the other one still works!
Zorii’s dead! No, she’s fine!
Agreed, although I will concur with those that say, looking back, the first one wasn’t as good as I imagined it when I first saw it in highschool.
I don’t care if she went and raided Kylo Ren’s closet. I just wanted to see some costuming and/or hair change. She could have put on TPM Amidala style clothes for all I care.
I thought there was a scene of Leia and Rey hugging so that was why I assumed they had to keep the same look because after that the rest of the movie took place in the same like 3 days or whatever because arbitrary and implausible time constraints are fun and not tedious to watch. Easier to have a ticking clock for reasons than let the story breathe.
All right, Rarity.
There might have been a scene like that, but that sort of thing is trivial to CGI your way around these days.
I saw the movie today, hubbie wanted to go so we went. I didn’t see The Last Jedi and I only saw maybe the first third of the movie before that, on a plane I think. I saw the original trilogy when it came out, and episode 1. I am not a Star Wars Maven by any means, so I have a question about the last scene of this movie.
(Also, I tried reading through the thread to see if this question has been answered already, but after 45 minutes and still on the first page, I gave up. Sorry if I’m covering ground again.)
Rey has two light sabers that she wraps in cloth and ties up neatly, and then buries in the sand (incidental question: why does she do that?). I assumed at the time that they were her own saber and the one that Leia “would have wanted you to have” that Luke gave her. Then she has a third one, that looks old and sort of steampunk. I didn’t notice what color the light was, either blue or green I guess. Whose light saber was that? And unless it’s obvious, how did she come by it?
Rey doesn’t have her own lightsaber throughout most of the new trilogy. The saber she was using in this movie (and the previous two) was Luke’s original lightsaber, that he lost in Empire Strikes Back. Rey found it in the basement of a bar in The Force Awakens. (It is not at all explained how his lightsaber ended up in that bar.) At the end of the latest movie, she’s burying Luke’s lightsaber alongside Leia’s lightsaber. The yellow lightsaber she ignites at the very end is, apparently, one that she made between killing Palpatine, and going to Tatooine, which is meant to indicate that she’s a “real” Jedi - canonically, building your own lightsaber was the last task given an apprentice before they graduated.
There’s absolutely no coherent story reason for her to bury those sabers on Tatooine. The scene only exists as one last spasm of fan service before the credits roll.
I see, thanks. I guess I shouldn’t have expected to understand every reference, having missed so much of the previous episodes.
Sure. I was just trying to explain my point of view.
Because it would be nice not to have to put up with insulting digs like this:
I like good stories. I don’t require every movie I watch to have them.
It’s yellow, and she made it herself. From part of her staff, apparently, hence the steampunk look.
The yellow colour we’ve only seen before in Jedi Temple Guards, in the cartoons. Theirs were folding double-bladed models (a bit like the red one Dark Rey uses in her vision).
I realise this sounds like I don’t think RoS had a good story. That’s not true, I think it had a perfectly fine story.
Wasn’t it snapped in half in Snoke’s throne room?
Now I wish there had been a post-credits scene where as soon as Rey leaves some Jawas run on-screen and start digging.
Mark Hamill looked handsome in that movie.
It was. She put it back together between movies.
And that’s half of what’s wrong with the movie in a nutshell.
I agree that RoS was a case of “come up with cool visuals/one-liners, then do the bare minimum of scriptwriting to string them together, and ignore the lack of any actual story”. To me, the most emotion-filled moments were from C3PO (as he’s basically agreeing to die for the cause); that’s a tribute to the actor who was able to convey such emotion just by moving his head and arms, and to the character that had been established in all the previous movies, but also a pretty harsh indictment of the rest of the current movie.
Also, as a tiny nitpick that didn’t really affect the movie (there were too many giant plotholes/inconsistencies for this tiny one to matter), in the hyperspeed-skipping scene with the Falcon, it was running from TIE fighters, right? The ones that A New Hope established were too short-ranged to be found in the middle of space? And that various authorized printer materials specifically said did not have hyperspeed capacity? Again, not a big thing, but another example of the attitude of “Screw continuity, I’ve got gee-whiz images to make here”