Rise of Skywalker: The Seen It/Spoilers Thread

[lowkey13]

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[Zardnaar]

A Star Wars Guide to Killing Your Enemies so They Stay Dead

Throwing them down a bottomless pit should be enough to kill them permanently!

slate.com

Ugh. I just realized that the last good JJ Abrams movie was 2009 Star Trek reboot.

...and I have my doubts about that one in retrospect. Great casting doesn’t equal great directing.

JJ is Hollywood speak for original.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Gradine]

I saw a review that referred to JJ Abrams as "Hollywood's most consistent B Student" and that about encapsulates my thoughts. Better than the prequels by a wide margin. Worse than any of the OT. Definitely worse than its immediate predecessor, which I fear it will forever compare unfavorably to (a fate which I feel that Return of the Jedi always suffered from and never deserved). Maybe better than The Force Awakens? Certainly riskier, which again I know, low bar (which it only barely clears), but again, is another thing it will forever be compared unfavorably to The Last Jedi to (and say what you will about TLJ, it took risks).

I see a lot of people complaining about the pacing, and fair but like... have you seen a Star Wars film? Like... any of them? Rise of Skywalker is probably the most conventionally paced film in the whole damn series. And yes, yes, low bar, etc. etc. At least it moves at a solid clip. I never felt like it was moving too fast, and the only places where it really dragged for me were the little-bit-too-long all-hope-is-lost moments.

 

[Morrus]

I see a lot of people complaining about the pacing, and fair but like... have you seen a Star Wars film? Like... any of them? Rise of Skywalker is probably the most conventionally paced film in the whole damn series

The first third of RoS moves like a fast-clip montage scene. I enjoyed the film, but I can't agree with anybody who claims that first section wasn't unusually rapid-paced, darting from one short scene to the next. It really was very montage-like, and very, very fast-paced. More so than a Michael Bay film or a Fast & Furious.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Morrus]

This is correct about Abrams, but the more I think about JJ Abrams, the more I think that calling him a consistent B student is over-praising him.

I mean, his films make money, and that's not a small thing. But he's kind of like a modern Ron Howard without even the gravitas of Howard (I never thought those words would ever form in that combination- lacking the gravitas of Ron Howard!).

The JJ movies are the equivalent of eating a whole bunch of pixie stix when you're an adult; sure, you get the rush of nostalgia. Then the rush of ... sugar. But 20 minutes after you've finished, you're left empty inside, and maybe a little sick. Because it's all surface, no depth. Nothing to fill you, nothing to (metaphor is starting to fail now) challenge you, or engage you ...

JJ will give you what you think you wanted, and nothing more. He can't fail, because he never really tries. I read what Lucas said about TFA; I can't imagine what he will say about this one.

So I'm getting the sense you didn't like the film then? Just stretching here.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Gradine]

The first third of RoS moves like a fast-clip montage scene. I enjoyed the film, but I can't agree with anybody who claims that first section wasn't unusually rapid-paced, darting from one short scene to the next. It really was very montage-like, and very, very fast-paced. More so than a Michael Bay film or a Fast & Furious.

Fast-paced, yes. Moreso than Bay or F&F is way overselling it though. It was fast-paced, yes, but it never got to the point where I would describe it as even frenetic, let alone montage-like.

Compare (the good trilogies, anyway):
ANH: Very weird, disorienting media res intro; we follow two droids antics for a good 15-20 minutes before Luke even shows up on camera and the music cue swells to let us know "oh, this is the hero". It also takes forever for the action to move off of Tatooine for how little of the relevant plot actually happens there.
ESB: You might think this starts with the Imperial assault on Hoth, but you'd be wrong. It, again, takes 15-20 minutes of glacially* paced business with Wampa attacks and Tauntaun innards and incest and it's all very iconic but also damn slow. On a recent re-watch I also noticed how weirdly paced the Falcon escape sequence(s) is are.
ROTJ: Jabba's Palace.
TFA: Again, we follow comedic sidekick antics for a while before introducing our main heroine, but then, this film's structure is just A New Hope redux, so what else would we expect? Otherwise, it competes with RoS on the pacing front.
TLJ: Canto Bight. But also, it suffers from a lot of the same weird multiple-subplots awkward sense of how-long-any-of-this-is-taking issues that Empire Strikes Back also has.
ROS: Has a swift-moving first act that's honestly pretty typical for a big budget action movie in the New Teens.

*puns always intended

 

[Morrus]

Fast-paced, yes. Moreso than Bay or F&F is way overselling it though. It was fast-paced, yes, but it never got to the point where I would describe it as even frenetic, let alone montage-like.

Yeah, you said. I disagree (still).