The Rise of Skywalker is Forgettable
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- Опубликовано: 17 июл 2024
- Of all of the cosmic letdowns in the last half decade that have been largely defined by Disney's far-too-sanitary dive into reviving nostalgic properties for the sake of mass appeal and [perceived] overenthusiastic narcissism, The Rise of Skywalker is one of the worst. I'm here to tell you what went observably wrong and how its failure was serviced by setting up this trilogy that was clearly doomed to mediocrity from the start.
Also, how else am I supposed to describe this massive company that knows they can skimp out on a genuine understanding of their source material, because they know that they can produce the same visuals as every other film that they've made in the last ten years and still make a billion dollars, aside from outright calling them narcissistic pricks?
I have an addendum of some extra thoughts on this review and movie in the comments below.
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Outro ► • Cult of the Lamb [Offi...
Video chapters:
0:00 - Intro
1:36 - Part 1: Some Positivity
3:54 - Part 2: All Potatoes, No Meat
9:12 - Part 3: Please Let Rey Do Something
14:28 - Part 4: Please Let Finn Do Something
18:42 - Part 5: "...Of Course It Does"
26:58 - Part 6: Shutting Down a Legacy
Music:
Anxiety from the Celeste OST ► • [Official] Celeste Ori...
Tempos Vari by Freedom Trail Studio ► • Tempos Vari
Bella Bella Beat by Nana Kwabena ► • Bella Bella Beat
Here I Come by Mikos da Gawd ► • Here I Come
Salamanca by Sarah, the Illstrumentalist ► • Sarah, the Illstrument...
Beverly Chills from the Lethal League Blaze OST ► • AAron EVO - Beverly C...
Ruins from the Undertale OST ► • Ruins
Surviving Exile from the Pyre OST (White Lute Edition) ► • Pyre Original Soundtra...
Thrash Pack from the Pyre OST ► • Pyre Original Soundtra...
Bopeebo (Instrumental Version) from the Friday Night Funkin' OST ► • Bopeebo (Instrumental)
Mini-Boss from the Kirby's Dreamland 3 OST ► • Mini-Boss - Kirby's Dr...
Beautiful Dead from the Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc OST ► • Beautiful Dead
Bob-Omb Battlefield from Super Mario 64 ► • Super Mario 64 - Main ...
The Rain Formerly Known as "Purple" from the Risk of Rain 2 OST ► • Chris Christodoulou - ...
Also, today is my birthday :) 
Развлечения
As you can imagine, it takes me a while to write script, gather clips, and edit them in a way that I see fit. As time passes during the editing phase, I often come across some points that I make that I might not fully agree with, since the time I have spent on editing lets me reflect better on what the heck I actually said. However, I don't make the effort to adjust these points because they were still true for me back when I wrote, revised, and recorded the script, so why bother changing what was my opinion at the time?
That, and adjusting them after the fact is a real pain.
To adjust, I would have to go back and re-record that segment up until the next break in the video, purely because my voice sounds different _depending on the day that I record_ . Secondly, timing graphics to match my voice can get thrown off by different inflections or pauses in the new recordings, forcing me to readjust segments I've already worked on. I don't have time to retread every minute detail I find wrong and sometimes have to suck it up and say that it was good enough.
Third and finally, you might find that some of the images are out of place amid the regular flow of the video, that some video clips are stretched to weird resolutions, and that most if not all of the video clips are mirrored. That's because if I ever want this critique to come out on this bricked laundry machine of a website, I have to go out of my way to make sure that the automatic claim system doesn't pick up on the clips and strike my channel. It's an awful, awful system, and I wish there was something I could do about it, but as it stands this is the best that I can do.
With that all out of the way, here is a list of statements I make throughout the video (with timestamps) and what I would have adjusted, given more time:
3:09 - I call Star Wars "the most defining science fiction IP of the last half century", even though Marvel is clearly listed above it. This is a result of two things: 1) Star Wars: A New Hope was far more successful in the 80s and has gone on to be a powerhouse today whereas Marvel started to hit their stride more in the last fifteen years. 2) For some reason I classified Marvel's movies in my head under a broad "action" banner while writing this without thinking about them being science fiction films. Complete idiocy on my part.
13:00 - In the movie they explain that Chewbacca's return from death by saying that Chewbacca was rescued before the transport ship ever launched, but then if Rey is able to "sense" his life force later in the movie and is already demonstrably powerful as a Jedi, why wasn't she able to sense his lack of presence on the ship to begin with? Even if the reason is that it's Disney's attempt at emotional manipulation, the writing here isn't convincing enough to make it effective. The writers are picking and choosing what rules apply, seemingly on a whim.
14:15 - Something else I want to add here is that I'm very briefly glossing over the psychological dependency that people have on what's familiar to them, even amidst toxicity. An example from my own experience is that I know people who are vehemently distrusting of the idea of government-centralized structure, yet they'd never go out of their way to make a decentralizing effort because their welfare and unemployment checks are far too valuable to them. From what we know about Rey at the start of TFA, she is familiar with the rates that the trader offers her on Jakku, yet all of that experience and familiarity is immediately forgotten for the sake of convenience. Let your characters make bad decisions, it makes them more engaging.
18:13 - It's not exactly nothing, but it sure as hell doesn't feel earned. He "wins" this fight purely on the basis of catching Phasma by surprise in the theatrical cut at which point the victory is handed to him like a participation prize. So in other words, Finn _does_ have character development but in the exact same way Rey does throughout this trilogy: by being handed everything he needs for it.
19:55 - "What about Kylo Ren?" Kylo Ren is a really hard character for me to consider a main character because of how his scenes always felt intrusionary and more like they were there to update the audience on what the villain was doing. Disney definitely tried to push the angle that the villain was a convincing character too, but when one hero has no connection to the character at the start of the trilogy and the other's relationship is like that of grocery clerk to a company CEO, there's no reason to believe that Kylo Ren was ever on equal footing. At least, not in a structural sense. Emotionally, Kylo is brash, immature, and destructive, and nothing that Rey does seems like she's ready to handle or counteract such behaviour in a way that makes it seem like there's an equivalent trade of personalities.
26:24 - I promise I know how to do basic math. When the prequels came out, they were to unravel the roughly 20-year-old mystery that was the true nature of the relationship between Luke, Leia, and Darth Vader (now also known as Anakin), meaning that all three of the prequel films were technically about the twins even if they were only newborns at the tail end of them.
26:51 - Oof, doubling down on "Star Wars is the most recognizable science fiction IP to date" does not look good for me. This is an unfounded statement as I'm basically saying that less people on an international scale will recognize Spider-Man than Luke Skywalker. Really?
29:12 - Zorii doesn't exactly represent the same things that Leia and Holdo did and I do a terrible job explaining myself here. The way I see it, Zorii Bliss could have been a victim of Poe's indecision and belief in his own power, of which he has and offers none to Zorii directly. The scene where they're talking on the rooftop in Kijimi City leads us to assume that Poe has planted a seed of doubt in Zorii's mind about the futility of leaving Kijimi, causing Kijimi's eventual decimation to be all that more tragic. Poe's arrogance and want to be right in all situations, even seemingly hopeless ones, comes at a great personal cost here BUT WHO EFFING CARES ABOUT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT RIGHT!?
You could remove Rose from the movie and I instantly like it more
Finn was always my favorite character in this trilogy and each movie left me feeling more and more like he was an irrelevant comedy relief character.
Movie so forgettable it made Kai forget his login
Space wizards :(
13:00- One could say Rey wasn't able to sense Chewie surviving because she let her eyes deceive her (a wise Jedi once said, "Do not trust them."); she was so focused on seeing the ship that Finn said had Chewie in it that she didn't think about trying to sense his presence first. Yes, how Finn missed the second transport is a bit contrived, but for Rey, it makes sense in a moment of desperation.
In addition to Kylo's survival, Rey's fear and anger clouded her mind, and after thinking she was responsible for blowing her friend to smithereens, Rey's fear, despair, confusion, and all of those other emotions, along with Finn and Poe telling her they need to leave, were enough to distract her from even considering the idea Chewie had survived (let alone was in another ship).
Later on Kijimi, Rey is more focused and so she senses her friend.
13:56 - *"Why does (Rey) immediately trust who she's with?"*
Aside from Finn who pulled her along when the First Order troopers marked her as an associate of his, a man with a gun and a Wookie appear instead of the expected First Order stormtroopers.
Next, the man asks Rey where she got the Falcon: "From Ducain?"
Rey answers his question, and the man says his name is Han Solo, and sure, Rey does seem to believe it easily, but for what reason would "the guy who could be Han Solo" lie? It's not like Rey knew the ship for what it was and was attempting to hold onto it.
And why would "the man" bring up Ducain before Rey if Ducain actually was the one who stole it from him?
14:10 - *"Why would Rey return to the Resistance aside from being...eerily empathetic?"*
Let's rewind. Rey had no allegiance with the First Order or Resistance on Jakku. She helped BB-8 and at Nimma told BB-8 his master would probably come looking for him there. Later, after refusing Unkar's offer of 60 portions, she protected BB-8 from being kidnapped. The droid zaps a "thief" that "stole" the jacket from his master. The "thief" explains he helped BB-8's master escape from the First Order. Because the "thief" said they helped Poe Dameron, Rey assumed the "thief" was with the Resistance, a lie the "thief" embraced.
The First Order finds them and tries to kill them (Rey is marked because she is with a "Resistance" fighter).
They escape. Rey wants to drop off BB-8 and Finn so she can return to Jakku; she doesn't want to get involved in anything, a point she emphasizes to Han after he offers her a job and Maz after she helped her understand that the Force is calling her to find Luke Skywalker.
Rey is with BB-8 in the forest on Takodana and the First Order attacks. She fights back and runs off, but gets taken hostage by Kylo Ren, the man in her vision who will later kill Han Solo.
As Starkiller Base is being attacked, Han suggests that the group blows up the oscillater. Rey helps Han accomplish this task. She could have taken off without Han and Chewie with Finn since she's a pilot (if she wanted to), but considering she was just rescued by people who came back for her (unlike her parents), it's understandable why she stuck around.
The moment she pulled the saber from the snow was her accepting what she had once refused; the call of the Force. Maz had suggested to Rey that she needed to find Luke, and so by taking this saber, Rey accepted the calling to fight against the First Order by finding Luke and bringing him home", which was the goal of the Resistance at the time. Rey going to find him makes sense for her to learn more about her power, but she is still aligned with the Resistance because they were taking care of Finn and Leia had sent her to retrieve Luke.
So when she's seeing them being blown up before her eyes, it's no wonder she wants to fight against the First Order and align with the Resistance.
15:19 - *"Finn wants to escape so he can do something right by the universe."*
That's not why Finn wants to escape. His only reason for escape is to get away from the First Order. If he wanted to do something right by the universe, he would have joined the Resistance's cause in TFA as soon as he found BB-8. But TFA makes the opposite much clear by these scenarios:
1) If they had known where the Resistance's base was, Finn would have left BB-8 and the Resistance and run off.
2) Had the First Order not appeared to steal BB-8 at Maz Kanata's castle, Finn would have left with those other aliens to the Outer Rim.
3) If Rey had not been kidnapped and taken to Starkiller Base, Finn never would have had a reason to lie to them about being able to take down the shields in order to cover up his real reason to rescue Rey, despite the fact the entire galaxy was relying on him knowing how to take down the shields.
Heck, he doesn't even "so happen" to intercept Poe either; he saw him get captured, he sought him out specifically so he could escape.
It even gets supported by TLJ:
- Had Rose not stopped Finn when she did, Finn would have left the Resistance and the fight.
15:44: *"That end goal being facing Captain Phasma"*
When did Finn ever say he wanted to take down Captain Phasma? All he wanted to do was get away from the First Order. He had no motivations to get back in the fight to take her down. He fights her when circumstances lead to it (forcing her to take down Starkiller's shields, being captured after failing to disable the hyperspace tracker), but him beating her is significant for his character not because it was a goal he set that he accomplished, but because he decided that after that moment, he would run no more from the fight between the Resistance and the First Order. He chose, in that moment, to be an ally for the Resistance.
The arc you are thinking applies more to Rey and Palpatine in "The Rise of Skywalker" than Finn and Phasma in TFA and TLJ.
Nothing I can say that you already haven't, I still want to ask do you think han solo killed himself by turning on the lightsaber or did his san killed him by turning on the lightsaber, Maybe we will never know.
I think it's more of the latter and the whole sequence leading up to it was more of Han's way of saying that he was willing to go the distance to redeem his son, even at the risk of death.
𝔭𝔯𝔬𝔪𝔬𝔰𝔪