Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, 2019)

[Big Ben]

Film Twitter at times is indistinguishable from a shitpost and it's horrifying. Those are certainly all words.

[mfunk9786]

Karen Han from Polygon said:

THE RISE OF SKYWALKER is like SERENITY (the matthew mcconaughey movie) in that if i told the plot you would think i was making it up or had had the plot relayed to me by a child after consuming 100 pixy stix

So not only are you probably onto something, DI, but this thing sounds like a fucking mess. Good, it's what the fans who griped so much about the last one deserve.

Film Twitter at times is indistinguishable from a shitpost and it's horrifying. Those are certainly all words.

I dunno, I find all of these amusing! Sure it's a pretty ham handed (also haven't had lunch yet) way of approaching a first impression but at least it paints a picture.

[Big Ben]

Karen Han from Polygon said:

THE RISE OF SKYWALKER is like SERENITY (the matthew mcconaughey movie) in that if i told the plot you would think i was making it up or had had the plot relayed to me by a child after consuming 100 pixy stix

'
So not only are you probably onto something, DI, but this thing sounds like a fucking mess. Good, it's what the fans who griped so much about the last one deserve.

The thing is is at this point I'm unsure if it really matters to the most vitriolic fans. Star Wars, for any number of reasons indiscernible to us is irredeemably ruined and it goes all way to the top in their eyes. Right to Kathleen Kennedy.

[mfunk9786]

K. Austin Collins:

The negative takes make it sound more interesting than it really is, I'm sorry to say.

[mfunk9786]

Apparently Kelly Marie Tran's character

Spoiler

has been essentially written out

[knives]

I liked the previous two a surprising amount and Abrams is good with this type of material so if only in the interest of the characters I hope they haven't subcummed to the idiots pleased by their biggest BO failures.

[mfunk9786]

Excellent acronym double entendre, knives

[domino harvey]

Clearly the New York critics had to skip lunch to make their screening:

Were these written by katy t3h PeNgU1N 0F d00m?

[mfunk9786]

Seems like the movie was, so why not

[Michael Kerpan]

Jeez -- that trailer is pretty awful....

[tenia]

I made it sure to see it tomorrow on the earliest 2D showing, bit it seems it will not allow me to enjoy a good sequel early but only to pile early on it.
Oh well, I just hope it'll be less of a borefest that Ep 8 was.

[ford]

So not only are you probably onto something, DI, but this thing sounds like a fucking mess. Good, it's what the fans who griped so much about the last one deserve.

When THE LAST JEDI was finished but before it came out, Lucasfilm was apparently blown away. That’s why Kennedy immediately offered Rian Johnson his own trilogy.

It comes out, critics love it and it makes a ton of money — *but* some obsessive fans are enraged. So they panic and lose all confidence even though they were certain they’d made a great film. They fire Trevorrow so they can get Abrams back to do his “please everyone at the expense of blowing away no one” thing. And apparently it’s not even working. Pathetic.

[domino harvey]

So not only are you probably onto something, DI, but this thing sounds like a fucking mess. Good, it's what the fans who griped so much about the last one deserve.

When THE LAST JEDI was finished but before it came out, Lucasfilm was apparently blown away. That’s why Kennedy immediately offered Rian Johnson his own trilogy.

It comes out, critics love it and it makes a ton of money — *but* some obsessive fans are enraged. So they panic and lose all confidence even though they were certain they’d made a great film. They fire Trevorrow so they can get Abrams back to do his “please everyone at the expense of blowing away no one” thing. And apparently it’s not even working.

Is this, uh, a defense of Trevorrow?

[ford]

So not only are you probably onto something, DI, but this thing sounds like a fucking mess. Good, it's what the fans who griped so much about the last one deserve.

When THE LAST JEDI was finished but before it came out, Lucasfilm was apparently blown away. That’s why Kennedy immediately offered Rian Johnson his own trilogy.

It comes out, critics love it and it makes a ton of money — *but* some obsessive fans are enraged. So they panic and lose all confidence even though they were certain they’d made a great film. They fire Trevorrow so they can get Abrams back to do his “please everyone at the expense of blowing away no one” thing. And apparently it’s not even working.

Is this, uh, a defense of Trevorrow?

No. It’s a defense of filmmakers trusting their judgement (+ box office returns) while totally ignoring social media.

[tenia]

IDK, but maybe it just turned out that they realised too late that being blown away is a good thing but not when it puts a franchise in a creative dead-end ?
I'm also wondering what concrete piece of info supports Lucasfilm having been blown away by TLJ but putting back Abrams back for Ep 9 because of some enraged fans. I mean, it's not as if Trevorrow shot himself multiple times in the foot since 2015 (both cinematographically and on-set) and some critics against Ep 8 aren't justified.

[nitin]

What creative dead end?

[Luke M]

I thought it was Johnson who was trying to make his way out of a creative dead end of the Force Awakens. While Last Jedi set up a new road map of where a sequel could go.

[mfunk9786]

What creative dead end?

Right. There was no creative dead end, fans just did the math and realized that to get exactly what they wanted out of where the story was going, they might have to look inward instead of expecting this trilogy to paint their fanfic notions of where it should go by numbers. It sounds like, based on the reviews of this one, Abrams threw out the rulebook and did everything he could to steer the story back in the direction of fan service, which is not surprising considering his sensibilities, but is certainly very disappointing. There would be no fans of this cultural property had there not been risks taken during the initial series of films.

It's like if your mother's stitching a quilt for you for Christmas, and you want her to be driving around looking for a video game console, and you consider every stitch to be painting herself into a corner where she no longer can find your video game console. It's a childish way of thinking about just about anything, but it's an especially childish way to be thinking about blockbuster movies, an artform that literally exists to show you something you can't see anywhere else.

[mfunk9786]

One of my favorite uses of a Simpsons reference in years and years:



For those unaware:

Spoiler

Two characters very briefly kiss in the background of one scene.

[therewillbeblus]

For those unaware:

Spoiler

Two characters very briefly kiss in the background of one scene.

How progressive!

[mfunk9786]

In space, the Q in LGBTQ+ stands for "quark"

[domino harvey]

This is hovering in the mid-50s on both MC and RT. That doesn’t mean it’s terrible (I think a lot of critics went in with knives drawn), but... it doesn’t look good. Though I stayed away from the last one for so long because of naysayers, do I really want to make the same mistake again?

[swo17]

I just feel really gross giving Disney any money at this point (especially given this latest doozy)

[DarkImbecile]

I just feel really gross giving Disney any money at this point (especially given this latest doozy)

I bought a ticket to this for tomorrow night on a whim when they went on sale six weeks ago — I'll report back from the perspective of someone who thought the last entry was the best Star Wars movie by a good distance, dom — but this is almost certainly the last of these that I'll see (much like this year's Avengers was the last Marvel movie I'm going to bother with).

[Never Cursed]

Just post the Cats reviews already, you cowards