I saw a Star War… potential spoilers
On December 20th, I went to see the last of the Skywalker Star Wars with my six year old Maggie, and my wife Kim. We got in late, the previews started late, and 40 minutes in the movie finally started after 12+ previews with about 800 rounds of ammo, 16 explosions, more deaths than I could count.
TL;DR – some nitpicky stuff but overall good ending for the last trilogy. Probably spoilers but I’m going to attempt to not spell anything out in case you’re wanting to read a little to decide if you would go see it.
I was sort of keeping track for purposes of how kid appropriate trailers were but also because I kept getting asked why that person just killed that person. Eh, no big, my kid knows it’s a story.
There were 11 other people in the theater. From what I can gather they were all in another packed theater for the 1pm showing and we were in an overflow, as it took us about 20 minutes to get out of the theater parking lot.
Some thoughts on this from someone who’s seen them all in theaters, possible spoilers below.
If you’re 40+, your Star Wars ended with 6. you’ve probably known this since 7 or the beginning of 8 (or when Episode 1 came out.) The Ewoks and the rebellion saved the galaxy, this is their kids screwing up the universe with special guest appearances by characters you thought you knew but have changed with age.
Kylo Ren’s emo dark side grandfather idolization explained (and probably why Anakin’s force ghost didn’t pop up and Force-slap some sense into him.)
Rey’s lineage revealed. Not what was expected, absolutely not required, generally felt like “oh, let’s keep this whole tradition of everyone in the galaxy has to be related somehow going”.
The movie, rushed. One of those things where it’s explode, explode, explode over and over and over without a break for much. The reactor hole in the plot for this movie centered around a traffic signal as opposed to a heat vent. It hurt my brain to wrap my head around this being the one thing that needed to be handled in order for the death weapon to be neutralized. Ugh… hurt… brain. Y’all, the direction is UP – go that way and then stop.
I guess one of the things with the pacing is they had to fit everything possible into a couple of hours. I think it needed to be stretched out a bit like the last two Avengers films.
Rey literally jumps the Tie Fighter…
Leah’s reaching out to Ben seems to be missing a couple of scenes leading into it. Not going to nitpick too much here because I think they did what they could and assumed we’d be smart enough to know why it wasn’t fleshed out. They didn’t CGI her into the final scene as far as I could tell.
The way the Force is explained it appears the best way to weaken the Sith would be for all the light side users cut themselves off from it. Hey, you’re a good person? Great. Cut yourself off from the force so a bad person doesn’t rise to meet you. You want to save the most people? Give up. Don’t play. The Force, baby, it’s a yin/yang sort of thing. While you’re here healing the sick the dark side is over there draining the life and free will out of people. Give up, it’s the only logical thing to do.
A big deal is made of a character trying to tell Rey something that’s never explored. They evidently forgot to in movie, and it’s not what you think. I walked out wondering what that was all about.
But did it end? I don’t know. You can claim it did. It had about the same ending Return had. Nothing was done to ensure an end. We learned that all those people on the New Order’s side had probably been enslaved/recruited as children rather than being cloned or signing up, and the rebellion killed a crapton of them this time. A generation lost.
37,000 crew on a Star Destroyer, 279,144 on an SSD… I’d say the death toll in the final battles topped the two Death Stars easily. Bunch of kids enslaved into the New Order. Meh.
I started wondering about 3P0. This I guess goes into a bit of cyber ethics, some of the motivator descriptions from the now-defunct expanded universe, and I wonder what his fate actually was. Was that him? Was that another being who just thought it was him?
Lando… I’m trying to figure out if there was anything about him other than a character from the previous Star Wars that was required… it’s sort of like yes, this could have been done by anyone, but your bus driver was …… the clone created from Luke Skywalker’s severed hand. OK, does that matter? Good to see him but was there a reason he was there?
I’m happy to see any of the characters from the original if there’s a reason but I don’t know why Lando, other than nostalgia. Tell me where we found him is trading with Bespin? Great.
Chewbacca swap – uh… that was complicated. Way way complicated.
Poe’s love affair with Daft Punk was a bit confusing. Also my understanding of what Spice is in SW may be off.
The Emperor. Man, getting old I know sometimes it’s hard to stop the lightning when it’s coming out but seriously. They don’t teach you to stop when your power is going to be used against you? Pretty sure that still counts.
Overall…
9 ended 7-9.
6 ended 4-6.
3 ended 1-3.
Much like we didn’t see the nuanced Anakin ever after the Clone Wars, we don’t see the positive of any of the Skywalker after Return.
I don’t really feel that this was the end of Star Wars. Not even a conclusion really as 6 was a conclusion with the same circumstances. Just the end of the Skywalker genetic opera, if not the name.
I’m even less convinced of the Emperor’s fate this time around as I think he had the means to pull a C3P0. Also since Skywalker was a force baby to begin with I sort of feel there can be no end.
But whatever. Fun movie. I’ll probably watch it again when it comes out streaming. I could nitpick this into infinity and make it something terrible, or I could leave it as it is a fun romp based on a story from when I was little that aims at its own audience, even if it uses some of my childhood memories to do it.
And because no blog about Star Wars is complete without some movie ranking, here’s mine: 5,4,6,8,9,7,Solo,3,R1,2,1.
Love it, hate it, the director says either way you’re right.
RoS made less than the last movie in the first three days making a paltry… oh Lenore, please hold my teacup while I spittake… slightly less than $400 million in 3 days… spits… oh failure… let me adjust my monocle.
This means Star Wars 9 didn’t see its first hundred million in profit until sometime … today…
