Based on this review, The Rise of Skywalker sounds like a real mess.
I’ve liked—but not loved—the recent movies well enough. They’ve certainly been an improvement over the prequels! However, the intense feelings they’ve generated amongst some of the fans, especially The Last Jedi, mystify me. (And I simply don’t care enough about Star Wars to learn about the various criticisms and grievances to become ‘de-mystified’…)
I suspect that I’m somewhat unusual in this respect, but of the recent Star Wars films I’ve much preferred the ‘standalone’ films—Rogue One and Solo—to the trilogy. Rogue One in particular is excellent. I suspect that one reason for their superior quality is that they are not embedded in a trilogy that must somehow be ‘epic’ in nature. Their themes are quite different. Moreover, they take place around the time of the original series, which strikes me as a more coherent setting than that of the current trilogy.
Anyhow, perhaps Rise will turn out to be decent after all. I’ll see it eventually in any case. But I’m certainly not ‘invested’ in it. Once the Ewoks first stumbled into the Star Wars universe in The Return of the Jedi, I realized that I was really not a Star Wars fan after all. I like it but I don’t love it. I’ll take Nazgûl over Sith any day.
An even harsher review:
ReplyDeletehttps://slate.com/culture/2019/12/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-review.html
Rogue One was one of the best movies in the Star Wars franchise. They need to figure out why that was so good and do more of that.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure when I lost most any enthusiasm for Star Wars... probably when it left behind its initial 'Republic Serial' inspirations and became serious business. It kind of became ossified by its own success.
ReplyDeleteEverything since the original trilogy - with the exception of Rogue One and to a lesser extent Solo, because they were really part of that same original story line - has lacked any kind of internal consistency. In fact, I'd say they've lacked coherence in general, and I'm definitely including Lucas' own edits to the original movies in this sweeping generalization. I'm not just talking about the movies, either. The entire "expanded universe" suffers from a too-many-chefs problem and is basically a fan fiction repository.
ReplyDeleteOver the years it lost it's specialness. First the Prequels, and then the by-the numbers new movies. I've at least enjoyed all of the new ones, but there's nothing special about them at all.
ReplyDeleteThe best Star Wars is still Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars.
https://www.comicsbeat.com/genndy-tartakovsky-clone-wars/