Star Wars: L'Ascension de Skywalker

Where the Mandalorian feels like somebody taking their own beloved Star Wars fantasy and putting it on screen, this feels like a marketing product. While the direction is enjoyable, the actors are doing a great job, the writing and the story is just checking boxes.

Retcon what the fans hated in the last movie? Done. Callbacks to the originals? Done. Cute new animals and droid for toys to sell? Done. New stormtrooper looks for game skins? Done. Are we blowing up random planets? Sure...

Best to get your SW fix from the expanded universe stuff. Pehaps where the company didn't spend a billion dollars on marketing, there's still room for a kid to look over the setting alien suns of his planet and dream of something more.

My family, at this point mostly made up of middle-aged people, always goes to a movie over the Christmas holidays. This year, we saw The Rise Of Skywalker. This is the first time in about 10 years we have seen a really bad movie. For details, read the other reviews.

I went to see this new Star Wars movie tonight--a few weeks after it opened to tepid reviews. Well, after seeing it I can understand some of the lack of enthusiasm for "The Rise of Skywalker", as it suffers from a HUGE problem...I felt pretty much indifferent to it. I would have preferred it if the movie has really sucked...then I would have had fun laughing at it.

I won't recount the plot here...mostly because the film was non-stop and most plot elements lasted mere minutes. The folks went from one deadly fight to another to another to another...and much of the first portion of the film turned out to be unnecessary.

I am NOT a 'Comicbook Guy' who complains that the film isn't true to the original three or other such nonsense. I have gone to all the films and enjoyed them (with the exception of "Episode 3"...but few enjoyed that movie)...and I really enjoyed some of the more recent ones. But I disliked much of "Episode IX" because it seems like J.J. Abrams is trying to undo so much of what Rian Johnson did in "Episode VIII". Sad...but I liked "Episode VIII". Instead of relationships and characters, "Episode IX" is pretty much only about explosions, near misses and more explosions....as well as long dead characters suddenly coming back to life for no good reason.

All in all, a joyless mass of explosions and a film I should have just skipped. The theater also was showing "Knives Out" (By Johnson) and that film was FUN. "Star Wars: Episode IX" is simply un-fun.

For me Star wars have allways been about good storytelling.

The original trilogy had a simple but strong and surprising story.

The prequels had their faults but they still told a great story about how evil could rise to power under the nose of the good guys.

The story in the rise of skywalker, is not existing. It just chaos. People running around doing stuff in a pace which seems to be an attempt to hide an incredible high amount of plot holes and inconsistencies. Even the ideas which could have been awesome fall flat due to the lack of an overall structure in the story and what seems to be a fear of surprising the fans.

The use of the force and the depiction of the power structure in the galaxy, is so vague and not in line with what was established in the previous movies, that it almost break the logic of the franchise.

If you just want a movie with stunning visuals, high amount of fan service and where everything happens as you predicted, then the rise of skywalker may be a good star wars movie.

I liked the music and the visuals, but the lack of good storytelling and respect for ALL the previous movies mad me sad.

Star Wars: Episode IX is, at times, a decent thrill ride, and it provides us with some satisfying moments, but it fails to tell a compelling story. It feels empty. It rushes through a corporate checklist of must-have moments at a chaotic pace. It manages to thrill with epic space battles, but it lacks a soul. There's no creative vision here, no story to tell. The pressure that comes with making a Star Wars movie seems to have shackled the creators, preventing them from doing anything interesting with the film. It's a shame. The Star Wars universe is one of the greatest fictional universes ever created. It should provide fertile ground for many new and interesting stories. If I were Disney I would take a serious look at the creative process for these films. They could probably learn a thing or two from Marvel Studios.