Current Events > TFA > TRoS > TLJ

(+) Yeah! (+)

Here's why.

The Force Awakens, while shaky at points, was a really decent Star Wars movie. It played it safe, but erring towards the older movies was not a bad idea considering the reputation of the prequels. People argued whether a good new Star Wars movie could even exist thanks to the prequels, and I think the overwhelmingly positive reception TFA garnered upon its release was a good step towards salvaging the brand. I only started to see really extensive backlash when I started posting on CE in 2016, and while I personally disliked the inescapable Star Wars hype at the time - not everything in life has to be about your fucking space magic movie, you nerds - The Force Awakens stands as a solid enough effects movie, and an enjoyable action movie.

The Last Jedi isn't as bad as I remember it being - I saw it on release, and I indulged in it because I knew how hard it was gonna fuck up the fanboys. But even then, the movie was overly long, full of bad jokes and a ton of it ultimately went nowhere. The pacing of TLJ is ultimately its greatest weakness - it's the longest movie in the franchise, but it has the slowest pace of the lot. The framing of the movie is pretty flat and dull just about every time there's an interior scene, the only big action set piece before the finale is a big CGI animal chase sequence that reeks of Disney jerking off all over it, and arguably the best part of the movie - the ending where the rebels are fighting on Crait - feels like it's tacked on and only contributes more towards the movie's bloat. I've defended Canto Bight as recently as 2 days ago, but pretty much the entire plot of TLJ with Finn, Rose and Poe is filled to the brim with bloat.

This factors into my opinion of TRoS.

The biggest problem with TRoS is that it's trying to fit 2 movies worth of Star Wars into a movie that's shorter than The Last Jedi. I've seen people complain about The Rise of Skywalker's pace by calling it "video game pacing", and I don't disagree. The first half of the movie is so rushed that everybody's lines feel like they're cut off before they should have a chance to end. In order to bring this movie in at a reasonable time, they had to be as efficient as possible with the dialogue, and the first half of the movie suffers especially from that.

With that being said, it picks up well enough eventually, and eventually it becomes a decent enough popcorn muncher. I think TFA is ultimately the most cohesive and well-paced movie of the trilogy, but I was down with most of the TRoS hype stuff. This movie has a rocky beginning, but it's not a 55% type of movie. It's a better flick than TLJ, hands down. It does music, action and fanservice much better than TLJ, though I still think that TLJ did the "Jedi Master Skywalker" thing well enough.

Maybe this trilogy wasn't so flash, but I liked TFA pretty well and I actually enjoyed TRoS for the most part (when the movie slowed its pace, which took a while). TLJ is ultimately the rotten banana of the bunch. I would go as far as to say that if half of TRoS' plot was present in TLJ, this would have been an excellent trilogy and the pacing of the trilogy would have been fine.

But TLJ barely got anything done, and TRoS had to pick up the slack and jam 2 movies worth of content into one movie. The Force Awakens was a solid-ass introduction to this new trilogy's characters, and TLJ had a compelling plotline marred by an A-plot that amounted to nothing. TRoS had a decent enough Star Wars plot, with a bunch of action and hype that's some of the best stuff of this new trilogy. But the pacing is off, and I think the characters suffer a bit from this - and it undoubtedly falls short of The Force Awakens.

But The Rise of Skywalker was a solid movie. Not perfect - it needed two movies to flesh everything out - but it did an admirable job trying to right the ship after TLJ set everything off course.

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MrMallard posted...

the only big action set piece before the finale is a big CGI animal chase sequence

That was the most bizarre part of the film to me, how utterly crappy those creatures looked. Not their design or anything, the CGI itself. Looked straight out of the prequels.

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Shablagoo posted...

That was the most bizarre part of the film to me, how utterly crappy those creatures looked. Not their design or anything, the CGI itself. Looked straight out of the prequels.

My main gripe with it is that it's just 5+ minutes of these fucking animals tearing through a casino. At least half of it could have been cut down - it felt really slow and indulgent in a movie that's already so fucking slow and bloated.

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I'll read the first post in a bit, but I just wanted to comment on the CGI in both this and TLJ. It's been pretty bad. Palpatine looked super cheesy in the starting.

I mean, yeah not every movie has the best CGI, but this is ILM we're talking about. That's GL's company and they are the industry leaders. They do CGI for every movie basically.

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After Finn reuniates with Poe, all of his scenes could have been cut from TLJ and the movie's conclusion (and the entire sequel) would not need to change. TLJ is half a film. Therefore TRoS needed to be one and a half films to compensate. Rian Johnson really screwed the pooch.

One of the deleted scenes was one of the best in the film ffs, Luke teaching Rey what it truly means to be a jedi. We sacrificed scenes like that for a casino chase? For a forced romance that didn't develop? For some "closure" on Phasma that was poorly executed and unnecessary? Wow.

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MrMallard posted...

My main gripe with it is that it's just 5+ minutes of these fucking animals tearing through a casino. At least half of it could have been cut down - it felt really slow and indulgent in a movie that's already so fucking slow and bloated.

Oh yeah, definitely. I dont hate Canto Bight as much as most people but I recognize the problems with it and the negative effect it had on the storys pace. Those creatures appearance was just very jarring to me.

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I didn't mind Canto Bight either tbh. I liked seeing all of those weird casino aliens, and I didn't even mind the whole "codebreaker" plot. The only thing Canto Bight needed to trim down was that big, pointless chase, and it would have been fine - which is why it's kind of annoying to see Canto Bight discourse reduced to "it's completely redundant, cut it completely".

Having seen the 9th movie, I now think that the entire subplot should have been removed in favor of the lore TRoS had to cram into it. But if we're going to accept TLJ as its own thing, it would have been a better movie if they cut down that chase scene. Otherwise, I don't mind pretty much all of Canto Bight. It's a fine Star Wars set piece, just with the abysmal pacing of The Last Jedi.

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