But now after watching The Rise of Skywalker, my writer's block is now gone, but unlike in TLJ where I was extremely excited and pumped about everything in the movie, TROS made me extremely pissed and disappointed at how things turned out.
The marketing for TROS touts it as the end of the Skywalker saga, spanning 40 years. I knew I was going to get a lot of feels, perhaps see something bittersweet, and leave the theatre having sobbed my eyes out but satisfied with how things turned out.
Like with Endgame.
Instead, a lot of the story didn't make a lick of sense, there were new characters we didn't need since there's already so many damn characters in there, and it detracts focus from the two who really matter - Rey and Kylo Ren, and everything else was inexcusably underwhelming.
The visuals were gorgeous, but for all of the final battle between the Star/Sith Destroyers and the tiny Rebel fleet, to Palpatine's electrocuting the entire fleet above (which I found extremely cool but immediately was like "whuh?" because ships were only being disabled instead of getting blown up I mean it's fucking electricity in the fucking sky for like 10 fucking minutes why aren't tiny X-wings on fire and crashing more but I digress), to the millions of Sith cultists in the stands - I don't know why I wasn't, well, impressed. I didn't get that OMG THIS IS SO COOL feeling unlike when I saw Endgame (mind you, we got the equivalent of everyone showing up to fight in TROS, and still I was like "meh").
And Ben. You don't make him a sympathetic character at the expense of Luke Skywalker in TLJ just so he can fade into the Force in TROS just like fucking that. I knew beforehand Ben would die so I was a bit sad about it already, but literally before the movie started I told myself that - even though Ben dies, the rest of the movie may be good. So let's not knowledge of Ben's death impact our (my) enjoyment of the movie.
Gosh, from the opening crawl when I saw that Palpatine had announced his return I was like:
Strategically it would have made more sense to just launch your Destroyers into every system, you have so many ships equipped with the planet destroyers, come on!
There were a few moments that were very well done. One that comes to mind was Ben reliving his moment with Han from TFA. Very, very heartfelt, and a very nice way to bring Harrison Ford back into the series despite him wanting to die since ESB.
And I was so, so, so looking forward to TROS because I've been going through an extremely down patch the past few months and I was really in need of a pick-me-up and I had hoped that during this Christmas season I could at least go see TROS more than once because hey, nostalgia and feels and the last movie in the series.
Hell, Endgame's ending was also depressing in its own right but everything else was good and I was even considering seeing it a third time just to push it past Avatar!
More thoughts in the official review post. I'm just so angry right now that I need to get this out of my system first.
Which also reminds me, my TLJ hubris post is not yet finished. Time to work on it now too. Read More......
