Rewatching Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Max and I are big Star Wars fans. He’s watched all of Clone Wars multiple times, I own multiple Star Wars books, underwear, and pajamas. We were extremely disappointed in The Rise of Skywalker when it hit theaters. The movie was not only bad, but somehow made all the other movies worse, calling into question our fandom. But May the Fourth offered another opportunity to watch it, this time with a clear head and allow ourselves to escape from our CoronaVirus induced social distancing to a galaxy far, far away. In true OTBB style, we ran a running blog as the two of us made our way through the film. I started the movie about an hour after Max because my cheeseburgers took longer than expected to cook over charcoal.
Before you say “What? Is this a Star Wars post?” It is. There’s no mention of baseball in here. If you want OTBB / Star Wars baseball content, we did that in 2014. Also, if you’re interested in our previous notes from watching Star Wars together, 2012 Sean and Max have got you covered there. Also, we’re a (mostly) baseball blog.
Max 8:11 I have started Rise of Skywalker!
Max 8:12 The dead speak. No explanation there, how is Palpatine back? Nothing? no info on this? Great start
Max 8:13 Kylo has found a triangle! Something that was not mentioned or alluded to in any of the previous 8 movies
Sean: This is actually a pyramid. The strangest thing about that opening sequence was that the man with the three pointed lightsaber is body slamming enemies
Max May 4th at 8:15 All these guys working for Palpatine are the Sith Eternal. But you woudn’t know that if you we’re deeeep in the cannon. Cool
Sean This movie is bad already. Like comically bad. Ships just come out of the ground now.
Max: Palpatine! but how?!? (you’ll literally never find out)
Ok. who built all these star destroyers? where did they get the raw materials in the unknown regions? Who funded this? The Sith Eternal? Are they unionized? Seriously, where did these ships come from? I have so many questions. There’s just no way there’s an adequate labor force on Exegal
Sean This could have gone so much better. Why does the Emperor have to be physically there? Why can’t he be a spirit or mirage? How does the little pyramid thing work? Why are we cool with the FIRST ORDER just being replaced immediately by the FINAL ORDER? There’s gotta be a few steps in between. What happened to the PENULTIMATE ORDER?
Max May 4th at 8:18 The message from the first order spy requires a literal cable? There’s no floppy disks huh? Even though we saw them in Rogue One which took place like 40 years before this
Sean They should use a pyramid
Max: This chase scene is pretty cool though. Going through the ice wall is badass. Untilllllll Light speed skipping? I’m sorry wtf? This has never existed in cannon until now. This is is stupid. Not even Han, known for being reckless, jumped to lightspeed without ‘precise calculations’ And the ties can just do it too? Light speed skimming is just indication 1 that this movie cares more about ooohs and aahs from the theater audience than anything that actually makes sense or has any continuity in cannon Ok, I will stop nitpicking every scene in this 2:23 hour movie. I’ll just make higher level comments from now on
Sean This is bullshit. Please continue nitpicking. It’s a real shame that I’m 1.6 hours behind you or I would have asked for continued nits.
Sean My biggest nit right now is that we’ve just jumped into approximately 18 worlds, with 3 different main characters acting in anything but a cohesive story. The edit here is more to remind us that there are characters and worlds in this universe than anything that could resemble the 9th installment in a saga with the most loyal following in pop culture
Sean Leia says “do not tell me what things feel like, tell me what they are” which I think is a way of telling us very early that not only does this feel like a product of Hollywood that thinks its audience is dumb, it very much is
Max May 4th at 8:31 “somehow Palpatine returned.” How? “secrets only the Sith knew” cool. Useful
Sean I know you haven’t watched LOST, but the fact that this line is delivered by Charlie is a big deal. It renders the whole thing so much more dumb. The scene genuinely feels like an SNL scene from like 2012 when Disney bought LucasFilm (LOST concluded in 2010)
Max: You can’t build a whole movie on that.
8:31 You just can’t
8:32 What have we been doing for the last 2 movies? Just wasting time? No info on any of this. They just thought of this idea, didn’t they?
8:33 Rose doesn’t go on the mission why? Because of racist Redditors? Cool
Max 8:47 What does Finn want to tell Rey? I hope they get to the answer later, considering this is the last movie and all
8:48 They get catapulted from their feeders, land in sinking sand, and then pop out in a cave below, walk a little, find Ochi’s bones, and then find the dagger that tells them exactly where the wayfinder/ McGuffin is. Cool
8:49 So what was the point of all this? What is the point of this Wild Wayfinder Hunt?
8:50 Good thing the worm thing had an injury Rey can heal so they could be friends/ she can forshadow that power
8:50 Oh the serpent happened to be sitting on the way out. Convenient!
Max 8:52 Anakin built C3P0, right? So why did he program in an inability to speak Sith? Especially since when 3P0 was built, the Sith had been thought to be extinct for 1000 years
Sean: This movie has been so many movies already. It’s really only been like a half hour?
Sean Each of these movies would be fine, maybe even good movies, but instead we’re left with Hollywood making Vines
Sean You know why Parasite was fantastic? Because it was impossibly measured. It knew what it wanted to say the whole time and made you beg for it to tell you. This movie is anti-fantastic for exactly the opposite reason. It has SO MUCH TO SAY that we can’t possibly care about any of it. It’s like when a 5 year old is telling you stories about school
Max: Kylo’s ship is destroyed. Please note this for later
8:54 Woah Rey grabbed the transport with Chewy on it! Cool!
Max 8:56 Oh my god! Rey killed Chewy! A thing with actual consequence happened in this, the last movie!
This movie has no courage. He was dead for 1 scene
Max 9:04 3P0 can translate it but it’ll cause a complete memory wipe, oh no!
Sean We need some black market dronesmen in real life though. I’d like more ridiculous black market nicheMen sprinkled throughout this film. Give me the black market pyramid reader guy. Give me the black market cloak makers. Tell me about the black market VR guy that sold the Resistance the VR headset that Rey was using to train in the opening scenes
Max 9:05 So emotional, one last look at his friends
9:07 Zori Bliss has a 1st order captain’s medallion! What luck! And good thing the honor the medallion no matter who has it, even if they’re clearly not a 1st order captain. It’s like a free pizza coupon
9:09 So Rey can sense Chewy when he’s on a star destroyer but not when he was on the transport she was focusing all her attention on?
9:09 This movie is lazy
Max May 4th at 9:23 Now we’re at the part where Kylo basically just goes ‘remember that thing i said last movie that was a big deal? yeah, nah”
Sean It’s not just the thing he said in the last movie! It’s the whole point of the trilogy! Rey came from nothing, was a lost one (Force Awakens), found a good teacher, honed her powers and became a badass and was of no special lineage showing us that literally anybody can be born with midichlorian (Last Jedi), But now you can only get in touch with the force if your lineage traces to one of 2ish families. Why do I care about these 2ish families? Is Rey going to go make more babies at the end of this movie?
Sean This movie’s big reveal turns Star Wars into a glorified Great Uncle’s Facebook post about family history, rather than a portal into some oddly similar galaxy far, far away. We’ve got an entire galaxy and now we’ve spent 11 movies outlining their (mostly internal) struggles of Good vs Evil. Imagine me writing 11 sentences about such struggles. Would anybody care? Why do we care? I hate it all.
Sean From now on, I’m just going to be entertained.
Sean Entertain me, Disney. Give me battles and bright lights and fantastic CGI worlds!
Max May 4th at 9:23 ForceTiming is very cool though
Sean ForceTiming is cool. That you can fight and not really know where the other person is speaks to the modernity of their intense relationship. As a veteran of a long distance relationship, I feel it.
Max 9:32 One thing. Parts of both Force Awakens and Last Jedi felt like a slog- like I have to get over a mental block when turning them on that don’t exist with any of the original trilogy- ‘do i really want to go though all that again?”
9:33 This movie doesn’t have that. It’s fast, it’s well paced. It’s a much easier watch. I appreciate that.
9:34 I’m also super in on the horse with tusks
9:36 Ok. so Rey holds the dagger up and it tells her exactly when on the Death Star wreckage to go? She’s standing in exactly the right spot and the wreckage hasn’t moved, despite being ON REALLY ROUGH WATER FOR 30 YEARS?!?!?
9:38 The stuff about First Order troopers rebelling is pretty cool though. Shows the balance inherent in the force
9:42 Wait the secret passage with the important wayfinder was in the Throne Room?! No way!? who would have guessed! Good thing we had that dagger
9:44 Kylo broke the wayfinder. And the other one was in his ship that was destroyed. Oh no!
Max May 4th at 9:45 The battle on the Death Star ruins is 1) pretty cool and 2) a pretty on the nose way of emphasizing this trilogy’s lack of imagination
Sean i’m in full “just enjoy the movie mode” and the water scene was excellent
Sean Wow. “Enjoy the movie” mode ruined by a gut punch of Leia and now Han Solo is here to…. What are we doing Disney? Just allow me to enjoy the movie.
Max May 4th at 9:52 How much did Harrison Ford make for this scene?
Sean Harrison Ford is far more tan than than Adam Driver. Implies there are beaches in heaven in a galaxy far far away
Max 9:54 The Final Order? what happened to the second order etc?
9:54 Who are these people piloting the Sith ships?!?! Who are they!!?!?!?!?
9:59 The whole scene on Ach To might be the best part of the movie
10:00 Jedi Leia is cool
10:01 The wayfinder is in the glove box of Ren’s ship!?!? Why? Ren moved it from the ship Rey destroyed to this ship? not to his throne room where he keeps all his stuff, such as the dagger?!?!
Max 10:01 Never mind about this being the best part of the movie
Max 10:02 Oh, R2D2 restores C3P0’s memories. Cool. No stakes at all for anything in this, the last movie
10:04 “cmon that move is one in a million” says a disembodies voice off screen. Why take such a gratuitous shot at the Holdo Maneuver/ the previous movie
10:04 This movie is vindictive
10:05 There’s so many Sith Ships. Thousands. Who built them? I want to know everything about construction
Max May 4th at 10:07 Thousands of ships. Each with a crew the size of a city. Who are all these people?!?!?!?
Sean And they couldn’t figure out how to make a better way to embark?
Sean Thousands of Ships controlled by one central navigation control…. Did the FINAL ORDER not learn anything from the aliens in Independence Day?
Sean You just have to embrace a distribution navigation paradigm when it comes to interstellar travel / worlds domination
Max May 4th at 10:11
how is Palpatine alive? can I have just 1 tiny shred of actual explanation?
Sean how did you miss that Palpy wanted to make a diode with Rey now? This perv wants to become one with his grandaughter and Han Solo’s kid, creating some sort of weird Sith triumvirate / Trinity
Max 10:12 So if she kills him, all the Sith just pass into her? Just like that? Then why didn’t they pass into Vader when he killed Palpatine? Guess that death just doesn’t count
10:15 Ben is here! Any idea how?
10:18 Ok. the force pass of the light saber is very awesome
10:20 This diad in the force thing is interesting. If only it was expounded upon beyond 2 sentences in the whole movie / whole trilogy because they just thought this up right now
10:23 Kylo got thrown down a pit! If there’s one thing we know about star wars its that falling down a pit is deadly
10:23 Unlimited Power!!!!!
10:25 Hey Palpy, stop shooting yourself, stop shooting yourself
10:25 What is he shooting himself? Just stop shooting! This is dumb
10:26 So is this him killing himself so it doesn’t count as her killing him and she doesn’t absorb the sith?
10:27 Seriously, why didn’t he stop shooting himself? Also, how do we know he’s really dead? He was really dead last time too
Max 10:28 Kylo’s back!? But he fell down a pit?!
Sean WHY DID THEY KISS? What was that about? They obviously had a connection, but they just sexualized the relationship for no real reason. Finn won’t be happy, but it also feels like it turns Rey into a damsel who needed saving if only for a minute
Max 10:32 The Sith fleet is falling on Exegal and I can’t help but notice there are no construction or maintenance facilities. Interesting
Max 10:37 Force digging holes is pretty cool. Not sure why she’s burying the sabers though
Sean I often think about what I would do with certain things that’s not their primary purpose if I had them. For instance, I would totally go around clocking bunny rabbits if I had a radar gun. What’s the most ridiculous thing you would do if you had Jedi powers? I think I would never take stairs.
“Stairs? Nope. I levitate”
Max 10:38 The yellow saber is awesome. Rey Skywalker is dumb
Max 10:40 Ok final thoughts. This movie was better than I remembered. It was entertaining and fun and fast paced and exciting and light. It had a million annoying plot holes though and the Palpatine stuff is intensely stupid, undercuts the ENTIRE SAGA, and is utterly inexcusable. Prior to this rewatch, I thought that people who liked this movie were heathen not fit to walk the earth, now I just think they’re very superficial and wrong.
Sean I’m with you that the movie is fundamentally entertaining and simultaneously wretched. It’s a star wars movie for people who think they like star wars but who haven’t thought about star wars since the last time the advertising gods told them to think about star wars. Its for the people who don’t bring up star wars at dinner parties, but have seen the movies. You and I are not the target audience, but the movie could have pleased both audiences! It was a Disney blockbuster with decades of character develo ent, a nearly unlimited budget, and an entire galaxy’s worth of potential activities. What we wound up with was an interstellar Bonaroo, a female bounty hunter, a bunch of glimpses of other worlds, some cool waves, and a Force diad. How did anyone smart like this movie?
