Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
"No one's ever really gone." - Luke Skywalker
release year: 2019
genre: sci-fi/action/adventure
viewing setting: home Bluray 3/31/20
synopsis: New enemies and allies show up, questions are answered, and the final confrontation between good and evil happens.
impressions: I wanted to add onto the synopsis above "...until the next movie." So I get it...the first one came in the late 1970s and there was no plan, but Lucas made the best of it and got two sequels made and things were pretty good. And then in the late 1990s they made another trilogy, which had some issues due to never being really planned out. And now the same thing's happened again with this trilogy. I know it's tough and I know they can't please everyone, old and new; it's an impossible mission. Yet, the plot holes in this one were plentiful: (SPOILER ALERT NOW) How did the Emperor survive? How did he build a huge fleet of super star destroyers in secret? And why did he wait so long to act? How did Lando just happen to be on the planet they went to? How did they accidentally find something that Luke, a Jedi master, couldn't find in many years of searching? Why did Chewbacca just randomly wander away and get caught? How is it that Kylo can use the Force to pull one ship back but yet let the heroes escape in theirs? Why did the entire group leave their ship to go look around? Why can Kylo sense Rey across the galaxy, but not when they're on the same planet? Why was all the stuff Rey needed to find conveniently left in the same place where she randomly finds it? How can two people in different places have a physical fight? How could a ship that's "locked down" allow the Millenium Falcon to just leave? Why weren't these random new Jedi powers used in the past films by more powerful Jedi? Why was Leia in normal health and then suddenly just died? Why was everyone who died before just able to come back as a ghost when the plot called for it? Since when was Leia actually a Jedi, capable of training a student? Where did an entire arena full of Sith disciples come from? What's with the lightsaber handoff from an entirely different location? Why did Palpatine, if he was this powerful, not come out of hiding and win a long time ago? Why were star destroyers crashing in faraway locations, if they were all on that one hidden planet?
It just seemed like the filmmakers just made things up as they went along. The movie wasn't terrible - there were a lot of fan tributes and humorous funny moments, and the special effects and fights were great - but it just didn't feel like a classic Star Wars movie.
acting: I won't go over them all, but pretty much everyone returns and does a great job. We actually get face time from the original three main heroes in this one.
final word: Like the last two, it didn't suck but wasn't quite awesome; it did entertain, and was probably about the best that could be expected given the passage of time, the death of actors, and the changing fan base for this series.
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