I was pretty much done with this trilogy already after the embarrassingly inept Episode VIII, and the leaks and trailers and TV Spots for this one made me either sad, exasperated or pissed off more than anything else. Pretty much the only reason I went to watch this was because my family asked if I wanted to and I didn’t have the heart to say no. And while I was sitting in the cinema I actually felt a little hyped and I was actually ready to enjoy this last Star Wars Saga film. Then reality came crashing back in, in the form of the first two sentences of the opening crawl:
"The dead speak! The galaxy has heard a mysterious broadcast, a threat of REVENGE in the sinister voice of the late EMPEROR PALPATINE."
It was around here that I understood just what kind of bottom-of-the-barrel sludge this movie was going to be. Not only is this corny as Chaos and utterly out of character for Palpatine, it is the epitome of lazy writing. They don’t show him returning; they don’t have his return be part of the plot; they don’t give us the reactions of a single character to these news, they just slap on the laziest piece of exposition they could possibly think of. This is
not a nitpick by the way, this is how the (supposedly) climactic final antagonist is introduced to the final movie in the saga, and that’s the best they could come up with? It was around there that I realized this movie was going to be utter garbage, and it did not get any better from there.
Part of me wants to just let loose and make an incoherent rant about just what an utter travesty this movie and this entire trilogy has been, but that would probably get me banned from the entire group. So I will instead list a series of issues that I had with this movie specifically, with as little vitriol as I can manage.
- This movie has the laziest expository writing I have ever seen. The first Bayformers movie was unironically better than this.
- The rules of hyperspace are permanently and irreparably obliterated, representing the culmination of how thoroughly messed up they’ve been since The Force Awakens.
- This trilogy’s habit of not giving a Bantha poodoo about worldbuilding is back with a vengeance.
- Apparently Rey has trained to the point where she can casually outperform Luke at self-levitation, but can apparently not beat a small training droid. Just everything about Rey in this movie is bloody rubbish.
- It is really obvious that Leia isn’t actually there in these scenes.
- They try to give us some sense of camaraderie between the three “central characters”, but this is too little too late and they really have no connection at all.
- Literally nothing about the Pasaana mission makes any sense.
- I’m willing to accept that there is some kind of ban for translation droids against translating Sith language. It is not supported in the movies at any point and trying to tie in the EU does not fix this problem, but I’m actually willing to let that go. However they specifically mention that 3PO can in fact read Sith, but he can’t actually say the translation. Why? Can’t he write it? Dictate it? Use some sort of code language? If you were going to do this, why didn’t the movie make him unable to read it full stop?
- Rey can shoot Force Lightning now, accidentally.
- Why does Chewbacca get a fake-out death only to be revealed to be alive two scenes later?
- Zorii Bliss is literally the only character in this entire trilogy that has any natural dialogue.
- Apparently they can’t upload 3PO’s memory to R2 because that is unreliable, but apparently Babu Frik doesn’t have a USB or something to do that himself. Not that it matters anyway because his fakeout death is rendered moot later in the movie. If anything he has the best outcome since he can forget this damn trilogy.
- Zorii Bliss goes from hating Poe to being willing to sacrifice her way off planet with nothing in between. Then she somehow survives the destruction of Kijimi, appears in the final battle and she and Poe seems to be almost DTF by the end of the film. This would require some major scenes of development, of which she has none.
- The Sith Dagger MacGuffin is hilariously stupid on every level.
- The inter-locational lightsaber duel between Rey and Kylo is ridiculous.
- Hux being the spy is silly and then they just nonchalantly kill him off, effectively making him a martyr. They play off the whole “Pryde having served Palpatine before” thing as a big reveal when nothing is done to earn that.
- The entire Endor subplot is a stupid and contrived waste of time. Let's not even mention the Death Star.
- Palpatine apparently just randomly has 10,000+ Star Destroyers, each with an axial superlaser that can all blow up a planet. If I have to explain why that is stupid I am going to lose my faith in humanity permanently.
- The lightsaber combat choreography is just as garbage as it has been throughout this entire trilogy.
- Kylo, despite not having earned redemption, somehow just turns from a villain that randomly kills people for no reason, to a card-carrying good guy by having a conversation with his conscience(?), which takes the form of Han Solo. There is nothing special about this conversation, he could’ve had it with himself at any time and yet he is just randomly redeemed and somehow gets a ship and a blaster, which is promptly lost for no reason. Also I really want to know just how much money they had to dump on Harrison Ford for him to come back for this.
- Luke or Yoda could literally just end this plot at any time.
- Luke definitively proves that he was just being a coward at the end of The Last Jedi.
- Roughly half of the movie is made pointless by D-O having all the information they need about Exogol.
- The Resistance is able to ascertain the size and weaknesses of the Final Order, with a full visual, when they should have no intel about this stuff. The Final Order is ridiculous on every level, but I do not have the energy to keep talking about it.
- The Knights of Ren are just glorified Stormtroopers.
- The Sith Troopers are just Stormtroopers with red armour, they are not the least bit different from all other ones
- TLJ: “What is the point of all this if we can’t blow up three tiny cruisers?”. TRoS: “What is the point of all this if we can’t move our ships upwards?”.
- EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING about Palpatine’s portrayal and the final battle surrounding him is a kriffing catastrophic travesty of creative writing.
- Reylo is awful. This relationship is not romantic in the slightest, if anything it is toxic and abusive, not to mention completely unearned by the writing.
- Rey goes to the Lars homestead for some reason and takes the Skywalker name, which is both poorly motivated and has a silly execution. Again, everything about Rey sucks in this movie.
Man, I am just scratching the tip of the iceberg with all this. I have heard people describe this as a “great end to the Saga”; how is that even possible? What kind of framework, what kind of lens does one have to watch the movie through in order to come to this conclusion? This entire trilogy has turned the previous films into a complete farce, pretty much everything done in them is made moot by these sequels and TRoS is the final nail in that coffin:
Victory over the Empire: Undone in TFA by how insanely OP the First Order is and how they can apparently do whatever they want.
Luke growing into a proper Jedi and redeeming his father: Undone by Luke creating Vader 2.0 and turning into a selfish emo asshole who doesn't give a Sith about anything.
Han becoming a true self-giving hero: Undone by making him a deadbeat dad and returning him to washed-up smuggler status.
Luke and Anakin overcoming the ultimate evil: Undone by having Palpatine not actually die and come back 300 times stronger than he was as Emperor. Also Palpatine is bloody lame in this movie.
The Chosen One, the whole crux of the Prequels: Made useless and redundant by the existence of the Sith Eternal, the return of Palpatine and the idiotic Force Dyad/automatically self-balancing Force bull-Sith. The way Anakin is used in this movie outright pisses me off. “Bring back the balance, like I did”? This very movie confirms you didn’t bring balance Ani-boy, just shut up. And the fact that they made the most important character in the saga, the supposedly strongest Force user in history into just another random Jedi cheerleader for an already invincible character is the final and ultimate middle finger to any significance the previous movies might have still had. Not even pulling in the EU, just talking about what happens on screen, he can’t do a tenth of what Rey can do; the whole idea that he was in any way important is thrown in the gutter. I honestly find it kind of funny how there was so much debate over how “revolutionary” TLJ was for saying that anyone can have the Force even without a special bloodline, when not only is this not revolutionary at all, these movies completely trample on the significance of Anakin and Luke to prop up Rey as the most special thing ever.
If they are ever going to make new movies taking place after this they will have to start from scratch: there is nothing to build on. This trilogy has no direction, no cohesive story, it might as well take place in a different universe. As standalone movies, they are generic Hollywood fare at best and incomprehensible rubbish at worst. As the “conclusion” to the Star Wars Saga they are an utter disgrace.
Now obviously if anyone likes these movies, that’s a personal matter, more power to you. That being said, from an intellectual or critical perspective or whatever synonym anyone uses, how can these movies possibly serve to enhance the previous movies? Especially when they seem to actively go out of their way to just tear the previous movies down. The prequels, for all their flaws, can only dream of damaging the integrity of this story to anywhere near the same extent that these sequels have. TLJ and TRoS are far an away the worst instalments in this Saga. Jar Jar Binks, “I don’t like sand” and the wasting of Christopher Lee doesn’t hold a candle to the sheer incompetence of this pathetic trashfire of a “trilogy”, which is really just three standalone movies that hate each other.
However even that is not the real coup de grace for me where this movie is concerned. What really cements my contempt for this movie is just how cheap and cynical and lazy it is. When I got into the whole TRoS ESE Spoiler chat, I couldn't find any discussion of the actual movie itself. I found no discussion about plot structure; editing; character development; dialogue; theme or anything. I found literally nothing more than gushing about how many things that could be considered references to the EU and the previous movies. Things like Palpatine's big Force Lightning Storm or the Essence Transfer implication or the Force Drain-esque stuff at the end or how the Visual Dictionary (not the movie itself) offhandedly gives EU Sith names to the Sith Trooper legions. This is the definition of bad fanservice. These Force abilities are just randomly tossed at the screen, everything that made them interesting in their previous forms is completely excluded in this movie. There is no context; no semblance of an explanation; no buildup; no tension; no strain. The Force is just a magical Deus ex machina factory now: just splay your hands and something will happen, no training or deeper understanding is even implied, it's laughable. And the Sith Troopers especially are just incredibly annoying. They are in the movie for five seconds, don't make any sort of difference beyond having red armour and these names are just randomly and lazily tossed into an accompanying book with no context, the same kind of pointlessly skittish and wishy washy approach Kennedy-Lucasfilm been going with since Day 1. And apparently I am just supposed to sit back and count everything that can be considered an Easter Egg or a half-assed reference. This trilogy shot itself in both legs before it started walking forward and this is the result.
Just, just, I have no words for just how poorly assembled this whole thing was, and I'm just bloody tired of this and needed to get this off my chest.
