@Reverend I don't think I'll be able to look at Bob Saget again without laughing and no that isn't to come across as some kind of you ruined my childhood after watching some of that clip.
Bob Sagat was rauchy motherfucker LONG before he stepped into Full House and "America's Funniest Home Videos" the irony that he got those two roles as a normal, well adjusted parent, is beyond me. Someone at ABC must've been on coke when they offered him the job. that or sagat is the ultimate black pilled troll.
Unpossible that Scott "ShillSucking" Mendelson is on the same page as most of the audience. He's still a cunt fucktard who uses the word "Problematic" like any NPC douchecanoe but hey a win is a win in my book whomever the speaker.
‘Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker’ was also determined to repeat the mistakes that doomed ‘Spectre,’ ‘Fantastic Beasts’ and ‘X-Men: Dark Phoenix’
www.forbes.com
Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker was also determined to repeat the mistakes that doomed Spider-Man 3, Spectre, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and Dark Phoenix.
With today beginning the unofficial two-week “kids are out of school and many adults are off work for the holidays” break period,
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will have plenty of time to pull a
Phantom Menace and make fools of those of us concerned about the $175.5 million domestic and $373.5 million opening weekend. The problem is less the raw number and more everything else. Beyond mixed-negative reviews, the film had a noticeably lower weekend multiplier (1.95 x a $90 million Friday) than the last three Christmas
Star Wars flicks and a B+ Cinemascore grade, the lowest such grade from the opening night polling service for any live-action
Star Wars movie. Even if you argue that the lower opening is indeed related to so-called
Star Wars fatigue or backlash over
The Last Jedi, the audience polling is entirely about
The Rise of Skywalker.
I don’t pretend to know how the film was made, in terms of potential push-pull between J.J. Abrams, Disney and/or Lucasfilm. But beyond a frantic pace that left little time for character interaction, generic action sequences and oodles of “We’ve got to find that file!” Saturday morning cartoon-level dialogue are two core problems. First, the film spends a large majority of its running time retconning plot beats and character threads from
The Last Jedi, in a way that, intentional or not, feels like kowtowing to the very sort of anti-
Last Jedi folks who have kept John Boyega on the defensive since 2014 and chased Daisy Ridley and Kelly Marie Tran off social media. Moreover, it seemed dead set on ripping off plot twists and plot turns from some of the most divisive franchise finales and/or franchise sequels from the last 15 years.
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First, Rian Johnson’s
The Last Jedi didn’t retcon or undo anything from
The Force Awakens. J.J. Abrams’ franchise restarter ended with a major cliffhanger (Daisy Ridley’s Rey discovering Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker alone on an uncharted island). Considering the exposition offered by Harrison Ford’s Han Solo (Ben Solo was seduced by Snoke and destroyed Luke’s Jedi training school, which in turn led Luke to disappear), what exactly did fans think was going to be Luke’s reaction to a random nobody showing up on “exile Island” with his old lightsaber? Moreover, with the knowledge that he had no intent of returning for an additional-Star
Wars movie, director J.J. Abrams left the origins of Snoke, the fate of a comatose John Boyega’s Finn and/or Rey’s parentage completely up in the air. Even Oscar Isaac’s Poe was a blank slate as he was supposed to die in
The Force Awakens.
Spoilers for The Rise of Skywalker from here onward.
J.J. Abrams probably had concrete answers to the questions he posed in
The Force Awakens but was willing to let Rian Johnson continue and (at the time) Colin Trevorrow finish the story he began. Whether you like or agree with the answers Johnson came up with (Luke has given up, Rey’s parents were nobodies, Poe is a cocky narcissist and Snoke is just a step to Kylo Ren’s path to ultimate power), they were no more or less valid with the information
The Force Awakens gave us than anything fans might have speculated. What’s doubly frustrating about the retcons, specifically the reveal that Snoke was a clone created by Sheev Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) and that Rey was actually Palpatine’s granddaughter and that her parents were actually heroes who hid her from grandpa and gave their lives to keep her safe, is that it both painfully patronizing and entirely unnecessary.
Going the expected/lazy route had no bearing on Rey’s “the belonging you seek is not behind you but in front of you” arc, or the Resistance trying to maintain hope after being ignored by their allies. The time spent retconning
Last Jedi in a diabolical game of “No, but…” improv, be it Kylo and Rey’s redundant conversations about Rey’s expanded past (“I know your secrets, but I’m not going to divulge them until the next scene!”) or introducing new characters so that Rose Tico could become a glorified background player, left little time for actual character interaction and/or plot amid the various action sequences. It wasn’t just bad storytelling but a waste of valuable time. As far as Rey’s character, it invalidated the whole “anyone can cook” messaging and makes Rey yet another female hero (
Interstellar, Tomb Raider, etc.) who is only in the game because of her father or grandfather.
The other weird issue was that Chris Terrio’s screenplay seemed to be a hybrid of many story beats and plot turns from series finales both loved and loathed.
Spectre, arguably plotted as a finale in case Daniel Craig didn’t come back, offered a newly introduced Blofeld who was the secret puppet master behind the scenes of the previous three 007 movies and had a surprising relation to James Bond.
Spider-Man 3 retconned Uncle Ben’s murder so that Thomas Haden Church’s Sandman (pre-transformation, natch) was kinda-sorta the real culprit.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald spent much of its running time teasing the dark secrets of its newer characters with a final reveal that Ezra Miller's Credence Barebone is Dumbledore’s brother. Even the climactic “Rey Skywalker” reveal brought back memories of Joseph Gordon-Levitt revealing at the end of
The Dark Knight Rises that his real first name was Robin.
WARNER BROS.
Avengers: Endgame didn’t invent all the good guys showing up for a last-minute rescue. The season finale of
Power Rangers: Mega Force, the finale of
The Two Towers and the climax of
Pitch Perfect 2 arguably pulled the same trick. But it was still an odd case of two Disney mega-hits using the same plot device (think
Maleficent’s “kiss from the prince doesn’t work” bit months after
Frozen) but to much lesser results.
The Rise of Skywalker’s similarities to
Frozen II can wait for another time (-starts to hum “Show Yourself”-), but a comparison between the two highlights why character and emotional authenticity trumps plot when it comes to these beloved franchises. And yes, Rey’s showdown with Palpatine, down to the “the Jedi who died before Rey giving her strength and telling her to stand up” beat, felt like an inferior riff on
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II.
If I were being optimistic, I would merely presume that J.J. Abrams came back for the third film, not entirely of his choosing, and then just made the movie that he would have made had he also directed the second film (or had
Last Jedi not gone in unexpected directions). As a result,
The Rise of Skywalker both feels like a retcon of and a loose remake of
The Last Jedi. In that sense, it would make sense that Rose Tico wouldn’t have a huge role to play in this threequel, or that the big Rey reveal would be both bad news (your grandpa is Space Hitler) and in line with
Star Wars tropes. Sure, it would still invalidate the core of the Rey vs. Kylo conflict (a man born of privilege and destined for greatness goes evil while a woman from nothing becomes the great hope), but c’est la vie.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker won’t be the first time a franchise shot itself in the foot by placating the “hardcore fans” (or giving audiences what they find the fan base wants) at the expense of general moviegoers. Think, relatively speaking, bringing Khan back for
Star Trek into Darkness, killing off Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacey in
Amazing Spider-Man 2, or making the last
X-Men movie a redo of the “Dark Phoenix” arc 13 years after
X-Men: The Last Stand. It also prioritized plot and plot twists over character, a mistake made by
Fantastic Beasts compared to
Harry Potter and (initially) DC Films compared to the MCU. Its commercial fate is yet untold, but
The Rise of Skywalker failed because it was dead set on retconning a prior movie at the expense of itself and seemed determined to repeat the mistakes that doomed the franchise films that came before it.
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