My Thoughts on The Rise of Skywalker

It's bad y'all, it's messed up.

Okay, okay. Let's not start on the bad stuffs. I'll be starting with the stuffs that I actually enjoy. Which is not that many.

DISCLAIMER : some of the things that i said here are mostly from twitter and youtube.

1. A nod to Return of The Jedi

Actually I'm just okay with it. Like, I just like to point out some scenes that "oh this looks like this scene from ROTJ". Especially the scene where Palpatine showed Rey how the Resistance are doing in the last war saying basically something like "just join the dark side and let the power of the dark side helps your friends". Very similar to ROTJ

2. Lando and "the people" (they literally call them that)

A scene that actually brought me close to tears. Seeing Lando joined the fight and brought back so many people on the battlefield makes me so happy. It felt like the hope that was gone, was being reborn with all the people from across the galaxy unite and fighting the one true enemy with all they got. Really touching.

3. Bendemption

Something that should've happened earlier in the movie, but I'm still grateful that it happened. We got Ben calling Han "dad". We got some silly yet cute little gesture of Ben Solo (which by the way, makes my love for Adam Driver even more). And that 10 minutes of fight scene of him with a blaster only, going to Exogol to save his one true love, very Solo-ish, and I'm happy with it. Only 10 minutes of Ben Solo already makes me happy, imagine if we got more.

Now we get to the bad and dirty part.

1. The Opening Crawl

I actually like the use of "THE DEAD SPEAK!" In the opening crawl. Really brought much tension to the movie. But after I watched Jenny Nicholson's video bitching on TROS, I just realized that we don't even get the explanation on how Palpatine came back through the crawl and what's really going on in the war right now. I believe that's what's the crawl is for, giving some insert on what happened on the war since the previous movie and a little explanation about it.

2. The Lines

It's not as bad as the prequels, but it's bad y'all. Even Oscar Isaac said so. The "they fly now?" "They fly now!" Is so cringy I can't help but hid my face when that scene happened. Finn constantly shouting "REY!" , is also very annoying to me. And some of the lines very contradicting on what happened in the previous movie. Which gonna bring us on my next issue,

3. The Plot

Abrams and Terrio really wanted to undo everything that happened in The Last Jedi and some of the other movies, I guess. It starts with small things like, Kylo's mask being fixed, Admiral Ackbar jr (i think it was his child that was shown in the movie), to some bigger parts like Luke's characterization being contradicting than his character in The Last Jedi, Rey's Lineage, the conception of Dyad of the Force, Finn's arc, everything that happens on Tatooine. It just feels like there's no continuation and correlation from the last movies even though J.J. Abrams said that he wanted to tie in all the trilogies together.

4. Where was Rose Tico?

Rose's character was very controversial to some people in The Last Jedi. And the actress, Kelly Marie Tran got so much hate for it, but we're not gonna talk about that. For me personally, I don't hate her, Rose taught us so much in TLJ but most of the scenes with her weren't that important to the story, so I get it why they basically cut her off TROS. But man, only 1 minute 16 seconds of a screentime in a 2 hours 20 minutes duration of a movie, for a character as prominent as Rose is unbelievable. I know that they did that mainly because of the backlash but she's basically an extra in TROS.

5. Rey's Lineage & The Rise of "Skywalker"

Listen to me, Rey being a nobody was okay and the message behind it was very inspiring. Showing that you don't have to be someone from a famous family to be strong in the force is actually a really good thing. Yet they just scrap the whole idea and make Rey a Palpatine, just because they don't want Rey to be seen as a Mary Sue. Also it was emphasized many times in the movie something along the line of "your lineage doesn't matter" then why did Rey said that her last name was Skywalker at the end of the movie? If her lineage doesn't matter, she could've just said "Rey Palpatine" and no one would give a shit about that. And the choosing of the name "Skywalker" is pretty, dodgy. She fought most of the time with Luke. She didn't feel that sense of family with Luke. I would be pretty damn fine if she took "Solo" as her last name, other than for obvious reasons, she felt like she belong in the Solo family. With Han, with Leia, and with Ben. Also, the title is called "The Rise of Skywalker" but all of the living Skywalker is being killed off of the movie and a Palpatine is alive.

6. Ben's death and the concept of Dyad of the Force

I'm probably gonna be biased in this point but i don't care, i'm gonna say it. I don't like that Ben is being killed off of the movie and the scene of his death was so messy, also it's contradictory to the concept of Dyad. First of all with the scene, you'll see so many mistakes being made in that scene. Rey's hand position, Leia's body vanishing at a questionable time. It's very obvious that the decision of killing him came up very late and they just did it so messily. 

It was mentioned twice that Rey and Ben are dyad of the force. Soulmates. Two that is one. Reincarnation of one soul that is divided into two. Whatever you call it. From a meta that I read on tumblr which gave a much better explanation of it than the movie, it said that since they're basically soulmates, one cannot live without the other. But Ben being "dead" and Rey being alive is not how dyad of the force concept work. Rey is literally missing her other half, and she could live just fine. No mourning of her other half scenes whatsoever. When it actually should've been shown and Ben being dead, Rey being alive actually causes the force not to be balanced since the other half is missing , when Star Wars has always been all about balance. This movie is the end of a saga, it should've shown some reassurance that the force is balance, and not the opposite.

7. The Ending

Where do I start with this point? I don't even know. This is what i'm just gonna say about the ending, it's very messy. The cuts weren't "clean" if that makes sense. Like, disney and lucasfilm ain't slick y'all. If you want to create a new ending in the last minutes, at least make it good, make it believable, And not copying and paste it from a previous scene, instead. 

That's all, I'm gonna continue mourning over the ending and Ben, especially Ben. Thanks for coming to my TED talk everyone.