Cinemavenger

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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Three Star Wars fans walk out of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.  Instead of hooting and/or hollering, they head to their car peppering each other with questions and comments about plot holes, logic lapses, and the overall halfassedness that form the bulk of the movie.  It's a far cry from the full body orgasms they had after each of the first three movies.  Of course, it's also nothing like the dick-shriveling, pussy-parching, Dark Side hatred they felt flowing through them after each of the three prequels.  So, the Force is balanced again, I guess?

The first three Star Wars movies are fucking classics.  A New Hope transported audiences and transformed the movie (and ancillary merchandising) industry.  The Empire Strikes Back is one of the woodpecker's pecker small list of sequels as good as or better than the original.  Despite the Ewoks, Return of the Jedi capped off the trilogy in style.

The prequels skull fucked the original trilogy, but at least they did have a clear, main story to tell, how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader.  What's the clear, main story of the current trilogy again?  Is it, "Who is Rey?"  Or maybe, "Will Kylo Ren be redeemed?"  Who the fuck knows?  I've seen 'em all, and I couldn't tell you.  These nine movies, ending with The Rise of Skywalker, are supposed to be the Skywalker story (see, it even says it in the title), but the final three, and in particular this last one, don't really seem to have fuck all to do with Luke, Leia, Vader, or any other actual Skywalker.

From the commercials and trailers, we already knew that Emperor Palpatine is back.  At the end of Return of the Jedi, he was deader than dumbwaiters.  How and why is he back now?  Because J.J. "Jameson" Abrams doesn't have an original thought in his fucking head.  And if you've been waiting for an explanation of why Snoke, the Big Bad from the last two movies, was killed off in the last one, you'll get one.  It makes less sense than a four-year-old teaching physics, and it'll piss you off to 11, but it exists.

There are some rousing moments, and for a minute here or there you'll feel like you're watching a good Star Wars movie.  Then there's the rest.  And there's a metric fuckton of it.

December 20, 2019