Rise of Skywalker and Stellaris

 
Previews

30 seconds of theater ID, then “Now, our...ad for the theater’s own subscription service.”

Barb and Star in Whatever - It’s obnoxious. It feels like a SNL skit made into a movie. SNL skits are sprints; they’re like Gimli, good over short distances. And that’s what this feels like. All respect to Kristen Wiig. She’s great, it’s just hard to find a good leading role for her. If the lord had descended from high and made people act like adults and possibly written something good for Leslie Jones, maybe we’d be having a Ghostbusters reboot right now.

But as far as Barb and Star, that’s gonna be no for me dawg.

1917 - A prequel to Saving private Ryan I guess.

New James Bond - I mean, ti’s a James Bond. Bond joins the gig economy it looks like. Hot new star as the villain. A rising base line doesn’t necessarily make a trailer dramatic, y’know?

Bad Boys 3 - hey, it’s Martin Lawrence. “Where are they getting these helicopters?” Great questions. That’s me in every video game dot gif, y’know?

Free Guy - Look, I like Ryan Reynolds. I just want to see something more organic to the concept. I don’t want special guy breaks the mold and becomes the chosen one of improving the world with violence and then fucks a girl. Like, I have seen that movie hundreds of times. I am sick of it and you should be sick of it.

Top Gun: The Unnecessary Sequel - I think I said everything I had to in the ‘Free Guy’ bit. Mean, the removal of the Taiwanese flag from Maverick’s jacket say everything. Well, everything the space plane doesn’t. After the reptilian executives who commissioned the committee that wrote this thing get their million dollars, maybe we will get some decent hot shots sequels laughing at its bullshit.

They’re gonna put Maverick in a space plane.

Wonder Woman 84 - Christian Wiig is in this. Yaay. Also, I know that guy isn’t Nathan Fillion, but he looks like Nathan Fillion. Oh, and I got this note from future me, “Did they ever find a vehicle for Chris Pine?” No, future me, they didn’t, but they came close.

Here’s the plot. Not-Nathan Fillion finds a wishing rock and he’s selling shares in it or something and he’s using those shares to control people and he gives wonder woman her dead boyfriend from WWI back and so she storms the white house, but he made the dead boyfriend too perfect so he’s going to realize what’s going on and sacrifice himself and turn to ash and she’s going to do the right thing and arrest not-Nathan Fillion. 10% chance she kills him.

Troll Sequel - Probably for folks who liked the first troll movie.

Black Widow - Eh. Hate that they’re making Taskmaster into a run-of-the-mill Marvel Villain. Translating comics, a serialized medium, into movies, an inherently episodic medium, makes this kind of bullshit. You hate to see it happen.

Live Action Mulan - Pass. Nice to see Rosalind Chao, the woman who played Kieko on TNG and DS9, getting some work though.

Fuck. Finally. Star Wars: Rise of the Skywalker.

Hey, it’s the crawl explaining how The emperor is involved in all of this shit. I forget that crawls are convenient expositional tools.

It’s at this point in the movie I realize how much I have to pee.

So then we pan down to Kylo Ren doing a full renegade run on meth and I wanna say when you have a pan from space, you go to a planet. If your crawl is done and your camera is on space...it stays on space. You don’t pan because you’re where you need to be. You don’t need to be in different space. You just move whatever is happening into space into your frame. DID YOU SEE STAR WARS?!

So Kylo Ren gets a holocron and It’s great because holocrons are things from the novels that are ubiquitous and yet never seen in the films so it’s great they’re using that part of the lore. It’s a real treat.

So Kylo Run uses the holocron to navigate the murder planet to get to the thunderstorm planet where a fuck-off huge Sith fortress with Sith landing pads and Sith edifices and Sith statues and Sith Hellraiser hospitals are and I’m like, “On day one theRrepublic, did they not subpoena the records of Secret Lairbuilders, LLC?” Okay, we know the empire built hella secret shit and we need the records of all of the construction projects you did on death planets, and murder nebulae, and stellar genocide snails, and then we’re going to send spec-ops forces led by Luke fucking Skywalker to clean that shit out.

But instead the first chancellor of the new republic was Joqu Bidolan and he’s all “we have to reconcile with the racist, imperialist, genocidal, faction within our new republic and put the past aside so this same shit can flare up the moment pluralistic democratic society falters the stupid, Pollyanna fuck!”
As the Emperor--yes the same emperor--no we don’t know why--as the emperor continues, you realize the 4th line of this movie is retconned exposition and damage control, so we know where it stands on The Last Jedi early on.

As the emperor goes on, using words I’m pretty sure are cut directly from Return of the Jedi, I wonder if this is a meatpuppet and there’s a guy in a Sith control room somewhere with an emperor soundboard, just hitting one of, like 12, buttons. “Good,” “Rule the galaxy!” “Do it,” “Young Skywalker,” “Jedi” “The Sith!”

It wouldn’t be that hard, right?

Has Kylo Looked at the last order balance sheets? I mean, I know the last movie asked us to look at the finances of insurgencies and military conflicts from idiotic and childish perspective of “rich people pay for both sides in a war” instead of “rich people fabricate threats to get the populace to pay for unnecessary wars to make the wealthy wealthier,” but--not to get too far into TLJ’s pretensions--even that shitty model doesn’t work in a situation where one side has RPGs on pickup trucks and the other side has a fucking DEATH STAR.

But maybe somewhere int he Last Order balance sheets it would explain where this lair is being financed?

HOW THE FUCK--A THOUSAND STAR DESTROYERS!?!

DID YOU THINK TO USE THESE SHIPS TO SAVE THE OLD ORDER YOU RAISIN...DIPSHIT?! WHERE WERE THESE SHIPS IN THE IMPERIAL NAVY AFTER ENDOR?! Did they lose the will to live???????

We swivel into the--fake laugh--Millennial Falcon. Get it? It’s full of millennials now? Millennial Fal--it’s doing courier missions for the rebellion which is imminently sensible, lemme pitch a new story format: Teaser, Damage Control from the Last Movie, Act I, Act II, Act III, Epilogue that Keeps the Next Movie from Retconning This One.

Now we’re doing lightspeed skipping to get away from the empire. I know it’s the first order and I don’t care. It’s the empire fuck off. So we’re just doing lightspeed jumps into random planets at space-velocities and not dying a whole lot. I hope it’s the stupidest thing this movie does, but at sequence number two, I’m feeling like it won’t be.

*sigh*

Now Rei is training and Leia has been training her. We know this because this movie establishes harder than the 1st National Bank.

And now we’ve got actual flashbacks. Is there a button we can press to skip these.

I know it’s a nitpick, but I think that Corellian Corvette landing in the rebel jungle is small.

“Master Leia.” Nice.

This argument between Rei and Poe is one of the scenes we needed to make these two friends.

A secret fleet. That can attack all worlds. All of them. Whatever. We couldn’t do this before for reasons but we can do it now...just because.

*sigh*

Are there no economics in a galaxy far, far, away?

We’re just building ships because we want to now? Is that what the good guys are lacking. Neiztche’s “ A will to starships?”

The name “X-tacle” is bad, but it’s a c-tier bad choice of this movie so we’re moving past it.

So now they wanna break up and do different missions and we’re all “Rei, you’re going together. Did you see the last movie Rei? We’re not splitting up again.”

Honestly, it heartening that we’re doing with the Fail-Rebellion of TLJ. That said, it feels like jungle planet here is gonna bite it pretty hard in an act or two.

Wait, they took C3P0? God, why?

The traitor is the red-head. Hux. It’s him. I don’t know why and it doesn’t make any sense because in this scene Kylo Ren literally reads a mind so we logically know it’s impossible that anyone in this room is the traitor...but it’s Hux. Hux is the traitor.

Adding a coin to the “evil AND stupid” jar, is the guy asking a reasonable question like, “What does he want in return” & getting a force choke for it.

Now we’re in another fucking desert with another fucking rich culture, but this is sub-nitpicking. It’s bitching. We’re looking for a trader I think who knows where the other holocron is that knows where the sith planet in the murder nebula is.

We take a brief moment to recap everyone’s trauma in this festival of--glad I have a family and a last name before Land shows up. Cowboy Lando.

Only two holocrons remain. We know this because the rest haven’t checked into foursquare in, like, forever.
I’m not 100%, but I think Rei just gave Lando the green light to fly over to the rebel planet and fuck Leia.

We’re doing engineering, but IIRC Rei is the engineer here. Also, Rose is the engineer here. I guess piloting is adjacent to engineering.

A chase scene breaks out, complete with “never underestimate a droid” line. It’s quickly eclipsed by the “they flow now” bit, which while we’re speaking of core competencies, shouldn’t be a surprise to Finn. Who literally was a stormtrooper. But I guess if the best dialog we could add here was borrowed from Joss Whedon we should just go for it.

We go from a pretty dodgy green screen shot to a stunt where everyone falls in stunt quicksand. Hey, I’m the first to bring up that maybe I’ve sucked the magic out of my own moviegoing experience with waters made bitter with the herb of knowledge.

Looks fake though.

So it’s quicksand. Really, really quicksand. And now they’re all dying. This wouldn’t have happened if they brought R2.

*CALMLY* If the quicksand, which is liquid-like, doesn’t suffocate you, but instead drops you into a cave. What is keeping the quicksand up? What’s keeping the quicksand out of the cave?? It’s fluid. It’s permeable. IT’S. FUCKING. SAND.

Whatever, it’s space geology. Free pass. Only the Fail-Rebellion could have found the impossible fast quicksand caves though.

I have a note here that says “R2 would have stolen the hood ornament,” I’ve forgotten the context, but I feel that’s true.

Forget the holocron; it’s just a good knife.

Rei, Rei! Do Jedi healing magic!

She did! That’s great...y’know provided no one dies of an injury that could have been solved by jedi healing magi--oh fuck, “transferring life.” It’s now a cool Sith knife of Damocles hanging over the rest of this movie.

So these are the Knights of Ren and not the guys from the last movie? Kylo. Kylo tell them what happened to the last Knights of Ren.

Oh, that’s why they brought C3P0. They needed to translate Sith language off of a Sith knife and he can’t do that.

“That ship won’t fly.” Bitch, every event in these stories is driven by things that haven’t done shit in 20 years. That ship will fly.

So are the Knights of Ren just packed into that one tie fighter like a college pizza run?

HOW DID CHEWIE GET CAUGHT?

The sequence of the tie fighter running down Rei in the desert should have been both of them making minor adjustments as they get closer.

Also, Rei, you are an engineer. Use the force on little parts to bring the ship with Chewie down. Chill lady.

This is stupid. You can’t tug-of-war something this small and...kill Chewie?

Where did THAT ship come from?!

Why weren’t those two unrelated, not-cooperating prisoner ships with Ren?

“Ren...and Rei?” Fuck this.

Also, how fucked is it that the treatment of light and dark in this movie is treated as whether you choose to drink white or red wine at The Force-Users Wine Tasting of Fate? Instead of a decision about how you live everyday that leaves everyone on a spectrum of neither morally pure, but always redeemable and as I say that I want to throw this whole dimwitted triology into a volcano.

TWO impossible transports? Ships are being inserted to and blown-up in and repaired in this desert mesa with no establishment or consistency as a way to move characters around like balls in cups for some contrived drama and a few action pieces.

At least the Fail-Rebellion has learned to fuck in an upwards direction since TLJ.

We’ve gotten away from the empire, but now our smaller cuter droid has found the smallest cutest droid.

BB8 = to what I assume is called A9--”They’re a little droid racist, but they’re OK.”

So now we’re on snowy Iraq planet and military crackdowns can be a regular status quo for a society. The manpower alone to enforce it is insane. The alternative is that the Empire got here first and knew where they were going when...the reason the Rebellion is here is because Poe knows a robot guy and the empire doesn’t know about the mission, the knife, the holocron, C3P0, C3P0’s Sith programming, or Poe’s roboticist friends.

The empire doesn’t even take the knife that Chewbacca has. The alternative is the let the rebellion get to the murder nebula and to kill them in the murder nebula. Or to deploy the FLEET OF STAR DESTROYERS around the Sith planet to--

Wait, the only way to get the Sith translations that C3P0 recorded off of the Sith knife is the overwrite C3P0’s prohibitions on translating Sith by erasing his Sith memory--sorry regular memory and C3P0 hasn’t backed up in a while so it’s going to be a big loss and a forever loss if the R2 dies on the rebel planet. That’s a really fair trade.

Also, couldn’t you back up 3P0 right now?

Poe is getting a case of the not-gays while Diet Caffeine-Free Mandalorian goes from killing Poe to sacrificing her entire future so he and an organization she barely knows about can get killed while not-stopping The Emperor and his fleet of a million star destroyers.

Hey, Chewie is alive! That’s...an event.

Finn, goddamnit! Be useful! Thank goodness, he knows where the detention level is.

Rei, just take five minutes and get Chewy.

So the rebels left snow Iraq for the mobile oppression fortress hovering above it and  no one told Kylo Ren that a civilian ship left the surface?

Hey, it’s that trope I hate, where the stormtroopers have the drop on Poe and they miss him entirely.

Hey, it’s time for Retcon Vision! It wasn’t Snoke connecting them after all!

I’m not gay for Hux, but he does have sexual chemistry with everyone.

Slipshine presents Hux and Kylo in the most epic of hatefucks.

Rei is a Palpatine. I...I knew it! I knew no answer would be satisfying.

So where did Kylo get his masters degree that lets him know what a force diad is? Because apparently he and Rei is one.

Hey, look Hux is the traitor and he gets anti-climatically killed by a guy whose role he could have served? Why is Hux suddenly incompetent, spiteful to the point of stupidity, and removed from the story by an older, identical dude?

That’s right Rei. You are what you love, not who loves you.

So we crash landed the Falcon on another--possibly different from Return of the Jedi--moon of Endor and I’m glad we didn’t spend five minutes saying goodbye to it. The high-speed, no landing-gear crash of the Falcon like that is a ship-ender.

But this is where the knife lead us to find the final holocron to find the Sith planet in the murder nebula to find the US-budget-deficit-scale fleet of sith Star Destroyers.

I’ve been a real bitch about this movie, but I will accept knife-map. And the twenty-year stability of both megastructure wreckage and random moon seabeds.

So I guess there wasn’t an Endor holocaust. Oh well.

These motherfuckers. Do you know. How many. Impossible fucking space things you’ve done? How many impossible physics things you’ve done? But you can’t surmount the impossible goal of CHOPPY SEAS?!

A black lady former storm trooper who rebelled against the first order is forming a close relationship with Finn? Oh, fuck this movie. “Uh, here are some heterosexual, normal parings for you to ship, you deviant fans of this series. Eww” says JJ Abrams.

Some of these green screens are a miss. Rei’s taken a sailing ship across the choppy seas because she remembers those caves under the quicksand were impossible shit too and the universe she lives in doesn’t give a FUCK about consequences.

I like that we’re on Rei’s home turf, big-ass salvage.

Boo. The evil Rei illusion is in the trailer. Illusions in the trailer and promo materials are lies. They’re just lies. This movie lied to you to get you excited. It hates you.

Props though; Crylo Ren straight up crushed the MacGuffin instead of doing any cliche. Truly, this is where the rising Abrams meets the falling Johnson.

So they do a lightsaber fight and immediately move outside of the much more interesting arena of the decaying ruins of the death star so they can fight on...wreckage in a sea for a lower stakes Mustafar fight.

So I said, “Rei, end this bitch," and Rei ended that bitch, honey.

R2! R2! Call Life Alert. R2! Call ‘em! The Princess is dying from the plot using Force Erase! It’s super-effective R2!

Then Rei heals him and...why, Rei? Him dying saves a lot of problems? If you thought he was redeemable before rey, why did you stab him? If you think he’s IRredeemable now, why are you healing him? What changed Rei? Princess Leia died? I don’t...understand why characters are doing things?

Why is Han Solo a force ghost? I mean, he’s probably a memory that Kylo is having, but that’s not a good narrative device to use in a setting that has force ghosts. You get that, right?

So now we’re back on the Sith Planet and the us national-debt levels of sith Star Destroyers ALL HAVE DEATH STAR CANNONS now because fuck scale and fuck self-restraint. If this movie had a 4th act, we’d learn that the death stars could destroy every atom in the galaxy at once.

“Of course they do.” You said it, Poe.

So now we’re doing those final loyalty quests before the Mass Effect 2 suicide mission.

Porgs are back.

Luke asks Rei what she’s afraid of and she’s all like, “I...literally just said that. Drinking the red wine at the Force-Users Wine Tasting of Fate. Boomers do not listen.”

Boomers being the generation that blew up the death star. Naturally.

“Hey man, some things are stronger than blood. Most things. Watch your sugar intake. Some of the emperor’s monster face IS from diabetes.”

“A thousand generations” which I think puts us 2:1 on some fucking obscure aspect of the lore I can’t remember.

So Rei, whose on the Luke Skywalker island, tore up Kylo’s tiefighter and almost threw her lightsaber into the fire. Now she’s gotta go back in Luke’s tie fighter from underwater and get the holocron that Kylo had to go to the murder planet and fight the emperor alone.

Meanwhile, because Kylo didn’t bring a star destroyer with him to the other moon of endor like he did everyone else. Poe and Finn fixed the Millenial Falcon, which should be inoperable, and ran away back to the rebellion and Poe runs the rebellion and they’re planning an assault on the planet even though I don’t remember how they know they can get to the sith planet? Maybe Rei told them?

But whatever C3P0’s memory is restored because “no consequences” and we get an expository mission briefing with our macguffin list. Poe says that glueten-free vanilla Mandalorian taught him an important lesson about how when they call for help this time people will respond even though that exact thing failed in the last movie.

Chewbacca then looks directly into the camera and says in perfect english, “FUCK the Last Jedi.” Before the mission breifing continues.

Who’s running the imperial fleet of worldslaying sith star destroyers of which there are more of than atoms in the universe? There’s a line about stealing more children, but that honestly just raises more questions.

It’d be nice, since they’re planning a ground assault, if they had the troop transports from rogue one.

Man, I wish I was watching Rogue One.

Maybe the sith could conquor the galaxy if the focused more on conquerying the galaxy and less on GIANT FUCKOFF BASES WITH GALATORIAL STADIUMS!!??!?!?

Godamnit Finn, it’s not a ground invasion of a starship; it’s a boarding action. You’re a marine now. Where’s the force ghost of R. Lee Ermy telling you how to do this right?

Swear to God, there were 12 rebels left at the end of the last movie. SHUT UP CHEWBACCA!

Not to act like that snotty kid in the front row of your time travel 101 course, but just blow up the evil chair and see where that takes this awful prophecy? I mean, has Rei even seemed the slightest bit inclined to red wine?

We’ve got an implicit setup for Luke’s feet of clay that allow evil to flourish and the Emperor’s enthusiastic spread of evil, but if you think this movie is aware of that on any level, you’re the one JJ Abrams was thinking of when he made this fucking thing.

The emperor says he was waiting for her. Bitch, you tried to kill her, like, 100 times. “All has proceeded according to my design. Do kids these days still buy that bullshit?”

Ugh. Painfully heterosexual.

Wait. All these sith star destroyers have planet-destroying weapons. And they’re around a sith planet. Wouldn’t it be better--albeit laden with heroic sacrifice--to board one, kill all of the...sith ghosts or child soldiers or whatever is staffing them and just shoot the sith planet?

Oh! Oh! Rei. Do “Strong in a Real Way” from STeven Universe. Sing it, Rei!

I feel like we should have a flashback to luke telling Rei: “Then he’ll hold the entire REbellion assault hostage unless you drink the red wine and join him. Bush league stuff, kid. Don’t fall for it.”

JJ Abrams, it doesn’t matter how you try to break me or what you do this franchise. I will never join the Reylo side. I’m a JediStormPilot shipper, like my father before me.

Or--or--or FINN. Use your marines to take the ship and explode the sith planet with the sith planet exploder gun.

How...did Kylo get here? He still sucks.

“Don’t. I’m sorry,” them Poe. Third movie. End of character arc. Be a leader.

The arrival of a fleet of civilian ships stirred into action by the Charisma of lando calrissian and chewbacca is stupid and unearned. But I’ll buy that Lando and Chewy could do it.

Lando, while pouring a drink on a holo-screen projected across the New Republic, “C’mon baby. Inaction at this juncture in galactic events would allow for the return of the galactic empire. I’ve been there and it’s the least smooth thing possible. Imagine getting into your ship and flying through the murder nebula to fight a literally infinite number of planetkilling sith star destroyers is like sitting beside me on this velvet-anium chase lounge; hard to do, but...oh so worth it.”

I buy that. I totally buy that. It’s just supid and unearned.

Ronald REgan Voice: “It’s dawn on planet Extacle.”

There’s just no consequences for any of this, you get that, right?

Emperor, have you copied your planet from Independence Day?

*emperor voice* “Nooo. Nooo!”

Look, no one loves the lightning hands more than me. No one. When the emperor lightning hands the entire rebel fleet; he’s taking a prized symbol of evil and making it into a farce. He’s ruining the cultural history of evil and lightning hands.

Rey, Honey, I don’t want you in this movie either.

And as a destroyer explodes the minute it’s planet-killing weapon is shot, the emperor turns to me and goes, “Okay, I watched Indenpendence day a few times; it was the 90’s. I don’t think I copied it; I think I was inspired by it.”

So now the giant ideological fight between white and red wine has become a simple beam war determined by whatever ideas the plot wants to throw at us and therefore label “more powerful” with the implication that side is more moral.

Cool.

Don’t say it bitch. You don’ thave to ray, baby. He can say “I’m all the sith, but you don’t have to give in. You don’t have--there she goes, saying ‘I’m all the Jedi.’” Ok, she’s fallen.

It’s cool to see the resolution of a grand conflict between two organizations we have barely ever seen period and have never seen contrasted. I assume this anticlimactic and frustrated emotion I’m experiencing is “catharsis.”

So Rey dies for no reason? Technically, it’s less time being in this movie, so I’ll cheer it on, for Daisy Ridley’s sake.

Are the Sheeves and Amidalas re-elected? What’s the political situation on Naboo? Like, did their political dynasties continue under the emperor? He couldn’t have killed his whole family YES THIS DIGRESSION IS THE MOST INTELLECUTALLY RIVETING THING TO CONSIDER RIGHT NOW!

Oooh, Kylo Ren uses jedi healing to save Rey and kill himself.

They kiss ina  movie that’s branded as painfully heterosexual then he dies in a win for Adam Driver.

I’ll be honest, I laughed out loud when the Star Destroyer crashed over pre-crashed star destroyer Jakku, effectively symbolizing the pointless and cyclical nature of this universe and these movies. It’s good to know the real ship was the hate shared between me, JJ Abrams, and Rise of the Skywalker.

We’re in the wrap up and we’re in the jungle planet (whcih didn’t get blown up) and setting the survivors on their own courses.

More heterosexuality. Fun.

Oh look gays k--oh, time’s up.

Final Scene: We’re from the New New Republic and we’re subpoenaing all of your records for work performed by the Empire or Sith LLCs, or any subdiaries.

When you bury those lightsabers, don’t forget to make a map, Rei. We’re gonna need it for the next awful trilogy.

“Rey, who?” Asks the old woman in the Tatooine desert?
“Rey Organa. Definitely Organa.”

Yes, theater patrons, clap. I, too, am happy this is over.