The Rise of Skywalker is Impressively Bad | A Star Wars Rant

this video is sponsored by surf shark vpn so i'm going to start somewhere you might not expect cats like the movie cats the adaptation of the musical i'm sure there's a good chance that you remember that movie was quite infamous for how bad it was how weird how creepy because that reputation i convinced my dad and brother to go see that movie with me because well i'm a meme lord i wanted to see some goofy memey things so i went there to laugh at the movie to have fun at its expense now due to sheer chance or maybe due to god's will i sat down beside this lady and right from the get-go i could tell that she was a massive cats fan she was engrossed in this film it was like she was watching a newborn baby her newborn baby this woman laughed at the right time she cried she was invested and for all i know this woman doesn't get out on the town much maybe this moment with cats was her one opportunity to have fun for the month or for the year or for however long and i'm not gonna ruin that fur so i'm sitting there going well i wanted to laugh but now i better shut up so part way through the film they were singing this song for like the seventh time uh the memory one memory all alone in the moonlight that type of thing they were singing and this lady is softly sobbing you know just little baby cries at cats and then there's my brother to my left who hasn't realized yet that this lady is a massive cats fan and he is fake sonic [Laughter] so i have to lean over to him very quietly very discreetly to tell him to stop because you know i don't want this woman to hear him and he did and we were safe and we left cats and we had a we had a fine enough evening don't get me wrong i wouldn't really recommend that anyone watches this movie if they want to be entertained it was apparently supposed to be funny but it wasn't one of those so bad it's good type deals that some people talk about it was just boring i didn't really care it wasn't quite as creepy as i'd hoped the cat's buttholes weren't there i mean come on i went there to see a cat's butthole regardless of that though there was a plan the plan was to see this movie and then the next day i'd go to see star wars the rise of skywalker see my grandpa's a massive star wars fan so we always go to see the new movies with him honestly from the very first the force awakens i was not into these disney star wars movies i've never even been a massive star wars fan but i watch them all with my grandpa because grandpa's great i love my grandpa i'm gonna go watch movies with him a few moments why not so i went and in my head despite the fact that i hadn't enjoyed disney's other star wars movies i thought this one will at least be better than cats i believed that cats would manage to make this one actually look like a pretty decent film instead something unexpected happened i walked out of the rise of skywalker to only realize that no i'd enjoyed cats more cats was a more interesting movie i'd at least never seen anything quite like it before some of the music was decent some of the performances were kind of okay despite how weird they were but the rise of skywalker i had nothing positive to say nothing at all so that's why i'm here today to talk about just how bad i think the rise of skywalker is and to talk about why it's easily one of my most hated films of all time first and foremost the rise of skywalker is a sequel if that's a surprise to you i can actually kind of understand why because the film itself doesn't seem to know it's a sequel okay okay maybe that's a bit unfair but honestly you could pretty much skip the last jedi so little of what happens in that film matters here it only builds upon a select few ideas from that movie those ideas being this concept of rey taking ren's hand and her revelation that her parents were no one the part where rey goes back to the island where luke was and hux being a spy maybe there's some other small things but i didn't notice them and i don't think they're all that important if they are there in fact i noticed just the opposite i mean what happened to rose like i get that a lot of people don't like her character and really i wasn't all that invested in her either but come on the whole thing between her and finn isn't even addressed here it's just dropped like it never happened to be fair part of the problem here lies with the last jedi a whole lot of nothing happened in that film and a lot of plot threads were purposely dropped or discarded in the movie itself even so what stuff was there should have been addressed but it's not instead the movie cuts forward to this whole sith wayfinder thing and kylo ren hunting it down and well i'll get into that in a bit all in all a lot of this film feels like an attempt to write over the last jedi if anything the last jedi and the rise of skywalker are at battle with one another for example in the last jedi rey's parents were no one here nah that's not what they were they were actually somebody we were just kidding that's not what we meant there snoke was killed but never mind snoke was some sort of weird thing made by palpatine so it doesn't really matter because that was just palpatine anyway gotcha bet you didn't expect that sucker yet at the same time rise of skywalker somehow manages to go too far in the other direction what i mean is that it leans into the older films in this cloying obnoxious way that it's like mickey mouse himself is grabbing you by the shoulder pulling you close and whispering this was for you you better like it you stupid piece of crap right in your ear first old characters are used as a way to form the film's plot or to direct the film where it needs to go of course palpatine is the most blatant example of this he's apparently just been hiding out here with a whole swarm of death stars for some reason even though his goal is to get rey to come to him so we can possess her or something and oh no i'm already getting into the plot problems and that's that's too early for that i've got a whole section about that later gotta slow down anyway there's also luke who appears as a force ghost he shows up when rey is about to give up on being a jedi and he of course corrects the plot with his big boy pep talk next up leia whose words reach kylo ren just in time to stop him from slashing rey finally lando who happened to look for the sith wayfinder with luke and who rey and the gang happened to run into in the end so many of the new characters actions are tied up in these old characters what i mean is that the moment they're about to make a quote-unquote bad decision or have something bad happen the old boys swoop in and save the day to me it gives this weird sense that all the new characters and by that i mean the main characters of this trilogy are puppets or pawns being moved from scene to scene by these old school characters plus all the callbacks maybe i wouldn't hate these so much if i didn't already hate the rest of this movie but really when rey says that it's okay that we're here you're relieved that we're here lying which is obviously a reference to the original film i couldn't help but roll my eyes and i actually laughed out loud when papa palpatine quoted the darth plagueis monologue when he was introduced i didn't expect palpatine to be a meme lord but i respect it later chewie gets his medal because why didn't chewie get his medal in the first movie i hate it i hate all these stupid meaningless callbacks i hate the way the music swells when lando reveals himself like a big you should be nutting here sign is flashing above his head i hate that all the music inserts feel like they're for star wars fans and not the story itself i hate that this was the only chance to take the original cast and do something meaningful with them and instead they did this crap and i'm not even a big star wars fan okay okay it's fine i'm in my happy place i gotta calm down i still have 25 minutes of this video to get through and we're going to get through it [Music] together all right now it's time for everyone's favorite part of their star wars review the part where i complain about the plot holes plot contrivances and exposition basically the part where i complain about everything related to the plot let's start with the contrivances because this movie has an impressive amount of contrivances i mean pretty much every single scene has something contrived in it first luke happened to be researching the sith wayfinder's location which sure is convenient considering that rey and the gang still need to get one now second lando happens to run into them when they're on the sand planet on top of that he happens to know about the sith wayfinder too third ray and the boys happen to fall into the quicksand stuff and underneath it there happens to be this sith ship that has the dagger they need fourth c-3po happens to be unable to read the language it's written in fifth when rey is confronting kylo ren the millennium falcon happens to swoop up to save her at the perfect time sixth the dagger apparently has this weird device attached to it that rey happens to immediately discover points to this spot on the destroyed death star seventh this little droid happens to know a bunch of useful stuff about axagal which is where palpatine's hiding out and happens to tell the main characters right at the time they need to know that information eighth you know what i'm gonna stop you get the point it's fine to have some of these moments in a film sometimes things happen where the odds of them happening are low i can accept that in particular films will often be front loaded with a few things like this because that moment that unexpected unusual moment is what kick-starts the plot here though these contrivances happen from the very beginning to the very end of the film the plot might as well have been written on popsicle sticks and held together with tape and glue however you might have one simple objection to any of these issues the force maybe the force did it and you know what yeah maybe i guess i don't know because at this point the force might as well be synonymous with uh oh we wrote ourselves into a corner better find a way out of that whenever anyone needs to know anything and there's no way that they would know this thing naturally the force swoops in to give them a helping hand that's how ren grabs this necklace off rey and learns where she is that's how ren and rey teleport or whatever while they're fighting and wren learns where she is then too that's how rey realizes that she needs to keep the dagger that's how leia communicates with ren at the exact right time that's how luke appears to get ray back on track that's how rey heals people's injuries that's how papa pal shoots lightning into the sky like the mad lad he is that's how finn knows rey's leading them to exigle that's how finn knows which ship is commanding this fleet i mean didn't you know it's all the force and before anyone gets ready to type their comment about how the technical aspects of the force doesn't matter because previous films did similar things even if previous films did anything like that i don't care i'm talking about what this movie did wrong and boy oh boy does this movie make me hate the force with the passion now it's boiled down to nothing more but a feeling a feeling that gets you right where the writers needed you to be at the exact right moment but not a moment sooner i mean if the characters could just know all this stuff why couldn't they just know where exigal was let's face it rey's superpower is knowing what the writers want her to do wait actually didn't palpatine want rey to get to exigal so he could take over her body using the force or whatever he was going to do why didn't he just send someone to give her that information instead of this weird roundabout thing of finding the sith wayfinder did he think ren was communicating that to her but now we're getting into some other stuff because these are issues where if you really give the film the benefit of the doubt you can maybe maybe forgive them for example i find it absolutely ridiculous the palpatine somehow made all these ships had them hidden and didn't do anything with them until now but maybe some people think that's acceptable enough as a way to get the characters into the action at the start of the film i also think it's ridiculous that this lady happens to have a first order captain's medallion that will allow rey and all the boys to go where they need to go right at that point in the plot and you know maybe you don't think that's ridiculous maybe that's fine enough maybe that coincidence is acceptable either way i could go on and on with examples like this but i don't really think i need to i've already described a lot of examples of how the plot relies on these contrivances to move itself forward i'm sure you get the point if you don't agree with me about the movie's plot being contrived now i don't think you ever will anyway we've spent a lot of time here talking about bad movies but what if you want to watch a good movie well that's where surfsharkvpn the sponsor for this video can help you out now people use vpns for all sorts of different reasons but the reason why i use one is to get access to content that isn't available in my country surfshark works super well for that within a few minutes i had it downloaded i'd made my account and i'd been connected to the fastest server by default i click on a country and just like that my phone or computer or whatever other device i'm using thinks i'm hanging out in the usa or japan or any of these other countries this way no more stupid region-locked content so i can stream into the spider-verse on netflix through surfshark's us servers and shin godzilla through the japanese servers and jump around finding all sorts of different shows beyond that there's loads of content here considering that with surf shark i can get access to the 15 largest netflix country libraries in addition to this surf shark has a 30-day money-back guarantee policy meaning that you can try it risk-free so click on the link in the description to go to surfshark.dllohart and enter promo code low art to get 83 off and three extra months free on top of that you'll get an extra month free if you sign up before the end of black friday with all that being said time to complain about star wars some more exposition everyone's favorite thing but you know what despite the bad rap it gets it can be totally fine in fact pretty much every story needs it after all someone's going to have to tell you something about these characters and about the plot and about the world and about what's going on it's just that with good exposition it doesn't feel like exposition because it slipped into the film in natural ways but the rise of skywalker isn't really concerned with that there isn't enough time to be concerned with that instead we've gotta fly through this stuff and get to the next scene baby let's do it my absolute favorite moment of this exposition is when a group of the rebel characters are talking about palpatine being alive and some of these people are rightfully confused about this you know like how is he alive how did this happen and then charlie from lost just pipes up and he says dark science cloning secrets only the sith knew and all i can do is go okay i guess that's the thing now i didn't know about this um i guess i needed to read more of the comics i don't know who knows really though so much of the dialogue in this film exists just to tell the audience what's going on we get exposition about palpatine being alive about luke looking for the sith wayfinder about lando looking for it about battle plans and so on now as i already mentioned this exposition doesn't need to be bad but most of it is delivered with the tone of someone reading off a grocery list some stuff should also be plainly obvious and the audience has still told it all the same like i'm really happy orange yoda piped up to tell us if we want to stop him we must find him we must find hexagon thank you so much i never would have guessed that if you want to stop someone you might need to find them oh and if you want to find him you might need to find where he is i'm so happy this film caters to my monkey brain i'd be so lost without it oh yeah and before i forget why did you have luke's lightsaber in the force awakens never mind sorry i'm getting off track again in particular the first 20 minutes or so of this movie is just stuffed full of this stuff it feels like it's trying to make up for lost time since you know it doesn't want to acknowledge the last jedi too much but once the movie gets going it's no better because of the characters and the other stuff i've already got into but now it's time for the part about the characters i've already gone into how a lot of the dialogue in this film is dedicated to ham-fisted exposition however that isn't the only part of the dialogue that falls flat on its face really almost all the dialogue bothers me first let's talk about the banter the banter in this movie it's it's unfortunate most of the interactions here consist of characters arguing with one another or talking about stupid things at the wrong time in a way that i think is supposed to be charming once again i have a bunch of examples written down but i don't want to do another list so let's just pick my favorite set of these okay so there's this section on the desert planet where rey finn poe and c-3po are all being chased by these stormtroopers while the main characters are being hunted down by people who very well might be able to take over the whole galaxy they're saying stuff that to me makes them sound like voices for the audience specifically c-3po says ah they fly now when stormtroopers start while flying then finn says they fly now and then post says they fly now at this point it seems to me that the characters are mouthpieces for the thoughts the creators think the audience will have i mean shouldn't the characters be a little bit spooked the stakes here are pretty high of course you could make the argument that this is their way of coping with the situation but that's not how it comes across to me at all instead it seems like they're making light of a situation that they shouldn't feel like they can make light of at all next up they get caught in this quicksand stuff and as he's going down finn tells rey i never had the chance to or something like that before getting cut off what might that thing have been well we never get to know but that's beside the point from here rey asks finn what he was going to say and he says he'll tell her another time paul immediately pipes up to say you mean when poe's not around he sounds like such a baby boy here i honestly can't tell whether he's supposed to come across as a dick or if he's supposed to be endearing in his crappiness to me this is just the characters arguing not having playful banter if that was just an element of their relationship that would be fine but so much of the film is dedicated to this stuff and moments where the characters could show love to one another are brushed aside but i'll get to some of those moments later all the stuff i'm talking about here is the moment-to-moment characterization all those little moments that add up throughout the course of the film to give us an idea of who these people are having that stuff so full of these arguments and inappropriate reactions to life or death scenarios to me it makes them feel wooden fake hollow of course this makes me dislike watching every scene in this movie because i don't care about any of these characters i don't find them interesting i don't find them endearing i don't find them compelling in any way whatsoever so i might as well get into the specifics of why i don't like these characters and why not start with kylo ren who's outside of this main group of arguing goofballs kylo ren's main motivation in this movie is simple he wants rey to join him so that they can take the sith throne for themselves and rule i don't know exactly why he's so focused on having rey join him but maybe it's related to their force connection maybe they both have a similar compulsion to move towards the dark side maybe he thinks that he can't defeat palpatine alone but recognizes that if he and rey combine their powers they can defeat him i'm honestly not sure but these are some ideas i have either way this means that he spends a big chunk of the movie trying to track rey down and trying to convince her to join him just like in the last movie she isn't interested in that but hey he's going to keep trying he wants this however his motivation changes when leia speaks to him right when he's about to strike rey after that rey heals him and then he sees a vision of his father or it might be a memory or a metaphor i'm not 100 sure since this isn't a blue boy i don't think it's supposed to be a force ghost but maybe either way ren changes his mind from here and decides that he's going to be a good fella and do the right thing it's a change that to me feels far too fast but i guess rey healing him really moved his heart or something after all she did leave him be after this she showed mercy to him of course it would have been nice if that got explored in more concrete ways but we don't really have time for that stuff there's too much plot to get through next he somehow gets to axigal how i don't know i guess he found a ship somewhere regardless he goes down and helps rey out unfortunately he gets knocked away during the fight and though rey wins she's pretty wiped so he gives her his life energy because that's a thing he can also do now then and this is the real kicker they kiss was this romance built up at all i don't think so i had no idea they wanted to slash their sabers but this managed to be my favorite part of the movie the reason well multiple people booed this moment when i saw it in the movie theater and many more laughed myself included i'm pretty sure this was the day after opening night and the audience booed regardless of that though ren's arc in this film centers around that moment where he turns to the good side if that part falls flat then this film has failed him at least for me and boy oh boy do i think it falls flat all i can do is speculate about why he changed sides i just don't understand his position before flipping well enough to care about him flipping and that's what i was talking about before why does he want rey to be with him so bad i'm not saying that you can't come up with good reasons i mean i listed a few potential ones that could be decent i guess but if i'm going to watch a whole movie if this is going to be an important part of that movie i want to know why he's doing what he's doing or i at least want there to be some nice hints left behind so that when i watch it again i'm not left more confused i'm left going oh okay i kind of get it i can at least start to understand but for me that's just not the case as far as ren is concerned unfortunately this failure isn't isolated to kylo ren in fact the creators managed to make every other character's arc just as disappointing and boring we might as well look at ren's smooching buddy next good old ray rey's arc is primarily focused on lineage specifically it's focused on exploring where she came from and seeing what effect that has on her in the end the message the film seems to be trying to get across is simple the past doesn't need to define you or maybe more specifically just because you're connected to someone bad that doesn't mean you yourself are bad like sure your grandpa was a bad guy but you can do the right thing you don't need to be like him in fact that blood bond hardly matters it might not even matter at all leia hints at this when she tells rey to never be afraid of who she is it gets brought up again when this guy asks what rey's family name is and she says that she's just rey and of course it comes up through rey's connection to palpatine since palpatine is of course her grandfather she has these visions of herself sitting on the sith throne there's this goofy looking shark tooth rey who seems to reflect her fears of what she is or what she'll become overall it's clear that she's afraid of going to the dark side however other characters help guide her on the right path this all culminates here when she hears the voices of past jedi spurning her forward encouraging her to do the right thing and telling her that she can do it all this is fine and dandy but in my opinion it lacks any weight and the reason can be found in this scene where chewie's been captured and rey accidentally destroys the ship he's on with her forced lightning here a slip of emotions a slip in control leads to one of her friends dying now she needs to deal with the guilt and work past it understanding that she can never change what she's done but that she can do the right thing from now on or at least try to be better nah i'm just kidding chewie's fine he was just on a different transport sure the characters don't know for a bit but they don't really react much to his death i mean i'm sure some people found these performances in the dialogue convincing but i honestly didn't believe for a second that these characters thought their friend was dead maybe i'm kind of right anyway considering that ray later just senses that chewie's fine using you guessed it the force from right here something was clear in this film rey will never face proper consequences for her actions as such we never get to see her grow it's almost like the plot itself is protecting her coddling her keeping her out of danger and out of situations where she could do the wrong thing that's why she can heal people with the force now that's why the millennium falcon swoops up to save her that's why luke's force ghost guides her on the right path that's why palpatine does her the honor of telling her his detailed plan of how he needs to make her hate him so he'll have the best chance of combining with her body or something i guess i don't know that's why ren somehow gets here in time to help her out that's why ren gives his life to her so that she'll live through somehow forcing his life energy into her even though i don't know i didn't think he could do that did they build up to this at all all in all when rey is so utterly shielded from every negative outcome by everyone and everything else in the story her flaws don't feel like flaws they feel like a performance like you get the sense that someone behind the scenes going ray told her friends not to come with her see she's prideful that's a flaw or rey lost control of herself and shot the ship down see a flaw or rey tried to give up by going back to luke's island see she made a mistake but none of these flaws feel real when nothing happens because of them so yeah rey doesn't want people to come with her but when they do she doesn't seem to mind too much and never really gets after them rey loses control of herself sure but nothing like that ever happens again and chewie's totally fine anyway rey goes back to this island but it serves as nothing more than a minor distraction because all it takes is a minute long pep talk and she's back on track baby overall ray barely feels like a character to me instead she's a plot device a plot device whose personality traits and abilities morph to fit whatever scene she's in whatever needs to happen next i already brought this up but if rey can see everything using the force why couldn't she just figure out where they needed to go in the first place you know where exigal is that sure would have saved a lot of time my main point is just that at the end of this movie i didn't feel like i knew anything substantial about rey because it felt like rey wasn't really a person finn is almost as bad but maybe i just feel that way because his character arc was always the most interesting to me in terms of its concept i really like the idea of a stormtrooper abandoning ship and joining the good side it could be super interesting to see how he deals with his past self with the guilt of what he's done with the horror of what he's seen to see how he's going to reconcile who he was with who he is now unfortunately though the character who to me started as the most compelling in this trilogy doesn't even come close to his potential in fact that potential just makes the failure to give him a worthwhile role in this film all the more frustrating i'm honestly not all that sure what finn's arc is supposed to be in this movie the main thing seems to be that he's force sensitive but that's not really an arc it's more so just the way he overcomes obstacles in this movie so what's finn all about then i guess he wanted to tell race something but he never got the chance so he's close to her but he's keeping a secret but we also never get to know what that secret is i guess he's also brave considering how he puts himself on the line to help stop all the death stars but beyond that i don't know if you ask me to describe him in this film all i'd be able to tell you is that he's brave and force sensitive that's it his personality like most of the other characters is muted and dull to the point of being almost non-existent again this makes him seem malleable like anything can happen and he'll be able to deal with it because he'll change just enough to figure things out i think his successes in this movie shouldn't have been related to some force sensitivity instead i would have liked to see how his training as a stormtrooper helped him overcome the empire and maybe that's what they were trying to get at with him becoming a leader here but again his successes as a leader are mostly related to the force or a feeling telling him what he needs to do so the character doesn't come across as competent he doesn't come across as someone who's grown and trained and been led to this moment by his own will or determination or anything really about him he comes across as lucky anyway next up uh po opo i think the creators wanted him to feel like a han solo type smart guy but that didn't work out instead he just comes across as a bit of a jerk i already mentioned how characters have these awkward reactions to life and death situations and poe is easily the best example of this my favorite bs moment with him is when he and finn are about to be killed and he's still going on about how finn never told him the secret from the quicksand like buddy you're about to die is this really what you want to be most concerned about right now shouldn't you be thinking about all the people you leave behind but how you'll never get to see if the rebellion pans out but how the first order might win everything you know something like that some emotions about things that are tied up with the stakes of the film and not with some throwaway line that's never going to come back around overall i think his arc is meant to track a change from a distant guy to someone who's accepted the connection between people is necessary with that in mind that's probably why he spends a good amount of this film being a jerk but later when he becomes the leader he has this epiphany that he needs to trust others as such he heads into battle banking on the belief that others will come to help them sure enough they do and his belief pays off however there are two reasons why this doesn't work for me first i don't care about poe because throughout the film he's shown time and time again that he's rude and distant and that's about it in order for me to care about this change of heart i'd want to see his interactions with other people evolve throughout the film but instead his personality changes from one scene to the next as he accepts that he needs finn's help actually my second problem is that moment itself because when he admits to finn that he can't do this alone this should be a big moment for him and by extension a big moment for the audience but finn just quickly says i appreciate that thanks and then we move on to the next bit of exposition and the next plot contrivance can we have at least had a little moment between these characters couldn't we have at least took a second to appreciate this change now with all those things out of the way i want to get to the failure that i find the most instructive when it comes to discussing how these characters went wrong c3po see there's this moment where c-3po can't translate the sith writing that's etched into the blade because that's just something that's built into his programming he can't override that order which really sucks because they need to be able to read that to find the sith wayfinder however if c-3po gets rebooted and has his memory wiped he'll be able to tell them the location needless to say this is a huge decision for him he says himself that he doesn't trust r2d2's data banks where he stores c-3po's memories so if that fails as he kind of expects it to he'd be giving up all his memories basically giving up who he is to help the other characters get where they need to go so how do the other characters react well they they don't really up until now they've often ignored c-3po and now doesn't feel much different now that the option's available of course they're going to go through with it no question in the end even when c-3po looks at the characters and tells them that he's taking one last look at his friends they barely react the scene managed to make me dislike all these people even more because now they aren't just hollow they're cruel and callous on top of that they can look him in the eyes and not give a crap about him but maybe the characters didn't care too much because they have their future sight their ability to know where the plot is going to go and how to fix things because of course c-3po gets his memories back from r2d2 much like the chewy fake-out it doesn't amount to anything here's the thing when a story has no rules when a story is a set of contrivances lined up one after another nothing matters eventually the audience will realize that the story can bend and twist itself in any way it pleases to get wherever it needs to go wherever the creators want it to go after all said and done that means that things just happen anything you learn about the characters of the world is subject to change at the drop of a hat basically you don't watch pieces fall into place you watch them get melted down into nothing that's it considering that how could i care about any of these themes about any of these characters how could i care when nothing matters and everything is subject to last-minute revisions and changes

Channel: Lowart

Views: 554,012

Keywords: star wars 9, star wars tros, star wars the rise of skywalker, the rise of skywalker, disney star wars, star wars skywalker, star wars new movie, newest star wars, keri russell star wars, star wars ix, the last jedi, the force awakens, a new hope, the empire strikes back, return of the jedi, the phantom menace, attack of the clones, revenge of the sith, daisy ridley star wars, rey, finn, poe, c3po, c3p0, r2d2, luke skywalker, mark hamill, carrie fisher, jj abrams star wars

Id: _FkiDW1EaJ0

Length: 32min 56sec (1976 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 25 2020