Ah, so I’ve seen Rise of Skywalker now.
I haven’t much discussed the latest batch of Star Wars movies here, and I won’t start now. However, for the sake of completionism, you can find those ramblings here: Star Wars at Mr Wford.
But back to the present, with some spoilers. RoS is the final movie in the Luke Skywalker saga, so it was interesting to see how it ended. As for the movie itself, it’s fine, you know? Like Return of the Jedi, it was 50% cool and 50% corny. There were some parts I liked quite a bit: more first 5 or so minutes, some other scenes that were well shot, seeing Rey’s powers grow and manifest themselves, more evidence that Leia was in fact a force user of Jedi caliber, Zorii Bliss and the scenes on Kijimi.
Scenes I didn’t like? Pretty much anything that reminded me of RoTJ (aside from the Death Stars scenes, I liked those), how overdone the Final Order fleet was, the overdone and mushy ending, the ridiculous looking scenes in the air above Exegol…
In both of the Star Wars trilogies, the three movies followed similar plans… Star Wars/Force Awakens, light-hearted, kinda corny, but serious, adventure movie. Empire Strikes Back/Last Jedi, more serious and glum and, in each series, the best of the three. And RotJ and RoS… Half cool evil empire stuff, half just corny.
For the RotJ connections (some spoilers)… Covers: we see Endor again, we see Death Star 2 again, the Emperor returns, dramatic descendant vs descender battle with lightning bolts, corny and unneeded celebratory scenes at the ending, too many scenes of Jedi ghosts, some worm thing that lives in the ground… Nuff said. However, with a new movie I’ll need to update my list of Star Wars films in order of favorites:
1. Star Wars
2. Empire Strikes back
Pre. Rogue One
6. The Last Jedi
-. Solo
4. The Force Awakens
5. Rise of Skywalker
3. Return of the Jedi