Quoted from Scar Tissue Films It's just factually wrong, mate. The Emperor's continued existence has been hinted at for decades. If you don't wish to accept that, that's fine. It doesn't stop it from being true. Here's an article from April this year explaining why the Emperor is probably alive : https://www.google.com/amp/s/a.....he-rise-of-skywalker They've been setting it up for a long, long time. It's just that a lot of people missed it. That's part of the fun of Star Wars, you only realise what's going on when it's all finished. It continually evolves.

There's a bigger issue you seem to be failing to see. The return of Palpatine is one small piece of a puzzle that doesn't fit.

This is a bad story, badly told. Many parts of it make no sense. Bigger issues like Rey's not existent story arc. She starts amazing and ends more amazing with no real challenges along the way. She can immediately fly, handle a light sabre and use the force better than anyone before her.

It's hard/impossible to care for any other character, because after 3 films we know almost nothing about them.

The coincidence is strong with this one, so much happens because it needs to to make the script work.

Sure you can argue that people may have missed all the pieces, that doesn't change the fact that this is at its core a bad film.

Kathleen Kennedy also said she would respect the characters, look how that turned out. I don't think you can trust anything she says.

As I said, each to their own but really this has so many logic and story issues that go beyond Palpatine.

All fair criticisms.

I agree with all of them, but still loved the film.

I have to say that Rey won me over in this one. Daisy Ridley acted her little heart out, making the absolute most of the shite she's been served. By the end I had nothing but love for her.

Kylo was underwhelming as a bad guy, but he was great as a good guy. Arguably the best character Star Wars has had.

They should bring him back using something they used in the comics : That he's stuck in the 'World between Worlds' ' that Vader opened trying to bring Padme back.

Honestly, the only thing that really matters to me in a Star Wars film is that the emotion is right. Plot holes and even characters are less important, because the other media tends to fill in all the gaps.

There's characters that appeared on the screen for seconds who will become some of the best characters in the saga on the page. The same happened with the prequels.

Overall, they did OK with the trilogy. They stumbled often, but kept their feet for me. There's a clean slate now, and they can do what they like and I'm looking forwards to the next one, instead of dreading it.

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Star Wars influenced, in whole or in part, generations of filmmakers and writers. Kids in the late 70s and mid 80s were practically given a film school and didn't even know it. Before special features on DVD and Blu Ray, there were loads of behind the scenes docs and even the bubble gum cards were showing off Ralph McQuarrie paintings and ILM model makers.

The OT set a high bar, maybe too high.
So high that the prequels took two films to get their footing. Part of the reason is that Lucas made the miscalculation over his fanbase. He thought the new generation would like goofy cartoon CG characters and rush out and buy merchandise related to that character.  He also thought he had to explain the Force to us as a technobabble construct. And that the Star Wars universe is a smaller galaxy than we first thought.  He was mistaken, and to course correct as much as he could. He finished on a high note with Revenge Of The Sith.

Time has been good to the prequels. No more so then when Disney bought Lucasfilm and started churning out more content under JJ Abrams, who barely has an original thought in his head, relying mostly on his mystery box concepts.  It seems that the new set of Star Wars films, being set thirty years after Return Of The Jedi one would think that the Star Wars universe would expand, when instead, all it did was recycle and shrink the universe again. If that were not enough, Disney would no longer treat the films as events, but planned a Star Wars related film every year. There was miscommunication between Disney, Lucasfilm's Katheleen Kennedy and the filmmakers they chosen to work with outside of JJ Abrams.

It's been a bumpy road, I'll give them that. I never thought a TV series on a new streaming service would save face, (and Mandolrian is great) but on the feature film side...we conclude with The Rise Of Skywalker.

Great action, dazzling CG effects, eat your popcorn, sip up the soda and...never mind all the plot holes, the inconsistencies, the convenient and contrived,  the retcons, shrinking the universe one more time, jerking off to fan service and/or recycled references, Making sure you are PC when you don't have to be, and on't let Star Wars be Star Wars, little things like that.

Well, JJ, people do tend to notice those things. Suspension of disbelief is needed, but when the rules of the film universe no longer make sense and anything goes, we have a major storytelling problem that's hard to ignore.  Don't rely on other future SW media to fix up the logic.  Spitting in the face of Rian Johnson, who only followed your outline in regards to Rey's heritage, mind you - is on display for all to witness.  Damn. No wonder filmmakers don't like sticking around Lucasfilm under Disney. A lot of folks point the accusing finger at Kennedy; maybe the wrath is misplaced and should be focused on Jj Abrams.

The return of Palpatine is fine; the opening crawl telling us and his fleet of hidden Death Star Destroyers which can zapout a planet but get kibboshed by a little poke isn't.


What a letdown. What a letdown!
Skywalker will make its cash. Take the money and run.

Here's my ranking in order:

Empire
New Hope
Return Of The Jedi
Revenge Sith
Clones
Phantom
Last Jedi
Force Awakens
Solo
Rise Of Skywalker
Rogue One

yes, yes and yes. the bottom half is all the recent piles of trash, and Skywalker only beats R1 by a foot, because at least Skywalker didn't put me to sleep.

There's a reason why folks are gravitating to Mandolrian on  Disney +. It is the antidote,

I've seen Rise twice now and I do enjoy it. I'm old, so I saw A New Hope when it first cme out. For me, Rise was a lovely way to wrap up 40 years of memories.

At the same time I can agree with most of the critisicms. It's funny, The Last Jedi was blasted by the more vocal fanboys on Twitter but since Rise came out, there has been a surge of love for TLJ when compared to Rise of Skywalker. I am a fan of TLJ BTW.

You can rip most scenes of Rise apart for bad writing. It is true, they ditch logic, good storytelling and character development for over the top fan service and nostalgia. You either buy into it and enjoy the ride or hate it. I enjoyed the ride, as I did with EP 7 and 8.

The problem is most of this was evident in Force Awakens, which was a massive hit. So, because it worked then, they did it even more with Rise of Skywalker and layed it on extra thick. Force Awakens is basically a re-imagined version of A New Hope and Rise is Return of the Jedi with a bit of every other SW film thrown in for good measure.  

It will be interesting to see what the overall Box Office figures are in a few weeks once the dust has settled as we can have whatever opinions we like but the numbers will have the final word.

Ultimately I think all the problems they had stemmed from two things :

Starting it in the wrong place.
Having  different directors working against each other.

I think they did a pretty good job of making it fit, but I think they've realised that in future they need a solid plan to keep it all together. Whatever you think of TLJ it didn't really follow the breadcrumbs laid by TFA and the third film essentially pretended TLJ never happened and tried to squeeze all the things Abrams wanted the second film to include (Lukes mission to find the Sith's homeworld, the Knights of Ren etc) into the third.

Colin Trevorrow's script for the third film, which had already been written before TLJ came out, was centred largely around Luke vs Snoke, and Rian Johnson killed them both off. He wanted to bring them both back, and left due to 'creative differences' because they wouldn't let him.

Abrans had written rough drafts for both Episodes 8 and 9.

It's a strange thing to let happen, really. They should have known definitively where they were going and stuck to a plan.

Anything in the main timeline is going to be contentious because everyone has a different opinion on what the story of Star Wars is depending on what tuner saw first and how much they've read. I met a young guy the other day who was practically crying over the new film because it destroyed 'Anakin' s Legacy', whereas for me, no such thing ever existed because Anakin was only ever really backstory to the originals and Luke Skywalker. If you saw the prequels first it's a different experience entirely. With the new releases, neither of them are really important. It's all been building to Rey Palpatine/ Skywalker.

There's a central dichotomy at the heart of Star Wars, which is that the core stories are a fairy tale, where everything is wrapped up neatly, but once expanded out of that, it becomes more of a 'realistic' story where good and evil and everything in between is on a constant state of flux. In order to continue the story, you have to lose the conceptual perfection of the original story..Good/ Love triumphing over hate/Evil. It's a difficult mix because if you move away from that core perfection, it no longer has the feeling of 'Star Wars', and if you don't you're constantly repeating what's already been.

What an utter piece of shit.

Two hours of nonsense for the protag to find an antag who wanted to be found in the first place. Paper thin, punishingly loud, joyless and stupid. The big saber fight was pathetic. Every callback to/ripoff of the original trilogy was just a painful reminder of how absurdly incompetent these new films are. "I'm the spy!" has to be the stupidest line of the year. The Leia stuff looked dreadful. And while I didn't really like seeing Luke, Han etc. in the new movies, the long stretches without them really highlight how deeply uninteresting the new characters are.

The worst Star Wars film. I would happily watch Caravan of Courage and Battle for Endor back to back over watching this again.

(Rey's slow-mo jump is still cool as hell, though.)