Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, December 20, 2019) Movie • Page 224

Hmmmmm

 

I really want to do a rewatch of the entire series, think I might start that soon. I did a rewatch of the OT before TFA came out but I haven't seen the prequels in YEARS. I loved them a lot when I was a kid and I have no idea if the nostalgia will be strong enough for me to still like them, looking forward to seeing lol

 

Reminds me of this awful wedding photography job I recently saw online:

 

What the hell is that picture

 

Hahaha

 

Don't know if it's been posted but UK Empire Magazine had a pretty good Star Wars feature this month with a Dark Rey art:

 

Rey seems to have the same kind of double saber the temple guards have in Rebels. Where the handle for the second one flips down to make it double sided.

 

Earface.

 

dont know if this has been poster yet but an international tv spot gives a few new clips

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker New Footage Revealed in International Trailer

 

Definitely confirms, at least IMO

they're training together for something by the way they're sparring

 

leia holding the saber!!

i was gonna spoiler tag that but its the screen cap lol sorry

also palpatine saying ”let the final battle begin”

 

Don't think I've seen that scene with ren before

 

I'm gonna be so intrigued by the "how" of all of Leia's stuff after this comes out. Would love a behind the scenes featurette on, like, what the raw footage was like, where it was originally intended to fit into Force Awakens' story, & what creating new scenes utilizing that material was like.

 

I’m guessing Palpatine is going to make Rey and Ben try to kill eachother

 

I’m guessing Palpatine is going to make Rey and Ben try to fuck eachother

 

Cursed

 

And watch.

Just like how he enjoyed watching Luke & his dad sword fight.

 

On a different note, I started rewatching Phantom Menace on Wednesday night & am now watching the rest of it.

Depending on how long this Star Wars kick lasts (it's been strong enough for me to have watched Empire twice in the same week), I might revisit Solo to confirm... but, my gut feeling is that I actually like this bad movie more than that adequate one, lol. My growing appreciation of pulp aesthetic & charmingly bad genre filmmaking has helped a lot, which I should've seen coming; of course someone who liked Dark Phoenix would like this.

I think this being shot on film helps a lot, in spite of all the innovative digital effects & compositing that hasn't aged well. (Not like all the OG trilogy compositing is flawless, lol.) Especially since I'm watching the old version w/ that puppet Yoda. The story structure & pacing is bad, the dialogue is full on Lucas clunky, the script & direction makes most of the acting super wooden, & that poor child's acting is predictably bad. But, there's a certain quaint charm, in that John Carter/Flash Gordon kinda way (which is, of course, what birthed the franchise in the first place), which allows for more camp than you'd think something this dry could have. I'm just getting to the final battle as I type this, which I hope doesn't sour this experience, but at least that includes the Duel of the Fates battle.

Also, sad Amidala in this scene is a whole ass mood, lol; I feel like having a young actress in gaudy attire reacting to bureaucracy indirectly created a great performance here:

 

When I rewatch those prequels I understand them way more now than I did at the time.

 

Update: The battle was good. The pacing of the Maul fight has aged really well. Padme w/ a blaster has big Leia vibes. I actually mostly like the Jar Jar slapstick on the battlefield, in spite of not being into most of the other gags w/ him; in battle, he's sometimes like if Goofy played Han. The only element I didn't like, which would've been nice to be cut so we wouldn't have 4 dang sequences to alternate between, was the Anakin in space crap, but at least that gave us that classic podracing line, lol.

I hope Rise of Skywalker has a big ol' celebration at the end. Phantom, New Hope, & Return have 'em, so it'd follow the whole chiastic structure thing that this franchise is so into, lol.

 

Original full interview: Billy Dee Williams Talks the Return of Lando in The Rise of Skywalker and His Star Wars Legacy

I really like this bit on nostalgia:
When our food finally comes, Williams takes a bite of the chicken Kiev he remembered so fondly from his younger days, and makes a comment that could work as a good thesis statement for our entire conversation, or the nature of nostalgia like Star Wars taking hold of this moment in popular culture: "An original moment is tricky. Because you’re really trying to recall or remember your palate, your sensibility, trying to recapture something that happened a long time ago," he tells me. "And when you anticipate it, you think you’re going to be in that moment. I’m right at that moment. So what I’m tasting is not that moment. I’m tasting this moment. And I’m happy about this moment but it’s not what I remember."

 

For some reason I always read quotes from him in the voice of Wayne Brady's impression of him from Whose Line

 

Speaking of, Dude on twitter said its impossible to explain the plot of phantom menace without explaining the whole movie. I think hes right