I've seen bad movies before, I've thoroughly enjoyed bad movies before, but I've never seen a movie so dismal it put me off a franchise I loved and made me hesitant to get into any of the spin-offs since because I'm afraid they'd pull something like that again.

also, look - having the entire fate of the galaxy tied up in one family is stupid, but that's the story they were telling

this whole thing is 'the skywalker saga'

and our final great confrontation for the fate of the force? that's right! it's palpatine versus palpatine! who's your chosen one now?

then, of course, it's back to running back all of the old beats with rey and ben versus the emperor

the emperor tries to get rey to give in to her anger and kill him! the emperor throws ben down a chasm (this has never once killed anyone in the history of star wars, sheev! you should know!)

star wars is full of plot holes and unexplained bullshit but usually it's the kind of stuff (kessel run, etc) that makes you excited to think about a possible explanation for it

this? I don't want to think about this! the more I think about it the worse it gets! I don't want to play in this sandbox

Fucking
Beautiful

#starwarsisdead

that's the crime, the one big unforgivable crime

they didn't tell a shitty story and leave us a sandbox to tell better ones in, they kicked over the sandbox

I have been a star wars fan since I was a child

I have loved star wars and I have hated it but I have never, until RoS, stopped caring

at the end of it, I don't care anymore

I don't want to read about how the first order came about

I don't want to read about the resistance

I don't want to know what happens to Finn, or Poe, or Rey, none of this is compelling, you've sucked the life out of it

I don't want to play in this sandbox

now let's run down some last nostalgia bait to wrap it up

look, chewie finally gets his medal! look, tatooine! look, a sandcrawler! look, the lars homestead! look, it's rey! rey... skywalker! none of this was earned, none of this feels real, it's just treating the audience with contempt

and this is the key to rise of skywalker's crimes - it's not even trying to tell a story, it's not even trying to work within a coherent fictional universe

the more you try to make it work the worse it gets

it's not a good story told poorly, like the prequels - it's not really a story at all

I pretty much figured what you meant since I felt the exact same way.

This was right around the time of the first Trump, the pandemic, basically everything going to shit. It all culminated right then for some reason, in my head.

Art these days is a collaboration between soulless AI-besotted corporate executives and thoughtless nostalgia-besotted excessively online fans, which is why most of it sucks.

It's art made for recursive fandom, made so that the loudest, dumbest fans can point at the screen and say "hey I recognize that!" It's what all AI content is: perfectly attuned to what we want, and thus, paradoxically, repugnant.

At least George Lucas really *went for it*. He took big shots. He tried.

IX represents something else entirely: basically it's what you'd get if you told an AI to train on previous SW & lightly remix them. Zero creativity, zero thought, zero risks.

GODDAMMIT THIS IS LIKE THE FOURTH FUCKING TIME I'VE DONE THIS.

Obviously I mean Star Wars IX, not IV.