The Rise of Skywalker (Review)

I managed to see Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker within the first week of release. That's pretty good by my standards.

I have mixed feelings about this movie. I suppose there's the usual excuse that it would be hard for any movie to live up to this kind of hype. I think this one worked so hard to top everything that had gone before that it went too far.

It's as if this story went through 100 exaggerated retellings via oral tradition before anything was written down and made into a script. That, and some aspects of the writing seem a bit lazy.

That said, the acting is great, the visuals are amazing, and there are some neat Force-related events that add interesting twists to the story.

I'm going to give it three stars and say it's worth seeing.

Spoilerish remarks below the fold (mostly focused on the things that annoy me and keep this movie from getting five stars).

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Dip It In Carbonite

The Old Republic

The 40 Plot Holes That Weren't (continued)

This is old news now, but I hate to leave things unfinished.

Original annoying article: 40 Unforgivable Plot Holes in 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'
Part one of my response: The 40 Plot Holes That Weren't

Click through for the rest.

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The 40 Plot Holes That Weren't

Nena showed me an article called 40 Unforgivable Plot Holes in 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' by Seth Abramson of the University of New Hampshire. She agrees with me that most of them don't qualify as either. It looks to me like Seth wasn't paying attention half the time.

I can be an argumentative jerk, so I'm going to dissect his article item-by-item.

This is your spoiler warning.

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The Force Awakens

I have now seen the movie twice. I was a bit disgruntled the first time, as I had avoided spoilers until mere hours before I actually got to see it, which put me in a somewhat negative mood.

I was past the negative feelings this time, so I think I can safely say that I do, in fact, like Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

I agree that it is highly derivative of previous Star Wars movies (I will not say which above the fold), but that doesn't really hurt it. This movie has the character development and dialogue that we truly love from the episodes IV-VI. It has action, but not pointless action.

Don't get me wrong: it could be better. The plot doesn't have blatant plot holes, but there are certainly plenty of open questions (which is okay if sequels fill them seamlessly).

Spoiler free, I am not disappointed that I payed to see it in theaters twice. I may even do it again. If you still haven't seen it, go away.

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Death Star Conspiracy

A new conspiracy theory has emerged on Facebook.


Like conspiracy theories typically are, this one is full of holes:

• Darth Vader was not in command of the Death Star; Grand Moff Tarkin was.
• Darth Vader didn't build R2-D2; that droid was built before he was born.
• There is no record of Darth Vader having children.
• The exhaust port was not two feet wide: it was two meters wide; there are kids on Tatooine who can hit a target that size from a skyhopper.

These conspiracy nuts clearly don't want to acknowledge the very simple failures that lead to the loss of the Death Star.

• If the Imperial intelligence services had been doing their jobs properly, the schematics for the station would never have fallen into rebel hands in the first place.
• If every single gun turret on the station hadn't been designed to shoot at cruisers with no regard to the possible threat of fighters, the rebel attack would have been quickly repelled.
• If the exhaust port had been fully shielded instead of just ray-shielded, there would have been no rebel attack at all.

This is yet another smear campaign aimed at Darth Vader simply because he was the sole survivor of the Death Star, when logs of the battle show that he was the only one who took action when it became apparent that the station's gun turrets could not rotate quickly enough to target starfighters. He ordered his squadron of fighters to repel the attack, placing himself at risk to lead the defense.

We should be glad he survived instead of trying to blame the Death Star fiasco on him.