Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

Originally written for OutLoudCulture.com

Spoiler warning.
Five years ago, the future of the Star Wars franchise was hopeful, and optimistic, and as  a fan of the franchise, I was  as well. Now I'm just tired. It's not that The Rise of Skywalker is a bad movie, by any means, but I can practically see J.J. Abrams' regret in every  scene of the film.  He probably didn't expect to be making this movie, since Colin Treverrow was originally slated to direct, and I'm going to bet that J.J. wanted to see what he'd come up with coming off the Episode VIII script.  I'm well on the record as not liking Episode VIII, and considering what J.J. had to do to even make this movie, it sure seems like he's losing his enthusiasm for it, as well. This film was put in such a bad position by easily correctable issues induced by the production of Episode VIII. For one thing, Princess Leia is the only character of the original trio who's still alive, despite Carrie Fisher being dead. This manifests as Leia having very little screentime, and her being killed-off rather unceremoniously. Normally, I'm not a fan of reshoots, but it wouldn't have been remotely difficult to edit Episode VIII to have Leia die, as she had a brush with death in that film, which, by all rights, should have killed her. It's not like the effects they used were bad, they hold up perfectly fine,  and whoever they got to voice-double Carrie Fisher is spot-on (If , indeed, they didn't feed archive audio into an AI or just reuse said archive audio the way they have a lot of archive footage), but the fact remains that Lucasfilm had more than enough time between Fisher's death, and the release of The Last Jedi to  perform the necessary reshoots. Indeed, that would have rectified one of the many issues I had with TLJ, that being, the Space-Leia scene. Instead, we have exactly what I feared would happen when they announced the plan to have Leia in the last film, most of her scenes are built around how they can use the footage they already had, leaving most of Leia's scenes fairly restricted in nature.   Some of the footage of Leia appears to be something akin to a DeepFake face-swapping technology, complete with the same strange facial animation on turning heads that currently plagues the Cats adaptation. One would think that Disney would have enough of a budget to  make this work well, and indeed, we've seen better effects in Rogue One, The Last Jedi, various Marvel movies, and even a couple of scenes in this film, as well. I suspect that any dodgy effects work may be down to the allegedly massive overhauls Episode IX has experienced during reshoots, as the film was rumored to involve time-travel at one point, and there have been numerous leaks of concepts and plot-points which appear to not have made their way into the movie which confirm some of my suspicions about the reshoots.
All of that aside, from a character and plot perspective, I like The Rise of Skywalker a hell of a lot more than The Last Jedi, although the two films share a handful of issues.  The Force-Teleportation and  other related powers introduced in TLJ have made their ways into this film, although Abrams  makes better use of them than Johnson did. The Last Jedi was very uncreative  in marrying its concepts with the film-making, and The Rise of Skywalker corrects that, allowing for proper integration of film and story.  Episode IX is also paced a hell of a lot better than Episode VIII was, and doesn't send characters off on pointless quests that take up far too much screen-time. Additionally, the dynamics of the three leads are finally cast against each other, and their  chemistry is brilliant. It's a shame that this is likely the last time Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, and Daisy Ridley will share the screen as these characters.
Daisy Ridley's performance as Rey, as always, is my favorite part of the movie. John Boyega's and Oscar Isaac's performances as Finn and Poe  Dameron, respectively, are no slouches, but  I like Rey, and I have since the start of this trilogy. Their chemistry as an ensemble is absolutely amazing, and it's really a shame that the previous films had the trio separated for so long, as the actors and characters bounce off each other in a way that I haven't seen done this well since Firefly, or the original Avengers movie.  The First Order has also gotten their act together at last, finally feeling like a competent foe, as opposed to the bumbling, overly-enraged idiots they were in Episode VIII, or the practically cartoonish villains they were in Episode VII.  Between Kylo Ren/Ben Solo (Played by Adam Driver)'s reforged mask, the set-construction of their conference room, and the cinematography of  scenes featuring The First Order, they come off as competent and imposing, while not also feeling like they're ripping off scenes from the Original Trilogy. Then, they rip off scenes from the Original Trilogy, right down to stealing the OT's primary antagonist. Kylo Ren grabs a doubter by the throat  during a conference and smashes him against the  ceiling of the room, a much more violent and dynamic version of what Vader tended to do, but  the additions do nothing to disguise the fact that it is blatantly ripping off a similar scene from Episode IV (As if they didn't do that enough in Episode VII.)
As far as inter-film plagiarism goes, though, it's not nearly as prevalent or blatant as it was in The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi, although there's one rather obvious scene lifted from the end of Episode VI that we'll get to later. The main plot of the film concerns  tracking down and stopping The First Order from joining up with The Final Order in a final effort to conquer the galaxy.  The Final Order (Surely they mean "Last Command?") is Emperor Sheev Palpatine (Played by Ian McDiarmid)'s new Imperial fleet. Yes, Palpatine's back. No, they never explained why. It's heavily implied that Snoke (Played by Andy Serkis) was a puppet of Palpatine, although I don't think it's ever truly explained why he's back, although, given this already happened  over twenty years ago in the 14-issue series Star Wars: Dark Empire, and what we see in the film, and the preexisting technology in the Star Wars universe, one can easily infer that cloning was involved somewhere along the line. That's kind of this film's biggest problem, and one that it shares in common with Episode VII.  Any Star Wars fan familiar with the Expanded Universe (AKA Legends) will be able to pick out the influences  a mile away.  There's Dark Empire, Knights of the Old Republic, The Force Unleashed, The Jedi Academy Trilogy, good god, it seems like we keep going back to most of the same old influences that they've been taking from since the start of this trilogy.
Anyway, apparently Palpatine's been using the Vader voice from the melted helmet Kylo keeps around to manipulate him, and why he thinks Kylo won't turn on him like he did Snoke is beyond me, but old Sheev decides it's a good idea to offer Ben a fleet of Death Star-equipped Star Destroyers in exchange for killing Rey, who's apparently his granddaughter. We finally get a good look at Rey's parents, and indeed, Palpatine's biological son. This could have been worse, but it would have made far more sense for her to either just be someone unimportant who rose to the challenge, or to just make her Luke Skywalker (Played by Mark Hamill)'s daughter or Obi-Wan Kenobi (Played by Ewan McGregor and Alec Guinness)'s granddaughter. Hell, you could have crossed the lines a bit, have one of her parents be a Kenobi and the other a Palpatine. There's more than enough chance that Obi-Wan might have had a kid with Satine Kryze back in the Clone Wars, although it's probably more likely for Rey to be a great-granddaughter than a granddaughter of either of them. Now, one might think "Doesn't that make Reylo  incest?" but it's not. Palpatine is  NOT Anakin Skywalker (Played by Hayden Christensen)'s biological father, and the original script for Revenge of the Sith is incredibly clear about this. Though that doesn't make their relationship any less strange.
After finding out Palpatine's still alive, the Resistance goes on a hunt for a way to locate him, heading first to some desert-planet that isn't Tatooine or Jakku, where Chewbacca (Played by Joonas Suotamo)gets captured by The Knights of Ren, and the gang finds a dagger  and meets Lando Calrissean (Played by Billy Dee Williams). They have to wipe C-3P0 (Played by Anthony Daniels)'s memory to get him to translate the message on the dagger, then they rescue Chewie and go to Endor, where they find the thing they need to find Palpatine, some kind of holocron thing. Then Kylo Ren shows up and breaks it with one hand. Rey mortally wounds him, but uses Force healing to save him, steals his ship, and returns to Ach-To to live as a hermit. There, Luke tells Rey to stop being Jake Skywalker and pilot the goddamn Eva X-Wing. An X-Wing still called "Red 5," which is a continuity issue I  didn't notice in Episode VIII, but has since been made  apparent. Anyone here remember Rogue Squadron? That was a thing as far back as The Empire Strikes Back. Luke's call-sign was "Rogue Leader" and Rogue Squadron remains a persistent aspect of the Disney Star Wars canon.  This error is inexcusable. It shows the distinct lack of care that has gone into the continuity of this trilogy, as if the entirety of Episode VIII wasn't proof enough that Kathleen Kennedy and the rest of Lucasfilm don't give a damn about the timeline.
After Kylo and Rey's showdown on Endor, Han Solo (Played by Harrison Ford) shows up in Ben's imagination, and Ben decides the best course of action would be to throw away his Lightsaber. Meanwhile, Rey leads what's left of the Resistance to Palpatine so they can take down the fleet. Palpatine then proceeds to rip off the ending scene of Return of the Jedi by showing Rey all of her friends dying.  Ben shows up, and is accosted by the Knights of Ren. This is a time when a Lightsaber might have come in handy, although, for the most part, Ben manages just fine without one.  I'm baffled as to why the Knights of Ren use traditional melee weapons, such as a halberd, mace, broadsword, etc, instead of Lightsabers or blasters.  Anyways, when it looks like Ben might lose, Rey teleports him the Skywalker Family Lightsaber, which he uses to kill the  Knights of Ren, and joins Rey in fighting Palpatine. Rey uses Leia's Lightsaber to fight Palpatine, though he drains their life-forces to power himself up, anyways. Then, all of the Jedi give Rey a pep-talk in her brain and she gets up and kills Palpatine, all while Lando leads in a ragtag fleet of people which includes none other than Denis Lawson as Wedge Antilles. And then, Ben gets up from the hole Palpatine threw him down, and finds Rey either dead or mostly dead, uses Force heal on her, they kiss, then he dies and becomes a Force Ghost. Subsequently, his mother, who has been dead for most of the movie at that point, also disappears. Fortunately, they remember that you don't take your non-biological parts with you, unlike Rian Johnson, who apparently forgot Luke had a robotic hand. Then Rey takes the Skywalker saber to Tatooine with Leia's, and buries them in the sand, ignites her staff as a Lightsaber without having been shown to construct it, calls herself "Rey Skywalker" when someone asks her her name, and the credits roll.  I skipped a lot there, but that's the basic summary.
All in all, the film's good moments ring hollow, and I should like it a lot more than I do. At its best, it's excellent. At its worst, I know it's working around the failures of The Last Jedi, but everything else just feels unearned.  A decent chunk of the awesome moments of the film seem like they're just there, because this film is attempting to pick up the pieces of a trilogy shattered by its middle installment. The fanservice is a nice touch in most places, but does nothing to distract from the dumb choices the film makes that are entirely its fault and the faults of the people who made it, not the fault of Rian Johnson and Episode VIII.  Attempting to follow Episode VIII was always going to present issues, but they could have fixed so much if, for instance, Ben didn't throw away his Lightsaber. Granted, they  at least make it look fairly cool, but merely "looking cool" isn't an excuse.  Honestly, this film reminds me a lot of The Empire Strikes Back, in a bad way. If you'll recall my rankings of the Star Wars films from a few years ago, I don't particularly like The Empire Strikes Back, partially because I see it as a "style over substance" sort of film, and  The Rise of Skywalker is a textbook example of that. Not that there's no substance to be had. The characters are good, the dialogue is good, it's just the framework which the characters operate in that's the problem.
While a lot of problems could have been solved by changes to the preceding film, there are too many issues that could have been solved simply by writing this movie better. There are times when characters act dumb, there are times when they pull Force powers out of their asses,  the Knights of Ren could have been replaced with random Stormtroopers for all the importance they have to the plot, the Resistance just so happens to have horses (or whatever they were) with them when they make their assault on the star destroyer that can disable speeders. It's all just so convenient, and it makes me sad and tired. I was hoping for better than this. I overlooked some of the conveniences in Episode VII, but it's just too late in the game to be relying this heavily on coincidence. There are also a number of interesting angles which barely get used, such as Finn's Force sensitivity, which was hinted at in the previous films, being finally confirmed. Granted, part of the problem with that is probably down to reshoots  and deleted-scenes. Star Wars has this issue (an issue it shares with the MCU), where most of the deleted-scenes do nothing but improve the final film immensely, yet they're left on the cutting-room floor regardless, and I'm going to bet that with all the reshoots this movie went through,  it's almost a guarantee that something was left out that makes the entire movie click. As it stands, I enjoyed the film while watching it, but after I was done, I didn't really care.
In the end, I give Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker a  4/10. Could be better, could be worse, but outside of some interesting cinematography and visuals, there's nothing much special here.
A side note, and this doesn't really matter much regarding the quality of the movie, but I'd just like to point out that they've been using the Chrono Trigger font throughout most of the posters of the Sequel Trilogy. A similar font was used for the originals, but it was mainly used for the cast and crew, and Star Wars has since gained a standardized title font, which the Sequel Trilogy has never used, to my knowledge.

Image from Impawards.com

Joker (2019)

    I know I haven't written a review in a long time and I've still got a rather long list of movies and games to get to, but to hell with it. I've been thinking about Joker a lot since I watched it and I'm damn well gonna talk about it, even though I haven't reviewed (or at least haven't published reviews) of the last few DC movies I've watched.
    Joker is one of those things that fell victim to a monstrously uninformed media outrage campaign, supposedly about "glorifying violence" and whether or not it would inspire violence itself, etc, which caused me to sigh in resignation upon hearing about it because I'm a gamer and anime-far, and I can remember a time before six months ago. When two of the hottest shows on TV were The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, series with protagonists who'd be villains in any other story. It doesn't help that most of the people spinning bullshit about Joker were doing so based solely on trailers and not having actually seen the movie. Having seen the movie myself, I determined (predictably) that everyone who claimed it would "inspire violence" were full of shit. Like Mortal Kombat, Manhunt, Grand Theft Auto and any number of other violent media subsequent or prior, the accusations lacked substantial credibility upon actually participating in the media in question. Besides, Eric Kilmonger and Thanos were both sympathetic villains and they haven't inspired people to take up their causes. No sane ones, anyway.
    And that's the crux of the matter, you're not going to inspire an otherwise normal person to violence, murder or genocide by depicting it in a movie. At worst, it'll inspire an absolute nutjob to something like that, but that's not the responsibility of the people who created the work. Whackos will find inspiration for their insanity in any medium, regardless of content, and that's especially ironic considering the context of this nontroversy, and the knee-jerk reactions only get more retarded the further into the film you get.
    Joker is about a potential origin for Batman's archrival, starring Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, the titular Joker. Arthur is a mentally-unsound man who works as a clown by day and takes care of his ailing elderly mother by night. One day, which sign-spinning outside a store, some hooligans abscond with his sign and he tries to get it back. They lead him on a merry chase through the streets of Gotham before whacking him with the sign and beating him up. In response to this, one of Arthur's co-workers gives him a gun to defend himself, which later gets him fired when it falls out of his pants at a children's hospital. On his way back via the subway, Arthur gets picked-on and beaten up by a trio of rich assholes, whom he kills in self-defense. Well, the first two were self-defense, the last one he just runs down and shoots because fuck 'em. Not that someone who runs around on the subway assaulting random people gets much sympathy from me. And at this point, we're halfway into Arthur's body-count. Yes, that's right. Throughout this movie Joker only kills six people directly. Three in self-defense, and two more who one could argue kind of deserved it. The Joker kills fewer people in this movie than Batman does in The Lego Batman Movie. Yes, the R-rated drama kills fewer people than the lighthearted toy tie-in even with the additional five or so kills done by people other than The Joker.
    Anyway, the killings of the assholes, who happen to work for Thomas Wayne, causes something of a revolutionary uprising similar to that of the Batmen from The Dark Knight. A bunch of people don clown masks, makeup and attire and cause trouble. Arthur struggles with the consequences of what he's done, finds out Thomas Wayne might be his father, finds out he probably isn't and that his (Potentially) adoptive mother was abusive, delusional and somewhat psychotic (Which lends some credence to the idea that he might be the child of her and Thomas Wayne because he has delusions of his own that are explored throughout the movie in a similar fashion to Fight Club.) kills his mother, kills the guy who helped get him fired from his job, goes on the TV show of his hero who mocked him previously, kills him, gets arrested, and subsequently freed by his fanclub, and... Maybe locked up and evaluated? The ending is somewhat unclear.
    All in all, the film is very entertaining and the performance by Joaquin Phoenix is fantastic. The performance is somewhat unconventional, given that most interpretations of the character are more bombastic and deeper/raspier-voiced, though one can definitely see shades of Ledger's Joker towards the end of the film. I like the choice to make Arthur something of a soft-spoken introvert at the beginning of the film and have him transform into a more bombastic force of personality as the story progresses, it helps provide contrast between the pitiful creature he is at the beginning and the monster he becomes.
    Now, to break down the finer details of the plot and cast. First off, I generally like how the plot plays-out. If I was writing the film, I'd have placed Joker's "I used to think that my life was a tragedy...but now I realize...it's a (fucking) comedy." line more towards the end of the film, when he's on Murray Franklin's show, I feel like it would have had more punch there. Secondly, I like how after Arthur stopped taking his medication he becomes more lucid. Throughout the movie, Arthur has a few delusional experiences, and after he goes off his medications the delusions go away, implying that he actually becomes saner by degrees. In fact, I've subscribed to the concept that Joker has a form of hypersanity, where he is fully aware of the meaninglessness of death and existence within his world/universe/multiverse/etc, and as such really doesn't care about killing people, which feeds into an interesting idea about the shared delusions of the other characters in the futility of their own actions, given the fact that superhero comics always seem to press the "reset" button as soon as any of the so-called "permanent" consequences of a storyline become inconvenient.
    Now for the nitpicks. One of Arthur's delusions is that he has a love-interest in one Sophie Dumond, and while the realization that the version of her we see throughout the film is a mere phantasm, if she'd been real, and her actions more than a figment of Arthur's imagination, she could have functioned as his Harley Quinn, a mutually-corrupting force that drives him towards where he ends up at the end of the movie. For those not in the know, Harley Quinn is a character from Batman: The Animated Series who made it into the comics eventually. She's a former psychologist who was assigned to study The Joker, but wound up falling in love with him. Their relationship is somewhat one-sided in most depictions, with The Joker manipulating her affections for his own gain, but, at least in some continuities Harley eventually becomes, as Suicide Sqaud says, crazier than The Joker, going so far as to become one of the reasons he remains a mad mass-murderer. I understand why they didn't take this route, since it's more about the psyche of Arthur than anything else.
    Another issue is in the casting of Thomas, Martha, and Bruce Wayne, and Alfred Pennyworth. Gone are the most-recent actors to play the roles, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Lauren Cohen, Brendon Spink and Jeremy Irons, replaced by Brett Cullen, Carrie Louise Putrello, Dante Pereira-Olson, and Douglas Hodge respectively. Not that any of them do a bad job as their respective characters, but as the portrayal of Thomas Wayne is more of a charismatic, morally-ambiguous type, I would have preferred to see Morgan in the role. Though Cullen wasn't the first choice for the role either, as it was initially offered to Alec Baldwin, who I can see giving a much better performance in this role than Cullen did, not that Cullen's was bad. Indeed, Thomas Wayne in this movie appears to have been explicitly written for Baldwin, and his replacement even resembles him to a large degree. While I can't fault them for casting a similar actor when the one they wanted was unavailable as I have literally done that with a production of my own, I'm disappointed in the lack of crossover between this and the DCEU, even if Warner Bros. has basically killed it. Yes, this is probably a different universe entirely, but the film ends with a half-assed recreation of the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne, and it feels like it was put there out of pure obligation rather than as a part of the actual vision of the film. Granted I am somewhat biased, but I felt like Zack Snyder did a way better job with the murder of the Waynes than almost anyone, even Christopher Nolan. Plus, recreating the Wayne's murder from Dawn of Justice would have added a bit of bittersweet irony to Bruce's quip about clowns in that movie, especially if the film ended with Arthur pulling the trigger on them rather than some random whackado in a Joker mask, though that would be getting a bit close to the origin-story from Tim Burton's Batman.
    I also have a bone to pick with Joker's portrayal of Alfred Pennyworth, as a man who barely fights back when Arthur grabs him in the film. Alfred is a badass in almost every portrayal of the character. I guess that's why they didn't get Jeremy Irons, because even if they de-aged him he'd still look like he could take Arthur in a throwdown. That brings me to another point about the casting, even if Brendon Spink was too old to play an appropriately-aged Bruce Wayne, everyone else could have reprised their roles. DC de-aged Temeura Morrison, Nicole Kidman, Willem Dafoe, and Patrick Wilson for Aquaman, they clearly have the technology to do so. Someone just didn't want to do it I guess.
    To the bleating morons who spun the bullshit about this film (Some of whom work for CNN, a sibling company of Warner Bros.) congratulations, you managed to make it even more popular. Don't know if that was intended or not, and I frankly don't care. If they legitimately thought their outrage would make the film less successful, they're idiots. A modicum of pattern recognition could have told you that. If this was some kind of guerilla marketing technique, then it's been a resounding success. Hell, even if WB were the ones started it, there were plenty of people who picked up the baton and ran with it legitimately.
    All in all, nitpicks aside, I heartily recommend Joker. It's interesting, deeply introspective, and darkly hilarious at times. Despite the quibbles, it deserves a 9.8* rating. I'll be back someday. Meanwhile, check out my latest work, Neon Genesis Evangelion Alternative Saga!