A Spoiler-Free Review of The Rise of Skywalker, and Thoughts on Why Fans Love to Hate
So I went to see the new Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker at the movie theatre yesterday with my son. I’ve been a Star Wars fan all my life, and was lucky to have a then-5-year-old son to watch the three prequel films with, which helped me enjoy them through the eyes of a young child as well as an older fan. There’s nothing like Star Wars to help a father and son bond closely…unless it’s Gundam.
As I wrote in Friday’s J-List post, fandom has changed a lot since 1977. Unlike the old days, today a franchise like Star Wars has to compete with an infinite number of other movies, TV shows, streaming sites, mobile games, fully-immersive video game experiences and various other bubbles of fandom. In addition, it’s had to endure the one-two punch of its original fans having grown to adulthood, where we naturally judge things more critically, as well as the “frictionless” world of the Internet, where ideas and negative opinions can travel faster than Hyperspace. It’s almost as if fans love to hate the things they love, at least when they get on the Internet together.
This will be a spoiler-free review with my thoughts on the new Star Wars film, except for the Jojo meme above, which I couldn’t resist. Still, as I will give my impressions on The Rise of Skywalker, you might want to stop reading if you prefer to know absolutely nothing about the film before you see it.
So, How Was the Movie?
I thought The Rise of Skywalker was a fine movie, easily surpassing my expectations and giving us a wild ride, and the best conclusion to the trilogy that could have been possible. It avoided the frustration of The Force Awakening’s wholesale cloning of the original Star Wars plot, and naturally improved on the many bad choices made in The Last Jedi, a movie that I can find very little redeeming about. It was as good as we could have possibly hoped for.
Considering the corner the last film had painted the series into, there was more than a little Obi-Wan style “so what I told you was true…from a certain point of view” tap-dancing to repair the damage done by Rian Johnson, the only man fans love to hate on more than George Lucas himself. Which I was actually okay with, because Star Wars itself is built around the idea that a man can lie to a boy about the identity of his father and pretend to have never met a droid he fought alongside with for years, if it’s for the good of the Galaxy.
Considering all the space battles and flashy explosions, I felt that The Rise of Skywalker was a very character-driven film, really taking the time to show us the individual journeys each character was on. Whether you’ll agree with me depends on your emotional attachment to this new generation of characters, especially Rey and Kylo. I especially liked the focus on C3P0, who got his biggest role in the film since the original trilogy, and of course the touching scenes as the characters said goodbye to a certain Princess were excellent.
If Only We’d Gotten This Film Last Time
There is a lot to criticize about Ep8, incl. editing, flow and shitty story decisions. But I really hate the “death by Hyperspace” scene. If this is part of Star Wars, why didn’t every X-Wing to to Hyperspace when it was hit by a TIE? Why didn’t the Battle of Yavin end this way? pic.twitter.com/vEHES4v694
— Peter Payne (@JListPeter) December 19, 2019
Every long series has it’s “red-headed stepchild” that fans all pretend doesn’t exist. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was so bad it got officially written out of the movie canon. The original Superman series had two films so awful they were similarly ignored. Doctor Who even had two films in the 60s in which Peter “charming, to the last” Cushing was a motherfucking Time Lord, yet for some reason fans hated the films and he was removed from the official list of Doctors.
So it went with The Last Jedi, a film that (admirably) decided to not just follow the tropes that the previous films had laid down but break some new ground, treating Luke as an anti-hero and subverting viewers’ expectations in surprising ways. This could all have paid off, if a dozen other bad story and editing choices hadn’t killed the magic for fans. As with Peter Jackson’s Hobbit movie trilogy, which is greatly improved by dedicated fans re-editing the works to take out all the crap, perhaps fans can turn to alternative versions like the Hal9000 Fan Edit of The Last Jedi and find some redemption.
You’re Going to Find that Many of the Truths we Cling to Depend Greatly on our Own Point of View
Obi-Wan said the words, and he might have been talking to Star Wars fans rather than Luke. Basically, the point of view we approach something like a new Star Wars film (or a Gundam series, or an isekai anime) can go a long way in determining how we’ll feel about it, whether we’ll enjoy the film’s story and characters, or whether we see only the dark side of the work, cynically obsessing over it’s every flaw.
Once upon a time, I really disliked Return of the Jedi. I had a long list of reasons — the fact that in the first two films, Lucas traveled to the far corners of the Earth for filming locations, yet didn’t bother leaving California for Jedi, the way he re-used footage of the Death Star Gunners and some X-Wing and Y-Wing explosions from A New Hope, “flipping” the visuals from left to right as if Star Wars fans wouldn’t notice, the way The Last Battle score was re-used. But the biggest problem with Jedi was that it didn’t measure up well to my beloved Empire Strikes Back.
Then I changed my “point of view” and re-examined the film, viewing it as a second sequel to the original A New Hope rather than a movie that failed to be as dark and wonderful as Empire. That helped me see Jedi in a new light and appreciate it more.
The Rise of Youtube Criticism of Film
As far as I’m concerned, one of the turning points in the history of Internet was the release of Mr. Plinkett’s seven-part review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, in which Mr. Plinket, a caricature of a schizophrenic beer-drinking shut-in voiced by Mike Stoklasa of Red Letter Media, picks apart the first Star Wars prequel’s flaws one by one. Every moment of it is genius, and it helps us understand some of the limitations of George Lucas’s approach to storytelling and over-reliance on CGI in all three prequel films.
And yet, while being snarky towards the things we love is the right of every fan, I question the wisdom of approaching everything new with our “negativity shields up,” ready to trash it and hate it from the beginning. While I love the work Red Letter Media does, watching the horribly negative reaction by Mike and Rich to Star Trek Discovery in their Half in the Bag discussions just made me sad. It was as if they’d pre-judged Discovery to be “shit” and weren’t even going to give the writers the chance to surprise them with an interesting and fresh approach to Star Trek. It was sad to watch, because I’ve found Star Trek Discovery to be outstanding, and I’m glad I didn’t listen to Mike and Rich when they started trashing it and talking about how fast they were going to cancel their CBS All Access accounts.
Why Do Anime Fans Love to Hate?
As an anime blogger, I’ve seen these kinds of mechanics at work many times. Rather than being open-minded to wonderful new anime series they might discover, they allow the negativity of other fans to influence them before they’ve even given the show a try. The topic of fans’ cynicism was covered in the under-appreciated anime G(i)rlish Number, about three voice actresses trying to make their way in the industry. In one scene, they sneak into an anime shop to listen to what fans are saying about an anime they appear in. One says, “I haven’t watched the show, but I read online that the anime, the original work and the voice actors were all shit. So who cares about it?” Because of the negativity of certain parts of the Internet (the matome sites that aggregate comments from the 2ch BBS, in this case), the fan wouldn’t even give the new show a chance.
One pattern that often happens is, an anime series explodes in popularity, and fans make memes and fanart, which pulls in more fans and creates a lot of positive energy around the show. Then some turning point is reached, like when the Sword Art Online Aincrad arc gave way to the slightly-less-interesting next arc, and fans suddenly formed “hate bandwagons,” trashing everything SAO-related for years. The psychology behind this is bizarre. Is it based on their embarrassment at their previous fanboying? Are they offended that the show, which they feel they had “discovered,” had been embraced so widely by many fans? Why don’t they just quietly move on and watch some other show?
We know from smart researchers like Robert Cialdini, author of Influence, that we’re all influenced by the people around us, taking cues about how to behave and seeking “social proof” that are actions meet with the approval of our social group. Two decades ago, we probably interacted with a dozen people per week, and this influence was muted. But in the frictionless age of the Internet, “the people around us” includes all the individuals we interact with on Twitter and Reddit and Facebook.
This means that we should all be more thoughtful about our online interactions and (I believe) avoid the truly negative parts of the Internet, who can make us feel negativity even about things like dating and love. If you’re having online discussions about what is good or bad about whatever fandom you’re into, that’s great, but if people are actively forming “hate bandwagons,” you might want to consider changing hanging out in a different part of the Internet.
Summary of The Rise of Skywalker
I think the new Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was a fine film, and I’m happy have seen it. And like every Star Wars film (or Gundam series), I know I’ll feel differently about it after I’ve watched it a few more times. Maybe I’ll write a follow-up blog post in a year.
Anyway, thanks for reading and have a great holiday!
It’s almost time for a certain man in a white beard to come down the chimney, but J-List has one more present for you: a last-minute J-List Christmas Sale through Dec. 22 giving you 10% off ALL items on our website, except for preorders. Since we’ve got a fast new DHL shipping method, you can get your items by Christmas, too. See more details on our DHL shipping here. The last day to order is December 22, so get your orders in fast!
