Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

[thecolorsblend]

I?m one of the biggest Matrix geeks you?ll find in the world. The original is my favorite film of all time. The sequels rock. I know you?re a Superman nut, so I?ll add that the Revolutions super burly brawl is exactly what I?d like to see from a Superman/super villain fight. I literally got back into the series again about four months before the M4 announcement, so the timing couldn?t have been any better.

Mine happened literally the day before the M4 announcement came. I had begun thinking vaguely about Revolutions. I can't explain why but for some reason that's the one that has always fascinated me. M1 is a sentimental favorite. Reloaded expanded the Matrix concept in ways nobody could've predicted. But I've had a strange fixation on Revolutions since the sequels were first announced back in 1999. The music, the story, the characters, the pacing, the EVERYTHING, it all just somehow captures my interest in ways I can't even describe.

To understand my point of view, this is on equal footing with a hypothetical Michael Keaton return.

High praise indeed.

The Matrix Comics are getting a hardcover re-release next month with bonus content, and I?ve got it ordered. I think the lack of merchandise isn?t necessarily a bad thing, because it helps keep the continuity pure and more clearly defined/understandable. I am eager for more content though and I do think the new movie will bring that. Niobe is set to re-appear, so an Enter the Matrix sequel for PS5 would be pretty amazing. Lots of possibilities. I?d rather possibilities than burning out and losing interest altogether.

I think history has been kind to the trilogy, esp the sequels. It's hard to get a precise feel of things but I get the idea that our fraternity is reacting to news of M4 just about the same way they did to news of Cobra Kai. There seems to be sincere interest to see what's coming.

If the movie delivers... well, I think the series will be considered a major player once again.

The Lucas prequels had copious CGI but they have a ton more heart, soul and fun in comparison to DisneyWars. Lucas, for all the criticism he receives, knows this saga is a space opera. He was operating in the past, continuity wise, but he greatly expanded the universe.

In retrospect, Lucas really should've found a way to incorporate a more emotional, intuitive feel to the prequels. Empire works in no small part because it strikes a proper balance between the conceptual stuff Lucas is fond of balanced against genuine human emotion. Luke's scream of emotional agony when Vader tells him the hard truth is earned.

The prequels lack that emotional content. Lucas is an intellectual and it's clear that he struggles to express himself in emotional terms. An editor, writer, co-director or whatever else might've corrected for that. Spielberg wouldn't think twice about sacrificing story coherence for emotion whereas Lucas could never bring himself to do that. There are times when that severely harms the prequels. Because the emotional expression that we do get has an artificial quality to it.

There?s so much of this stuff, so you get where I?m coming from. Nostalgia kills ongoing brands. DisneyWars hoped to ride on the coattails of nostalgia, while at the same time stabbing it in the back. A strange strategy indeed, I suspect done to replace the loved characters with their own. But the new characters are forgettable. You need to have a story to tell to justify a relaunch, and seriously, what was the story that needed to be told here?

See, I don't think the sequels trade enough on nostalgia. One major weakness I've seen in the sequels is taking a concept or situation from the original trilogy, eliminating the work/blood/sweat/tears/whatever that Luke/Han/Leia had to sacrifice to get to that point, inserts virtually flawless characters in their places and wraps the whole thing up in a slick, CGI package that doesn't evoke 1/16th of the drama of the original trilogy because (A) we've seen these conflicts before and (B) last time, they were carried out by characters that the audience had become invested in.

The sequels will probably become case studies in what not to do for filmmakers in the future.

[The Dark Knight]

I felt the death of Qui-Gon. But generally speaking, I think the staggering of the prequel trilogy?s characterizations is to be admired. Nobody can convince me there was a coherent plan with DisneyWars.

In the PT we see Anakin as a boy. As a lovesick teenager. As a wounded man who failed to save his mother. And finally the man who turned on his mentor and helped kill an Order. The Order 66 montage is fabulous, as is the Mustafar duel. Padme?s death is rather good too. ROTS is the payoff to it all, and I don?t see TROS having a comparable payoff.

I find the emotional connection of the prequels worthy for the simple fact we like the characters more. Some can see the emotional aspect as artificial, but nonetheless it is there, and looks mighty impressive in comparison to the mess of DisneyWars. However, Lucas? biggest achievement in the prequels is how he presented the political machinations of Palpatine. Really fascinating, and personally, more interesting than anything else in the saga. I love seeing how people work their magic to get their way.

As for nostalgia killing ongoing brands, I feel I need to clarify that comment somewhat. Lennon DELIBERATELY didn?t want to follow up Sgt Pepper with the White Album. So they did something much different with its own identity. That?s wise, because ?nostalgia? risks repeating oneself to the point of irrelevancy, creating a stale brand. And in terms of films, in this instance DisneyWars, when new things are done, they still need to be in line with fan expectations.

[thecolorsblend]

Critical reaction to the film is mixed at best. However much cred you want to grant Rotten Tomatoes, TROS currently sits below the 60% mark. The opening weekend tracking keeps getting revised down.

I originally assumed TROS was looking at $1.2 billion as the starting point and then going up from there. But apparent low ticket sales are making people think the movie might not cross the all-important $1 billion threshold. For Star Wars these days, anything less than that is a flop no matter what the actual budgets work out to be.

We could be looking at something pretty ugly here, fam. It's possible that not only is Star Wars dead but Star Wars fandom is dead too.

Then again, every single thing written above could be totally wrong.

[Travesty]

I saw it. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it. I'm pretty ambivalent to it. There's a lot of cool stuff, and a lot of "lolwut" kind of stuff. It's pretty messy, but I dunno....it's a weird movie.

I just think this new trilogy is bad.

[thecolorsblend]

As critics are savaging TROS, has Rotten Tomatoes been caught boosting the audience ratings for the movie?

[Silver Nemesis]

I just saw Episode IX today. I won't bother marking spoilers in white because A) I don't think anyone really cares, and B) the spoilers that leaked online months ago all turned out to be true. But if you're planning on seeing it and don't want it spoiled, stop reading now. I'll probably come back to this thread when I've had more time to process the film, but here are my initial thoughts.

The movie benefits from the strong cinematography, music and special effects we've come to expect from the Sequel Trilogy. However these merits are par for the course with a Disney-era Star Wars film, and they're not going to distract from the movie's faults as easily as they did when The Force Awakens came out in 2015. The new characters remain as flat as they were in the previous two films, although I felt like Abrams was trying to make Rey less of a know-it-all this time around. He even shows her training and getting hurt, which is something that never really happened in the previous two films. However the only really interesting new character in the ST is Kylo Ren, and that's mostly down to Driver's performance. He's the best thing about The Rise of Skywalker. The rest of the cast do their best with characters that are generally underwritten.

The subplot about Finn finding more First Order deserters should have been his main storyline in Episode VIII instead of that dreadful Canto Bight plot. To an extent Episode IX does feel as though it's trying to make up for The Last Jedi's mistakes. Luke's ghost catches his father's lightsaber when Rey discards it and then berates her for throwing it away. Luke also more or less admits that everything he said to Rey in Episode VIII was wrong. There's also a very brief flashback scene where we get to see Luke wielding his classic green lightsaber as he's training Leia (I like that they finally showed Leia using a lightsbaer, but the CG effects on her face were not very convincing). None of this makes up for what they did to Luke in Episode VIII, but it's the closest we'll get to an apology. Rose Tico is relegated to a minor supporting role and Snoke's death is retconned as being part of Palpatine's grand plan. Episode VIII really derailed this entire trilogy and left Abrams in an impossible position when it came time to wrap things up. He makes a valiant attempt at correcting these mistakes in Episode IX, but it's too little too late. Abrams just isn't a good writer and the bankruptcy of imagination that has crippled the entire Sequel Trilogy is on display once again.

I've seen several critics relating how they cried in response to the film's emotional content. Honestly, I felt no such emotional response at any point during the movie. We get a lot of Abrams' signature bluntness when it comes to scenes that are intended to be evocative. The music swells, the characters laugh, hoot or go misty-eyed, and so forth (I think there was a nitrous oxide leak aboard the Falcon during the final battle, because Lando kept laughing despite the carnage that was happening all around him). There are an insane number of fan service moments designed to trigger audience nostalgia: Poe and Finn play holographic chess with Chewie on the Falcon; Luke's ghost lifts his X-Wing from the water like Yoda did in Episode V, accompanied by the exact same music; Chewie receives the medal he didn't get in Episode IV; the trilogy ends with a shot of the twin suns setting over Tatooine, exactly like Episode III did. They bring out Lando and Wedge for the final battle, and we even get to see Wicket the Ewok return in a brief cameo. The characters revisit several locations from the Original Trilogy, including the farmstead on Tatooine and the wreckage of the Emperor's throne room on board the second Death Star. We see Bespin, we see Endor, but we don't see any of the planets from the Prequel Trilogy.

All of these elements rang hollow for me. They're the sort of things you'd expect from fan fiction, and that's exactly what this trilogy feels like – fan fiction. The world building aspect of the Sequel Trilogy has failed miserably. They've created no interesting new planets, ships, conflicts or characters (except Kylo). Instead they've simply recycled set pieces and iconography from the earlier films. The Rise of Skywalker continues this trend. Some new characters are introduced in Episode IX, but none are memorable or properly fleshed out. Richard E. Grant's character in particular is just another disposable bad guy, completely interchangeable with any other First Order officer. The Knights of Ren finally make an appearance, but they're totally forgettable and fail to live up to their potential.

Like the previous two films in the ST, this one coasts along on the popularity of the older characters. They even bring Han Solo back as a figment of Kylo Ren's imagination. While it was nice to see Ford on screen again – and the acting in that scene was probably the best in the entire film – I think it would have made more sense for Anakin to have appeared. Ben Solo was the biggest Vader fan boy, and it would have been far more appropriate for Anakin to have returned – not as a figment of Ben's imagination, but as a Force ghost – and tell him that it's never too late to be redeemed. Hayden Christensen is credited as being in the film, but his role is limited to a single line of dialogue spoken to Rey. And he never actually appears on screen. I would have liked him to have been the one to steer Kylo back to the Light Side. Sure, it would have been fan servicey, but then so was bringing Han Solo back.

Even Palpatine was underwhelming in this movie. He doesn't have any memorable or funny lines like he did in Episodes III and VI. The portrayal of his character is very dry and lacking in his usual sadistic quirks, and it's obvious he was only dug up because Abrams and Johnson had failed to create an equally interesting villain in Snoke. It's never explained how he survived this:

He just shows up alive, announces that he's somehow built a fleet of Death Star Destroyers (I'm assuming he used a Star Forge like Revan did in KOTOR, but this is never stated in the film) and then re-enacts the throne room scene from Episode VI before killing himself with his own Force lightning. His storyline in the movie borrows liberally from the 1991-92 comic book Dark Empire, particularly with regards to his plan to transfer his spirit to Rey's body.

The finale, where the fallen Jedi turns to the Light Side to aid his female friend as she confronts Palpatine, is also taken straight from this book.

To my mind, the movie does not justify bringing Palpatine back. His death in Episode VI was far more satisfying. And this brings me to what is perhaps the biggest problem with Episode IX – it not only ends the Sequel Trilogy on a dud note, but also retroactively damages both the Prequel and Original Trilogies. Lucas used the prophecy of the Chosen One to tie together the PT and OT, but now Abrams ruins this by revealing that Anakin did not actually bring balance to the Force (at least not for more than a few decades) and is therefore not the Chosen One. Instead Rey is implied to be the Chosen One. And since the Empire was never really defeated (it just morphed into the First Order) and Palpatine wasn't killed, Episode IX also undermines the ending of Return of the Jedi. The Rebels' victory now seems like a hollow one. I'm not surprised George Lucas didn't attend the premiere. He must be pretty ticked off right about now. Disney and Lucasfilm are probably trying to keep him as far from the press as possible.

Anyway, these are just my initial reactions to the film. It's overstuffed, convoluted and frenetically paced. There's too much planet-hopping in the first half of the film, which leaves the audience precious little time to process what's happening, and the plot hinges on too many MacGuffins. It tries to fix the problems with the earlier entries in the trilogy, but ends up creating more problems by not explaining important plot points and introducing new ideas that are woefully underdeveloped (Palpatine had a son?). It's the sort of film that will likely appeal most to casual viewers, and particularly those who jumped on the bandwagon with The Force Awakens. But for older fans, it represents a frustrating end to a disappointing trilogy.

I'll leave it there for now. Overall, I found The Rise of Skywalker slightly more enjoyable than The Last Jedi. But that's damning it with faint praise. If I was ranking the ST, I'd probably say VII>IX>VIII. If I was ranking all the trilogies in the saga, I'd say OT>OT Special Editions>PT>ST.

Bottom line: Return of the Jedi is the real ending to the Skywalker saga. If anyone wants a continuation of that story, I suggest they delve into the old pre-Disney Expanded Universe.

[thecolorsblend]

Disney Star Wars Is Dumb posted a basic outline of how these beloved franchises get infiltrated and subsequently destroyed. It's around, you can Google it. Still, I think it says a lot about the strength of the Star Wars fanbase that it took this long for them to call it a day. But it looks like a lot of them are.

For my own part, I only watched TFA reluctantly. And I never even bothered with TLJ. Still haven't seen it to this day. As for TROS, everything I've heard about it makes me regret nothing.

This is it. Star Wars is now just another lackluster sci-fi franchise. #SoloLostMoney and things aren't exactly looking great for TROS either. A once unbreakable cinematic brand is now a joke. Love or hate the prequels, none of them ever even came close to losing money. Disney's lone achievement is breaking probably the most amazing track record in cinema history. And there's no repairing it.

Something something The Mandalorian. Honestly, I couldn't care less. This entire Disney debacle has left a sour taste in my mouth.

Still, I'm convinced that a huge part of this is ultimately the fanbase's fault. They destroyed Lucas during and after the prequels. I think his treatment at their hands broke him. Hence, the buyout. And now fans are discovering just how good they actually had it when Lucas was the sole custodian of the franchise's destiny. Too little, too late? But unlike other film franchises, Star Wars fans bear a unique guilt in the destruction of their favorite property.

I hope that they'll be on better behavior going forward.

But between The Lies Of Skywalker, Charlie's Feminists and Woke Fate, this has been a pretty bad year for classic franchises. A disproportionate number of them have been broken beyond any hope of repair just in the last few months. I wish I could say that I see things getting better in the future. But I don't.

[The Dark Knight]

Thanks for laying this all out on the table, Silver.

There's so much mud to shovel through here so I'll stick to the bare essentials first.

What a dog's breakfast. From what I can glean the movie jumps around like Tigger on crack and the editing choices don't allow the film to breathe. Maguffins galore and barely any explanation of what is going on in the present day and the prior developments that led the audience here (Palpatine resurrected just because, with a fleet just because and with a son and granddaughter just because).

Stuffing so many maguffins and mystery muffins into two and a half hours is bad film-making. It seems like they aimed for an Indiana Jones type atmosphere but just proved how special those films are and just cannot be replicated on a whim.

All Skywalkers are dead and a Mary Sue who happens to be a Palpatine calls herself a Skywalker. Seems very PC 2019 - I call myself something therefore I am that something. Nope, sorry, you're not. The Skywalkers deserved a better, more tangible legacy than the lead villain's granddaughter hijacking their name.

No, sir. This cow has been milked dry but the studio keeps tugging for more. The rehashing of Return of the Jedi was expected and it's what we get based on the spoilers. Palpatine asking to be cut down as a battle plays out overhead, a battle in the sand and I bet much more. Which begs the question - what the funk was meaningfully added to the series other than slapping on this unnecessary continuation - other than mutilating the concept of the Chosen One?

Oh well. I type this with no feeling. No excitement, anger or sadness. Just cold and clinical strikes on my iPad keyboard. Load up your cannons and send this film into the abyss. In the meantime, The Matrix 4 is gearing up for filming, and that's going to be "very ambitious", which DisneyWars was not.

[Silver Nemesis]

Disney Star Wars Is Dumb posted a basic outline of how these beloved franchises get infiltrated and subsequently destroyed. It's around, you can Google it. Still, I think it says a lot about the strength of the Star Wars fanbase that it took this long for them to call it a day. But it looks like a lot of them are.

For my own part, I only watched TFA reluctantly. And I never even bothered with TLJ. Still haven't seen it to this day. As for TROS, everything I've heard about it makes me regret nothing.

This is it. Star Wars is now just another lackluster sci-fi franchise. #SoloLostMoney and things aren't exactly looking great for TROS either. A once unbreakable cinematic brand is now a joke. Love or hate the prequels, none of them ever even came close to losing money. Disney's lone achievement is breaking probably the most amazing track record in cinema history. And there's no repairing it.

The Rise of Skywalker has a Cinemascore of B+, which is the lowest of any live action Star Wars film in the main saga.

It's performing below the previous two films at the box office, which means this will be the first Star Wars trilogy in which the final entry is the lowest grossing of the three. It bombed in China and is underperforming in the US and most other territories.

It's the first Star Wars saga film to receive a 'Rotten' RT rating at the time of its release (Phantom Menace was rated 'Fresh' until the 3D re-release).

Critical response is mixed to negative. Fan response is also generally mixed to negative.

Star Wars may not be dead, but its status as a top-tier prestige IP definitely is. A lot of us on this site are old enough to remember when there were no bad Star Wars films, or bad Alien films, or bad Terminator films. And yet in the past few decades we've seen all of those franchises sullied through poor quality sequels, prequels and reboots. You can only devalue a brand so much before the fans simply give up. And it looks like Star Wars could finally be approaching that phase. I'm sure Disney will keep milking it in one form or another, but they'll never recapture the glory of its heyday.

Like most fans, I divide the history of Star Wars into three eras/ages:

The Original Trilogy Era (1977-1997) – Golden Age

This encompasses the classic OT, the Holiday Special, the Ewoks and Droids animated TV shows, the early Marvel and Dark Horse comics, novels such as Alan Dean Foster's Splinter of the Mind's Eye and Timothy Zahn's Grand Admiral Thrawn trilogy, and games like Super Star Wars, Rebel Assault and Shadows of the Empire. This era begins with the release of Episode IV in 1977 and ends with the release of the Special Edition of Episode IV in 1997.

The Prequel Trilogy Era (1997-2012) – Silver Age

This encompasses the OT Special Editions, the PT, the 2008 Clone Wars animated feature film, both Clone Wars cartoon shows, books like James Luceno's Labyrinth of Evil and the New Jedi Order novels, the Dark Horse comics series, videogames like Knights of the Old Republic, Lego Star Wars, Battlefront and Rogue Squadron. This era begins with the release of the OT Special Editions and ends with the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm in October 2012.

The Sequel Trilogy Era (2012-present) – Bronze Age

This encompasses the ST, Rogue One, Solo, the Rebels and Resistance animated shows, The Mandalorian, all the recent novels and Marvel comics, the two most recent Battlefront games and Fallen Order. This era begins with Disney buying Lucasfilm. It won't end until the franchise's profits outweigh its expenses, which probably won't happen for some time yet.

The first two eras were shaped by George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars. The third is the era of committee-planned corporate fan fiction. The best case scenario is that a new creative team takes over and brings some amazing fresh ideas to the table. If that happens, and it reinvigorates the love of the fans, then we can draw a line of demarcation between Kennedy-era Star Wars and whatever comes afterwards. But honestly, I don't see that happening. And most of the truly talented and creative people in the industry would probably prefer to create something new at this stage instead of attempting to breathe life into a tired old IP. When Ridley Scott was inspired by the original Star Wars, he went off and made Alien. When James Cameron was inspired by the PT, he went off and made Avatar. But maybe someone talented and creative will come along eventually and do something worthwhile with Star Wars. In the meantime, all I want is the unaltered OT on Blu-ray and a comic book miniseries based on Lucas's unused outline for the ST.

Still, I'm convinced that a huge part of this is ultimately the fanbase's fault. They destroyed Lucas during and after the prequels. I think his treatment at their hands broke him. Hence, the buyout. And now fans are discovering just how good they actually had it when Lucas was the sole custodian of the franchise's destiny. Too little, too late? But unlike other film franchises, Star Wars fans bear a unique guilt in the destruction of their favorite property.

I hope that they'll be on better behavior going forward.

Let's also spare a thought for Jake Lloyd and Ahmed Best, whose lives were negatively impacted by fans who overreacted to The Phantom Menace. Regarding Lucas, he imposed the Star Wars Special Editions on fans and refused to release the theatrical cuts of the OT on Blu-ray. He made the disappointing Star Wars Prequel Trilogy and fourth Indiana Jones film. He pushed harder than anyone in the industry for digital film to supplant 35mm, and he popularised the overuse of CGI in place of practical effects work.

BUT--

Lucas also wrote and directed THX 1138 (1971), American Graffiti (1973) and Star Wars (1977), all of which were critically acclaimed and two of which were selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress. He co-wrote and produced the classic Indiana Jones trilogy and created the Clone Wars animated series. He produced popular cult movies like Labyrinth (1986), Willow (1988) and The Land Before Time (1988), whilst also producing more serious works of cinema such as Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha (1980) and Godfrey Reggio's Powaqqatsi (1988). He created LucasArts, THX and Skywalker Sound, Industrial Light and Magic, and Pixar animation studios. He was one of the key figures of the Hollywood New Wave and was often consulted for advice by contemporaries such as Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. And to top it off, he's donated literally billions of dollars to charity.

I'm not denying he made a negative mark on the industry during the second half of his career. But on balance, Lucas did more good than harm and made a far more substantial contribution to world cinema than Jar Jar Abrams ever will. I'm as guilty as anyone of hating on Lucas back when I was a teenager, but I'm mostly over that now (I say 'mostly' because I'm still annoyed we can't have the original cuts of the OT on Blu-ray). These days I'd rather celebrate the man's accomplishments than whine about his mistakes. And his accomplishments include creating the real Skywalker saga.

I've seen a lot of fans saying "Star Wars survived the Prequel Trilogy, so it'll survive the Sequel Trilogy as well." But this all feels different to me. I'm not one of those people who suddenly thinks the PT is great because the ST has underwhelmed, but I do think the PT has its merits. And it probably does benefit from retrospective analysis in the wake of the ST's failures. I've always liked Revenge of the Sith, despite its flaws, and I rank it as the best Star Wars film outside of the OT. Phantom Menace is average. Attack of the Clones is terrible. But the PT on the whole succeeded in areas the ST didn't, such as imaginative scope and world building. It fired up the imagination of the fans and gave them lots of exciting new planets and conflicts, which in turn yielded many enjoyable books, comics and videogames, as well as the two Clone Wars animated TV shows. By contrast, the world of the ST is a gloomy, desolate wasteland that exists in the shadow of the OT. It doesn't fire up the imagination and make you want to play a videogame or read a book set in that world.

I remember fans being excited about the future of Star Wars back in 2005. Revenge of the Sith ended the PT on a high note. And although Lucas made it clear he had no intention of proceeding with his own Sequel Trilogy, he did announce that two Star Wars TV shows were in the works: the Clone Wars animated series and the unproduced Underworld series. It sounded as if there wouldn't be any more Star Wars movies, but fans were stoked for the franchise's future on television, as well as for all the comics, books and games that were coming out (2005 saw the release of the Revenge of the Sith game, the first Lego Star Wars game and Battlefront II, with Empire at War following in early 2006). But who is excited for the future of Star Wars now? What have we got to look forward to besides Rian Johnson's trilogy? I know that's going to be cancelled any day now, but what else is there? I've heard The Mandalorian is good and I'm looking forward to checking it out when Disney+ arrives in the UK next March (my expectations are low, but it might be fun). But other than that, the future of the franchise looks bleak.

All Skywalkers are dead and a Mary Sue who happens to be a Palpatine calls herself a Skywalker. Seems very PC 2019 - I call myself something therefore I am that something. Nope, sorry, you're not. The Skywalkers deserved a better, more tangible legacy than the lead villain's granddaughter hijacking their name.

That moment perfectly illustrates Abrams' predilection for scenes that appeal to nostalgia for their emotional impact, but make no sense when you stop and think about them. First of all, why did Rey go to Tatooine? She has no personal connection to that planet and never spoke to Luke about it. She buries Anakin and Leia's lightsabers there. Why? Anakin hated Tatooine. It's the planet where he spent his childhood as a slave and where his mother was tortured and killed. The whole point of Obi-Wan hiding Luke there was that he knew it was the one planet Vader would never return to. Rey might as well have buried his lightsaber on Mustafar for all the happy associations it held for Anakin. And to add insult to injury, she buries it in sand. And we all know how Anakin felt about sand.

And why bury Leia's lightsaber there? Leia had no personal connection to Tatooine either. She went there briefly in Episode VI, but it wasn't a particularly pleasant experience for her.

Now if Rey had buried Luke's green lightsaber on Tatooine, then that might have made sense. But that's not what happens. And how did Maz Kanata get hold of Anakin's lightsaber in the first place? They skipped over that detail in Episode VII and still haven't explained it. I know this was probably covered in a comic or tie-in book, but it should have been explained in the films.

So then this old woman just happens to be passing the farm. Again, why? The Lars homestead is situated in the middle of a desert. Why would a frail old woman be wandering through the wasteland on her own? She asks Rey who she is, and Rey replies that she is a Skywalker. Except she isn't. Then we see her walk off into the twin sunset in a final shot that rehashes the ending of the PT. The final shot of Revenge of the Sith did get an emotional response out of me. It made sense in the context of the story and was a nice way of bringing things full circle to connect the PT with the OT.

By contrast, the rehashing of this moment in Episode IX made no sense and stank of recycled sentiment. It was a hollow and unimaginative way of ending the ST. But then the ST as a whole was hollow and unimaginative, so I guess it really is the perfect ending.

[Silver Nemesis]

Bravo, Jar Jar Abrams.