Star Wars 9 - Rise of Skywalker

[airboy]

We sit in the theatre, waiting, the air thick with anticipation and the smell of popcorn and broken dreams. There aren't that many people, surprisingly. A few superfans are dressed up as obscure alien characters we don't recognize.

The movie comes on. It is a confusing CGI spectacle. The plot is unclear. We wonder why God has unleashed this vengeance upon us. We toss someone overboard to see if that appeases His wrath. It does not. More CGI comes on screen. It is a colorful vomit of characters with silly names, dramatic speeches about nothing, and lots of singing and dancing.

And fur. So much fur.

It is then we realize we're in the wrong theatre, watching Cats with a bunch of furries. We rush down the hall and into the right theatre as they hiss at us.

Then, it finally comes onscreen: STAR WARS! The opening crawl appears: "People who thought The Last Jedi was a masterpiece: Leave this theater now." This crawl sets the tone for the rest of the movie. From Rey looking at the camera and saying, "Hey, guys, sorry about that last one" to JJ Abrams making a cameo appearance where he pushes Rian Johnson down a reactor shaft, the movie is full of subtle winks and nods that Disney is disavowing The Last Jedi. It feels cheap for them to change direction, almost design-by-committee, but then again, it was The Last Jedi.

Things happen on the screen. The space wizards have laser sword battles. Some things explode with deafening booms in space, Neil deGrasse Tyson be darned. We cheer and clap at the appropriate moments. We shout, "Yes!" when something good happens and "No!" when it looks like all hope is lost.

At the exciting conclusion of the film, an interactive element comes into play: "We can only defeat the Emperor if you all clap and say, 'I do believe in Star Wars!'" Rey shouts. "I can't hear you!" The audience is electrified. One by one, we stand, mere mortals alone, but something bigger together. People of different races, creeds, colors, nationalities, and classes all standing as one in defiance of the Dark Side.

It is then we realize the Resistance is not fictional. We are the Resistance, you and I. Together. Standing.

The caption that then appears reading, "By standing you agree to subscribe to Disney+ for $9.99/mo" cheapens the moment, but only a little. Overall, we all agree this was a satisfying conclusion to a trilogy that made us say, "Yes, this universe is somewhat recognizable as Star Wars."

Some other stray observations as we try to gather our thoughts:
- Naming the object they were searching for "MacGuffin" seemed a little on the nose.
- Palpatine the Grey returning as Palpatine the White felt derivative.
- Disney vendors walking up and down the aisles shouting, "Baby Yoda, Baby Yoda, Get your Baby Yodas here!" distracted a bit from the action onscreen.
- The movie was alright, but man, we coulda been rewatching The Mandalorian instead.
- The characters linking hands and singing "We Are The World" over the end credits was a nice touch.
- The lesbian kiss got all the media buzz, burying the lede that Rey and Kylo declare they have an open, polygamous relationship at the end.
- Hey, JJ Abrams, whatever happened with that polar bear in Lost?

We will definitely be seeing it again, as Disney has contractually obligated all Star Wars fans to no less than 7 repeat viewings.

We'll say this in no uncertain terms: Rise of Skywalker is better than Cats.
https://babylonbee.com/news/rise-of-skywalker-the-babylon-bee-review

[JasonPratt]

I lol'd pretty hard at the second paragraph!

Meanwhile, a somewhat more-positive-than-average review from the HISHE guy.

[airboy]

We are going to see a movie on Tuesday.
One that we have been looking forward to seeing for months.
I'm certain that we will thoroughly enjoy it.

It is called......
[spoiler] Jumanji: The Next Level[/spoiler]

I'm sure we will have a good time.

[JasonPratt]

At last.

Listening to them give pretend reviews at the beginning as sincerely as possible in overgushing praise -- read from tweets... 


Worth noting, btw, they seriously did not hate the film. They're kind of impressed at how much plot was sloppily thrown into it (enough for six films or three tv seasons).

They're really pretty cheerful, all things considered. Consensus: JJ Abrams spun straw into bronze.

[Huw the Poo]

Who the hell wants to spend 70 minutes watching a review of a film?

Apart from you of course, Jason. :D

[FarAway Sooner]

Classic, Airboy!  Great stuff...

I went to see it with my son yesterday, and once I accepted that the Star Wars franchise will never be more than cheeseball Heroe's Journey fare, I relaxed and enjoyed it immensely.  Truth be told, I only realized that 41 years after seeing the original Episode IV in the movie theater.

The last movie was fun.  They had to basically ignore all the plot twists gratuitously thrown into The Last Jedi and refocus the story, which suggests that the whole "We'll let a different director do each episode" approach for the Final 3 was kinda silly.  There were a lot of nice twists and subtle nods to the history of the series.

Watching it with my enraptured son, who is the same age I was when I saw Star Wars, I realized that the franchise has been a thread through my life for going on 4 decades now.  As disappointed as I was with many of those movies (OK, fully half of them), Star Wars introduced me to a world of swashbuckling sci-fi that's never released its hold on my imagination even after I've turned 50 years old.

All things considered, that's not small potatoes.

[JasonPratt]

I just like listening to them talk about things.  O:-)

Incidentally, the nieces apparently loved it. The oldest one cried at least three times, by consensus report: "UGLY crying" she clarified, with a very amused grin.

Bro has completely failed to interest them in Tolkien films (or Tolkien at all), but has succeeded in some key regards.  O0 (Over-against amused eye-rolling from his wife!) (Who, it must be said, completely did not realize Spock had died at the end of Star Trek 2, back when they were dating.)

[W8taminute]

Who the hell wants to spend 70 minutes watching a review of a film?

Apart from you of course, Jason. :D

You should watch Angry Joe's review.  It's over 2 hours long!

Incidentally a lot of people I know are puzzled as to why I won't see this movie.  Calling me a big baby for not wanting to watch this Heresy.  Unfortunately I cannot reach them through the logic of a long time Star Ward nerd.  Their disbelief that I won't see a movie with a star wars label on it is being made very clear to me.  I will continue to resist.  I will not suffer the taint of the Disney Heretics. 

In other words:

[JasonPratt]

Who the hell wants to spend 70 minutes watching a review of a film?

Apart from you of course, Jason. :D

You should watch Angry Joe's review.  It's over 2 hours long!

I'm saving that one for when I eventually watch the thing.

[Martok]

Incidentally a lot of people I know are puzzled as to why I won't see this movie.  Calling me a big baby for not wanting to watch this Heresy.  Unfortunately I cannot reach them through the logic of a long time Star Ward nerd.  Their disbelief that I won't see a movie with a star wars label on it is being made very clear to me.  I will continue to resist.  I will not suffer the taint of the Disney Heretics. 

You speak my language.  Good to know there are some who understand.  8) 

[JasonPratt]

Buzz today over a Rotten Tomatoes weird ongoing stat blip.

The critical score has varied only a point or two over the past several days, which is reasonable since most professional critics have weighed in already and their tally hasn't changed much.

The audience score has stayed at 86% over several days, as reviews numbers rose from 6231 to 37,571 verified reviews yesterday (the 23rd).

As of today the score dropped one percent to 85.

Someone in the comments to the Quartering video went full autism ;) , and created a spreadsheet to analyze the reviews.

So where Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker had a pretty low critic score I've been curious to see how audience members would score the movie.

* The first day at roughly 2,200 reviews it was at 86%.  I thought oh, maybe its a movie critics got wrong.

* The second day after hearing from many people they did not enjoy it I checked again.  roughly 13,400 reviews... 86%. Odd.

* The third day at roughly 40,00 reviews. Seeing many youtube videos of people saying it was possibly the worst of the nine. It was like they stuffed two movies in one.  Hearing from many people that they simply didn't enjoy it.  Still at 86%.

This was very suspicious so I decided to look at archive data. To look at the rating every single hour during the three days it's been released.

From 2,000 to 40,000. And checking every hour of each day... at no point does the score change from 86%.

So I decide to dig a bit deeper. I decided to do the insanity that was... manually counting every audience viewer score there was. Thanks to the incredibly power that is spreadsheets and databases I was able to do this in a reasonable time; few hours. And I can say *There are significant abnormalities*

The review of
> 5 Stars! Amazing ending to an amazing story!
shows up 2,243 times. 

> 5 stars! Great effects. Fun, action filled story. JJ Abrams brought together the old and new elements. Recommended.
Shows up 3,143 times.

> 5 Stars! Excellent conclusion to the Skywalker Saga.
Shows up 2,243 times.  Not joking the exact same amount as the amazing ending comment.

There is some minor variations.  But it's very likely that a keyword bot was created to make reviews to this. You just don't get those kind of abnormalities otherwise.

As for the actual user score according to spreadsheets and manual entry. The movie sits at a score of....

64%

Note that he included the suspected bot scores in that average, since he had no way to decisively prove those were bots.

[Huw the Poo]

Yeah it's been fairly common knowledge for a while that aggregation sites like Rotten Tomatoes (and metacritic for example) are gamed by certain organisations.  After all, it is an aspect of marketing, and we all know how much the big film studios spend on marketing.  It's why I pay no attention whatsoever to them.

[SirAndrewD]

I work in publishing where I run strategy and sales.  Review gaming is just a thing.  If you don't do it it's a very bad business decision. 

If you want a better audience measure that relies on exit polling, use this...

https://www.cinemascore.com/

[Huw the Poo]

I have reservations about exit polling but it's still better than aggregation sites, I agree there.  It's not something that can be gamed.

[DoctorQuest]

I saw it today with my son and we both enjoyed it.