Jesse “Jess” Patterson

Just rewatched this movie and I decided it did not get its due mainly because of the movie that came out just 6 months prior to its release. This Movie, along with Rogue One (but to a lesser extent) was substantially better than the new trilogy. The actors were chosen well and while I don't feel there was a need for a half-hearted love story involved, it was a decent enough premise to work. IMO, he should have gone back and found her on Corellia; I did not think there was enough reason to justify her basically being a mid-level manager at the exact cartel he incidentally got involved with. Now, this plot about Coaxium was pretty good but I do feel it was nothing more than a cheap justification by Disney to cram in in-universe evidence that starship fuel was necessary so that Rian Johnson could have his stupid 2 hour long slow chase scene in episode that-shall-not-be-named. That aside, since I just marathoned all of the movies in chronological order, I would rank this right up in middle of the pack, which is pretty good for an 11 episode run.

Love this show (BTW Google, you are an a**-hat for requiring surnames before you can leave a review). The anime was great, a top 5 for me in anime and this show does not live up to that. However, I like to approach this show like I do The Office. The anime is the seasons with Michael Scott, the live-action is the seasons without him. If you watch the seasons without Michael and mentally categorize it as it's own show, they are wonderful episode with vivid characters- same can be said about this. It's not the anime, but in every other respect it's fantastic in it's own right. Most of the wrongs in this show either come from comparing it to the original and not liking it on principal, or limitations of live-action capabilities vs what can be done in a cartoon. It's only crime is that it's extremely niche as a space-wester neo-noir and is too specific for some people.

Pretty good retelling of Episode 4, imo.

***Spoilers*** Most review starts with second paragraph (if you can call it that), first one is preface. TLJ was terrible- do you hear me Rian Johnson?- terrible, garbage. And, no one is toxic just because they didn't like TLJ either; that's a cop-out to call millions of fans such just because they don't agree with it being good (his story tried changing the rules of the universe with almost ZERO warning or enhancement to the trilogy plotlines, and yet was only worth 11-12% of the whole Skywalker Saga-it's called continuity and he tried doing too much, end of story-it's not about fan fiction BS) Had TLJ been any good, RoS would have gotten a B-. But, because it's clear Rise spent most of its time trying to fix the fact that TLJ didn't progress the plot, characters, character arcs or Mary Sue, but sure as H*ll had the time to punch us in the face with “Animals have rights“, slavery is bad (freakin duh), capitalism is bad and everything needs to be subverted just because it can, Rise of Skywalker gets an A. You can tell Abrams didn't want (and never intended in the first place) Palpatine back in the picture. But what can you do when the previous movie throws all plots out the window for a "Because-I-can" factor? In Rise, characters progressed (finally) nicely, the story had some loops and stretches that were too far to really enjoy (again, though, it had to do some solid storytelling for two movie's worth), I liked some homage back to earlier trilogies, I wish it were Korriban but whatever, and I wish the fight at the end had been more holistic or more dangerous to the main characters. Solid story though, overall. Good enough to be satisfied for the most part with the wrap up. I was impressed by how Abrams had to take a hard left turn to finish the Saga with nothing working from TLJ (and hey to be fair, I gave Force Awakens a B+ for almost being a carbon Copy of episode 4) and giving off very little in Force Awakens. I wasn’t bothered that Rose wasn’t important because she felt shoved down our throat in the last movie, I don’t like that Luke could grab things as a ghost, but I do appreciate him being back in there, Han showing up was unexpected but cool, and I am ok with how Ben’s story turned out, considering that he never got developed in depth prior to it all. I really wish TLJ had used the Knights of Ren so there could have been more to that minor arc, but props for how they worked out in this movie. In all, this Trilogy gets the worst ranking out of all three though. Disney was money grabbing, for obvious reasons though, with this one. If Rian Johnson wants to make another sci-fi film, I'll watch it, but it needs to be HIS OWN film in his own story, not his 1/9th opinion of a 40 year long saga. Oh, and Knives Out does not validate your past idiocy in an unrelated movie.

It does a surprisingly good job of meshing the Showa “monster-works-with-monster-to-fight-monsters-to-save-human-for-no-good-reason” lunacy with more modernized Hesei themes where man thinks too highly of themselves and gets in over their heads. Albeit, the story surrounding the people was bland *SPOILER ALERT* (honestly, the most insane plot was how eco-terrorists thought they were somehow going to be important by letting the animal out of the cage). But, that’s how ludicrous the Godzilla concept is to begin with...Japanese had themes that meant something to them from the first Godzilla movie (read up on it) and Americans don’t-we look at these moves as glitz and glamour and “it only gets an A if the romance story sweeps us off our feet”. Just ignore the people in this movie, like you would in every other Godzilla movie, and it’s golden hour for Godzilla. I’ve seen every Godzilla movie out there and this is a top 5 so far.