Alright, finally got to see it a second time today and like a lot of people have already said, it's better after a second viewing. Probably due to the fact that I already knew what to expect, I could focus a little bit more on the little details and since I already knew the story, some scenes didn't looked as rushed as the first time I saw it. There are still some things that I feel doesn't make a lot of sense or that I think is stupid (looking at you sith dagger...), but the good is good enough to look pass those nitpicks. There is some nice addition to the lore in there and a lot of scenes that feel like Star wars. I'm a big fan of episode 8, and I don't feel like episode 9 tried to retcon it or anything. I still think it's the weakest episode of the sequel trilogy, but still good nonetheless. I would now rate it 7/10.

Now, regarding the Skywalker name in episode 4. He's definelty named Luke Skywalker and not Luke Lars. If I remember correctly, the only time we hear his full name in the movie is when he rescue Leia and says confidently that he is Luke Skywalker. I don't think he would have said it confidently like this if he spent his life known as Luke Lars. Now I might be wrong, but I think we never hear the name of Anakin Skywalker in the episode 4, and the Emperor only refers to Luke as the son of Skywalker. I believe that the first time we hear the name of Anakin Skywalker is in Episode 6 when Obi-Wan explains his certain point of view.

4 hours ago, Vondy said:

Does any of this really matter?

Of course. Why else would anyone spend their time doing it?

5 hours ago, DarthDude said:

Lower comparable retail store sales reflected decreased sales of Star Wars and Moana merchandise in the current year

This doesn’t mean what you think it does.

7 hours ago, Nytwyng said:

So, all of their “consumer products” have seen a decline. We’re just cherry picking Star Wars products to align with the “TeH dIzNeE iZ kIlLiNg StAr WaRz BeCuZ tHeY’rE tEh EvUlZ” narrative. The largest remaining dedicated toy retailer going under, toys increasingly being marketed (and priced) as adults’ collectibles rather than kids’ playthings, and cancellation of a highly-promoted toy/video game hybrid (Disney Infinity) among other factors can’t contribute. The decline across the board can only indicate waning interest in Star Wars.

It is probably also worth noting that with a stagnation of earnings (and least in US/UK) over a considerable period, that as discretionary spending drops, collectables would be expected to drop faster than toys for people's kids. Thus lines aimed at adults will be hit harder.

So yeah, I saw Rise a few days ago and....yeah I didn't like it, like, at all. Which is disappointing. They made some mind boggling decisions with the script that I just sat blinking in disbelief about.

Though I wonder how long it will be before we have the Secret Solo child that Kylo Ren had at some point in the past (because, if Palps can get busy off camera and have a kid and then grand kid, why not Ben?) So that the actual Skywalker bloodline doesn't die off, but instead he'll be called Something Solo, and this will allow them to maybe swap out the Solo/Skywalker protag being Force-Sensitive or not, as the plot needs.

7 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

if Palps can get busy off camera and have a kid and then grand kid

Yeah this was the biggest yada-yada in the movie for me. Questions this raises:

1. Who was the mother? Palps has desire (on second though I don't want to know)?

2. Was the relationship a marriage or something forced?

3. What kind of childhood did the kid have? Was he happy? He seems to have rebelled?

4. Did the Palp son have force sensitivity? Or not? Did this cause him to be rejected?

5. Was he raised knowing who his father was? How much did he know (Emperor, Sith, etc.)?

6. Where was he raised? How? Was he groomed? Was he hated?

7. Did he rebel against his father? Why? How?

8. Given that his life was tightly controlled, who is his wife? How did they meet? Why did they run? Was it set up by the Palps or what?

9. Where was Rey born? How was she kept secret? How did the parents escape? Why Jakku?

At the same time, I hated this retconning of Reys parents and I don't want to know the answers. They would probably spend another Trilogy answering them.

8 minutes ago, GM_Needs_A_Xanex said:

Yeah this was the biggest yada-yada in the movie for me. Questions this raises:

1. Who was the mother? Palps has desire (on second though I don't want to know)?

2. Was the relationship a marriage or something forced?

3. What kind of childhood did the kid have? Was he happy? He seems to have rebelled?

4. Did the Palp son have force sensitivity? Or not? Did this cause him to be rejected?

5. Was he raised knowing who his father was? How much did he know (Emperor, Sith, etc.)?

6. Where was he raised? How? Was he groomed? Was he hated?

7. Did he rebel against his father? Why? How?

8. Given that his life was tightly controlled, who is his wife? How did they meet? Why did they run? Was it set up by the Palps or what?

9. Where was Rey born? How was she kept secret? How did the parents escape? Why Jakku?

At the same time, I hated this retconning of Reys parents and I don't want to know the answers. They would probably spend another Trilogy answering them.

Honestly, given what we know about the Emperor; I imagine he just used the galaxy as his urinal and his sock, and only really started expressing any interest in any of his offspring if they themselves would be of use to him. That's a satisfactory enough answer to me.

Personally, I like to just imagine things rather then have it expressively spelled out to me. Like, I just found out how the Temple was wiped out and was immensely dissasatisified. "Oh, the Emperor just dropped a force storm and killed everyone. Kylo and his Ren didn't do anything." As such; I just want them to move on and explore different stories at this point.

8 hours ago, Nytwyng said:

From my perspective, A big problem is the overall drop in quality of the sorts of toys that sell through via parents for actual play. The 3.5” figure line, for example, has lost detail and points of articulation. Hasbro seems to be focusing more on trying to appeal to adult collectors, which means higher price points and more limited production to preserve at least the illusion of “rarity.”

The 3.75” line of toys was inexplicably dropped for this movie, after more than 40 years. Replaced by some completely new 5” cartoonish action figures, which I refused to buy. Hasbro failed me at Christmas this year.

As for the movie... I saw it for the second time yesterday, and had difficulty staying awake for the first hour or so. It was okay, because I don’t really have a rancor in this pit. I am glad my son had his own Star Wars trilogy, like his father before him. People clapped at the end, presumably not because it was over. But I’m kinda glad it is over.

2 minutes ago, LordBritish said:

I just want them to move on and explore different stories at this point.

I agree. The Mandalorian was a great move and it was so refreshing to see a plot that didn't focus on Jedi/Sith or War.

8 minutes ago, GM_Needs_A_Xanex said:

I agree. The Mandalorian was a great move and it was so refreshing to see a plot that didn't focus on Jedi/Sith or War.

Agreed! Looking forward to the upcoming live action shows, as well. Any confirmation on a Doctor Aphra series yet?

8 hours ago, Red Castle said:

Now, regarding the Skywalker name in episode 4. He's definelty named Luke Skywalker and not Luke Lars. If I remember correctly, the only time we hear his full name in the movie is when he rescue Leia and says confidently that he is Luke Skywalker. I don't think he would have said it confidently like this if he spent his life known as Luke Lars. Now I might be wrong, but I think we never hear the name of Anakin Skywalker in the episode 4, and the Emperor only refers to Luke as the son of Skywalker. I believe that the first time we hear the name of Anakin Skywalker is in Episode 6 when Obi-Wan explains his certain point of view.

I completely agree he is Luke Skywalker. I was contending to solve the problem of the ridiculousness of not changing his name when you are supposed to be hiding him from the Emperor and Anakin Skywalker. My point was he could have been going by Luke Lars then later realized he was actually Luke Skywalker after meeting Ben. Like you said, he is only referred to by Luke at first. If the first time we hear him say "Luke Skywalker" was when he rescued Leia, well that's after he meets Ben. It could even explain his confidence. "Hey, I'm not just this moisture farmer's nephew named Luke Lars, I'm Luke MF Skywalker!!"

Yes I know Lucas never intended him to be Luke Lars because the connection to Vader didn't develop until later. It's just fun trying to retcon the problems of Star Wars' changing narratives.

13 minutes ago, Sturn said:

I completely agree he is Luke Skywalker. I was contending to solve the problem of the ridiculousness of not changing his name when you are supposed to be hiding him from the Emperor and Anakin Skywalker. My point was he could have been going by Luke Lars then later realized he was actually Luke Skywalker after meeting Ben. Like you said, he is only referred to by Luke at first. If the first time we hear him say "Luke Skywalker" was when he rescued Leia, well that's after he meets Ben. It could even explain his confidence. "Hey, I'm not just this moisture farmer's nephew named Luke Lars, I'm Luke MF Skywalker!!"

The problem here is that Obi-wan never actually tells Luke what his father's name was, just what he did and how he died, from a certain point of view anyway.

People who are surprised Palpatine had a child really need to read up on real world evil dictators.

10 minutes ago, micheldebruyn said:

The problem here is that Obi-wan never actually tells Luke what his father's name was, just what he did and how he died, from a certain point of view anyway.

Not on screen at least. There was lots of time in a landspeeder and a YT-1300 where it could have been mentioned.

30 minutes ago, GM_Needs_A_Xanex said:

Yeah this was the biggest yada-yada in the movie for me. Questions this raises:

1. Who was the mother? Palps has desire (on second though I don't want to know)?

2. Was the relationship a marriage or something forced?

3. What kind of childhood did the kid have? Was he happy? He seems to have rebelled?

4. Did the Palp son have force sensitivity? Or not? Did this cause him to be rejected?

5. Was he raised knowing who his father was? How much did he know (Emperor, Sith, etc.)?

6. Where was he raised? How? Was he groomed? Was he hated?

7. Did he rebel against his father? Why? How?

8. Given that his life was tightly controlled, who is his wife? How did they meet? Why did they run? Was it set up by the Palps or what?

9. Where was Rey born? How was she kept secret? How did the parents escape? Why Jakku?

At the same time, I hated this retconning of Reys parents and I don't want to know the answers. They would probably spend another Trilogy answering them.

My personal responses to your questions.

1. Don't really care? She ultimately had no part in the story, so at most she would have some one-shot side story thing, if someone decided to fabricate one from whole cloth for her. I don't particularly find the idea of Palpatines Booty Call Girl very interesting, but then him having a biological legacy isn't really all that interesting to me anyway. It's not necessary for any storytelling, and doesn't really improve the franchise.

2. Again, don't really care, though with Palps it's hard to say. He was a very charming guy when he was Senator Palps, so it's reasonable to think he might've wooed some woman to be his bed buddy. It could also be something as clinical as a political marriage. Or yes, it could be some Sith, Dark Sidey rapey kind of thing. With Palps, who knows.

3. First two questions on this one, again, don't really care. It's been established that the only thing they did of note for a story narrative, is "birth Rey, and then die getting her away from Palps and the Sith." Third point seems obvious based on what we saw.

4. No clue, don't really care, yeah, most of my responses will be "don't care." As they are details about a plot point that I didn't like anyway, so fleshing out a silly plot element, to me, just compounds the silly. Historically, Force sensitivity doesn't seem to skip generations, as evidenced from basically every Force lineage in the entire franchise doing this. And I get that narratively, people like the idea of Legacy force user/jedis, I myself love Legacy stories, though I don't require them to be biological legacies. But, a lot of humanity thinks that your genetics has some mystical weight on you in real life, so it's not surprising it bleeds over into fiction. I can't think of any examples in the EU material (though my exposure is limited I admit), of them skipping generations of force users in some bloodline. But ultimately it doesn't really matter. If Palp's kid was Force sensitive, again, they didn't really do anything of note with it, other than the afore mentioned "birth Rey" bit, and then die like a Disney parent does.

5. Probably at least some of who Palp's was, otherwise why would they know to hide Rey from the Sith and Palps? If they didn't know of Palps existence and/or dark nature, there would be no reason to hide her from him. I mean, have you taken steps to hide your possible child from Neebol Floopstar? Dreaded Angry Boy of the Gloopal Race? No? Probably because you'd never heard of him before huh? Or knew that he was bad news.

6. Don't know, don't care. Ultimately, unimportant.

7. See previous Dont Care responses

8. See 7.

9. See 8.

I think trying to answer these questions, is how we ended up where we are today. Not calling you out specifically, but this fan need to flesh out all these ancillary details, is how we ended up with a bloated, contradictory franchise, that makes movies far more worried about answering fan questions about ultimately pointless details, instead of making a cohesive, coherent story thread through a trilogy of movies. I get that scifi nerds in particular LOVE details, and thrive on learning and cataloging them. But doing so has ultimately diluted the mystique of the franchise and setting, down to some checklist of details that are more important to tick off for accuracy to avoid the fan base blowing up youtube with videos about how terrible it is, and how "they don't know Star Wars lore!", instead of just making a good movie that holds together from start to finish.

Now, all that being said, while I really didn't like Rise, and am saddened by it not being very good in my opinion (I didn't get a single emotional reaction to that entire film, but the Mulan trailer actually got me choked up a bit, sad that a trailer got more out of me than a full movie), I don't really care in the end. It doesn't destroy my world that Rise wasn't very good, and made some choices I find to be really dumb. It's just a movie, I'll live. There will be more SW movies at some point, and like everything else, they always have a chance to make something better.

I still genuinely enjoy Awakens and Last Jedi, even though the end of their story is meh. By themselves they are enjoyable movies for me.

15 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

I think trying to answer these questions, is how we ended up where we are today. Not calling you out specifically, but this fan need to flesh out all these ancillary details, is how we ended up with a bloated, contradictory franchise, that makes movies far more worried about answering fan questions about ultimately pointless details, instead of making a cohesive, coherent story thread through a trilogy of movies. I get that scifi nerds in particular LOVE details, and thrive on learning and cataloging them. But doing so has ultimately diluted the mystique of the franchise and setting, down to some checklist of details that are more important to tick off for accuracy to avoid the fan base blowing up youtube with videos about how terrible it is, and how "they don't know Star Wars lore!", instead of just making a good movie that holds together from start to finish.

I totally agree, but it really irritated me how Palpatine and this whole story of his kid was just retconned out of thin air. Before the first 10 min of this movie there was no indication anywhere that Palpatine had survived or had a kid. I totally don't want the answers to all of these questions, but ignoring the implications of what you have added to the canon is reckless and disheartening. The point of canon is that you have a cohesive story. Throwing a huge curve ball like this out of nowhere undermined the cohesiveness of the trilogy.

5 minutes ago, GM_Needs_A_Xanex said:

I totally agree, but it really irritated me how Palpatine and this whole story of his kid was just retconned out of thin air. Before the first 10 min of this movie there was no indication anywhere that Palpatine had survived or had a kid.

To be fair, Star Wars has a long standing history of "haha! You thought that Very Obviously Fatal Fall killed me!! But it did not!" In fact if you have to find a way to die in Star Wars, leap off a cliff into the murky darkness, odds are really good you will survive. Heck even if you've been cut in half, or tossed into the stomach of a desert beast. Falling is great! And yes I agree the butt pull of Palps having a family is lame.

7 minutes ago, GM_Needs_A_Xanex said:

The point of canon is that you have a cohesive story. Throwing a huge curve ball like this out of nowhere undermined the cohesiveness of the trilogy.

I agree mostly, though I think the reality of "canon" is that it's really a way for obsessive fans to well...obsess about details because that's just what they do, so they can make crazy fan theories and debate with their friends for years between installments of the franchise. In theory, yes, canon is there to allow for a stable foundation for an ongoing storyline between creative teams. The reality, it's fans on forums like this, debating minute, insignificant details like what year BBY a ship was first made, etc.

1 hour ago, Edgehawk said:

The 3.75” line of toys was inexplicably dropped for this movie, after more than 40 years. Replaced by some completely new 5” cartoonish action figures, which I refused to buy. Hasbro failed me at Christmas this year.

I'm not going to make any assumptions about age, but perhaps you're not the target demographic anymore?

2 minutes ago, penpenpen said:

I'm not going to make any assumptions about age, but perhaps you're not the target demographic anymore?

Yeah, I know, sorry- didn’t mean to sound all dramatic. I am not a collector, just a dad with a son who still plays with toys. We use them in our tabletop gaming, also. Discontinuing the 3.75” toys may make sense, but I personally think abruptly dropping them at the conclusion of a forty year saga is in poor taste.

@x-wing toys: separatists and republic are newly released. First order is around before the 2. Edition.

But there is an objective lack of new, toy worthy ships. I think we saw some repainted y wings if I remember correctly. Yeay...

@new topic: who was this old first order general who gets blown out of the window at the end? He said he served the emperor in the last war already? Is he famous/known?

And did Sloane show up in the movies? I forced myself through those terrible aftermath trilogy and then the characters don't show up in the movies 😞

And did the guy from lost, with this horrible Scottish dialect show up before? Does he have any specific purpose?

12 minutes ago, Seguleh said:

@x-wing toys: separatists and republic are newly released. First order is around before the 2. Edition.

I think you missed my point, which was that only the GCW-era factions really have much presence, and much of the breadth of those three factions are drawn from ancillary media, rather than the movies themselves. Based on previous practices, it’s possible (perhaps even likely) that LFL had embargoed licensees from creating or introducing non-film designs, giving the films first crack. (Timothy Zahn faced similar restrictions about possibly touching on Clone Wars information in the original Thrawn trilogy, as the Clone Wars’ details were being reserved for any potential future movies.)

19 minutes ago, Seguleh said:

But there is an objective lack of new, toy worthy ships. I think we saw some repainted y wings if I remember correctly. Yeay...

And how many were in the original trilogy? Not many. Most came from other sources.

24 minutes ago, Seguleh said:

new topic: who was this old first order general who gets blown out of the window at the end? He said he served the emperor in the last war already? Is he famous/known?

Allegiant General Pryde. This was his first appearance.

24 minutes ago, Seguleh said:

And did Sloane show up in the movies? I forced myself through those terrible aftermath trilogy and then the characters don't show up in the movies

Nope. She is still exclusively a print character, between books and comics. I thought that might be her in the First Order conference room, but the Visual Dictionary identifies the officer shown as someone else.

26 minutes ago, Seguleh said:

And did the guy from lost, with this horrible Scottish dialect show up before? Does he have any specific purpose?

Dominic Monaghan. First appearance of his character, too. He had two specific purposes: to fulfill a bet than Abrams lost to Monaghan (his winning conditions being a role in the movie) and to take lines that could have just as easily been delivered by an established character (*cough*Rose*cough*cough*).

20 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

And how many were in the original trilogy? Not many. Most came from other sources.

.

X wing, b wing, a wing, y wing, milenium falcon, tie fighter, tie bomber, tie interceptor, tie advanced, lambda shuttle, slave 1,

Just small ships out of my head.

Thx for the other informations!

This actor and his dialect could have been replaced with jarjar, would have been a big atmospheric improvement

3 hours ago, DanteRotterdam said:

People who are surprised Palpatine had a child really need to read up on real world evil dictators.

But I want me friggin' escapism in peace like, dude, whatevz, me $$$ only goes there d@mm17z! Waaargh!

5 minutes ago, Seguleh said:

X wing, b wing, a wing, y wing, milenium falcon, tie fighter, tie bomber, tie interceptor, tie advanced, lambda shuttle, slave 1,

Just small ships out of my head.

Right. All of which have served as the basis of the other eras.

Oddly enough, as the prequels were being released, they were lambasted for “just trying to sell toys.” But now, I guess the sequels are horrible because they...didn’t try hard enough to sell toys?

D@mned if they do, d@mned if they don’t.

23 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

Right. All of which have served as the basis of the other eras.

? Partly, but what's ur point? There are still much less ships in the new sequel and they do not have the cool background story of development the old ones had.

And who complained about "they just try to sell toys" first semester students who want to change "the whole system"? No **** Einsteins, it is a company.

And nobody says that the trilogy is **** because it does not have enough new ships, it is **** because of a lot of other reasons. It is simply a hardly understandable fact. Since the company won't give a **** about people's opinion who do not want to buy their stuff anyways.