The Rise Of Skywalker Pacing (No Spoilers)

[unspeakablehorror]

One thing about The Rise Of Skywalker was that I found it difficult to pay attention to what was going on at times.  I don't know if the movie was just moving too fast in those spots or what, but I would be watching a scene, then start thinking about it, then realize I'd missed a part because the characters had moved somewhere else or the scene had switched to different characters.  Since I don't want to give Disney more money for this movie I'm going to wait until I can watch it at home from a secondhand DVD or something so I can actually pause and rewind the thing.  That might be the only way my brain can keep track of what's going on.

Comments

[tobermoriansass]

No it definitely isn't just you, the first half was way way too rushed and far too video game fetch quest-ish.

[unspeakablehorror]

It was such a disorienting movie! I was just like 'no, movie, I'm not done with the previous scene yet!'

[tobermoriansass]

Right! It kind of tanked any scene with emotional impact because you just rushed on to the next one without letting this one land and be absorbed.

I've heard people describe it as an attempt to fit two movies into one, and that probably explains the patchiness as well as the fact the film feels weirdly weirdly disconnected from TLJ.

[unspeakablehorror]

That probably was one reason the movie didn't have emotional impact.

It's so weird because I don't recall feeling like this for any other movie I've seen. I'd almost think they did it on purpose to get people to see it again in theatres, which just makes me doubly determined not to do that haha.

I think the biggest issue is how they handled Palpatine. I actually did enjoy his appearance, but had to ignore all the narrative around it. It would've required a clever setup to explain and justify his return, and they...didn't have that. He really undercuts any kind of narrative relevance for the new villains.

[tobermoriansass]

Ha! I mean, they *did* have Palpatine's "announcement" delivered via Fortnite (????) so it feels like they designed this movie for like. Maximum profit and encouragement of consumption of secondary canon materials for the Full Experience, so I wouldn't put it past them to want people to see this twice for the Best Experience or whatever.

And YEAH! OMG, I don't know how they managed to mess up Palps, because its not like he's ever had deep motivation. But he just was kind of... there in the film?

I honestly found that frustrating because I think it could have been so easy to set up the Palpatine reveal in a way that was engaging and tense and yet they chose to... announce his return in a fortnite announcement that didn't explain anything at all about his return. LOL.

[unspeakablehorror]

I'd heard about that but I hadn't really bothered to look into it until you mentioned it here, and now that I have I am even further convinced about the profit thing. It's like...one of those DLC game add-ons, and they literally put it in a videogame. While I still have questions about Palpatine's return in general, I'd agree that they don't need to make Palpatine have deep, nuanced motivations for his scenes to be fun. They just really lacked the impact they could have had. I have to wonder if some of the rumors about last minute changes to the film weren't true and if maybe that affected the end result as well. But maybe they just don't care anymore lol.