“The Rise of Skywalker”

Spoilers!

Its been a few years since I saw “The last Jedi” and frankly I didn’t pay much attention to it. And if I had, I think would have been easier to follow TRoS.

For me, the first half was like watching a non-stop trailer. Somewhat disjointed short scenes with a lack of story telling. It felt like I was being told about a book someone read. It was a collection of snippets and ‘you’ were left to fill in the blanks.

There were some cheap rollercoaster moments, a little over the top even for Star Wars. Dire situations with almost instantaneous relief- OMG NO! That can’t just of happened! Oh wait, it didn’t. It’s all good now. Another one- “We can’t save the galaxy unless we find “this”.Oh wait, here it is. Lets go”. And “let me use this incredible power to save our butts”. A moment later, “that worked, let’s go”. Use the same power a few more times to conveniently turn a bad situation 180 degrees.

One thing I really liked was the Jedi’s power to be in two places at one time. I don’t know if it’s new or not. It was sort of like lucid dreaming yourself into another part of reality, (ala DiCaprio in “Inception” ) being able touch and effect the physical beyond your immediate reach. And it was a little bit like time travel too.

The last half ( maybe 1/4) the TRoS story flowed together nicely like wet paint dots, not dry splatter on a crowded canvas.

Two last big nitpicks. Lando somehow managed to round up every ship in the galaxy to attack Palpatine’s fleet…. at the last moment of course. And the rebels somehow managed to find the chink in the Star Destroyer’s armor (I think there was a brief mention of blueprints) The ships dropped like flies on stink.

Nothing like Luke taking that one in a million shot down the exhaust vent on the Death Star….