Thread by @drvox

1000% correct.

https://twitter.com/priceoreason/status/1332058954134925313

Sorry, commenters, you're wrong: Rise of Skywalker is the worst Star Wars movie & the worst movie of the modern era. The prequels were extremely bad, but TRoS was extremely bad in a *worse way*. It was the worst in the worst way one can be worst.

The sequels were bad in a "auteur with no ear for dialogue & no feeling for actors is given way too much money & freedom & creates a towering, relentlessly clunky, narratively overpacked oddity." I don't wanna watch them, but I can forgive, or at least live with, them.

TRoS is bad in a grubby corporate way. No concern for the canon, narrative coherence, creativity or novelty -- just an exercise in how many familiar tropes can be crammed in, how many times the worn-out nostalgia button can be pushed. Fan service for the absolute worst fans.

Not a single scene is given room to breathe. The story, what there is of it, isn't shown, it's told in rushed, cursory exposition. "Oh, you need the mcguffin, but to find that you have to find this secret other mcguffin." Ok, I guess?

It was nothing so much as a long list of previous SW tropes for Abrams to dutifully replicate. Lando? OK. Ship flies through tight tunnels, pursued by tie fighters? OK. Large exotic space creature almost eats ship? OK. On & on, just cramming them in w/ no care, no coherence.

And the fucking editing, Jesus. Chop chop chop chop. I don't think there was a single shot in the entire film that lasted more than a second or two. No time to sit with anything, absorb anything, FEEL anything, got lots more tropes to get to! It's edited like a 2-hour trailer.

Oh, the fan boys were butt hurt that Luke went cynical? We'll just crudely reverse that. They were angry Rey was a nobody? We'll just crudely make her somebody. They were angry Kylo Ren was ambivalent & ambiguous? We'll just crudely turn him good, don't worry about the details.

TRoS is what happens when people w/ no understanding of what made SW appealing in the first place get ahold of it. To them it's just IP to be put in a blender & recycled again & again. Anything new or novel, any actual new story, might kill their golden goose.

In the end, sure, fanboys got every scrap of SW nostalgia they could possibly want, with nothing to challenge them or make them think or make them uncomfortable for even a brief moment. Like a back alley hand job -- gets it done, but does anyone feel good about it afterward?

I have been deeply immersed in SW since I was 5 & saw the first movie. It shaped my youth. Even through the prequels, even through VII & VIII, I *cared*. IX did something I thought was impossible: it broke the spell. I just don't give a shit any more. Meh to all of it.</fin>

Hm? What's that? Oh, I thought you said GRIPESgiving!