Rise of Skywalker Audience Score 86%, Critic Score 57% on Rotten Tomatoes

I'm curious what people make of the audience and critic review score disparity for Rise of Skywalker. When The Last Jedi had a similar disparity in the opposite direction, a lot of conspiracy theories came out that Disney was paying off critics, I'd say the current situation blows a hole in that theory, so what gives? What is it that fan like and critics don't, and vice versa?

I think the answer is fairly straight-forwad, but i do want to hear others opinions before I go into mine.

You don't really know whether you'll like something until you actually try it yourself.

Also, internet user score tend to be a bit of a joke. Anyone can post whatever score they like for whatever reason, regardless of whether they've seen the thing or not. Maybe someone orchestrated a mass vote dump.

I saw the movie earlier today. Mostly agree with critics that it's a mess and tries to stuff too much into one film, but still enjoyed it for the most part. The pace is so fast that you hardly have time to stop and think about how stupid it all is.

@judaspete:

Well there ya go. You had a good time, so who cares what the critics think?

When reading reviews, I never just look at the score, but always look for the meat of what they're reviewing, and look to see the overall consensus about them. Numerical scores are arbitrary and largely meaningless, and even seem to vary from reviewer to reviewer; i.e. a 6 to one reviewer might be "good," and "average" to another reviewer. Never found them very useful.

Went to see the movie, its shit.

And uncanny valley with Leia.

To many cliches.

At least it wasn't as bad as Rogue One.

Which, I honestly don't get how it ended up so bad, you can hop on youtube and find near flawless looking DeepFakes but for whatever reason she looks like a Nvidia tech demo.

Deepfakes don't rely on building up the face? This seemed entirely animated. Very well done, but something was off.

Saw it yesterday. I do like the sequels more than the prequels. But...

I hope they learned a lesson with this trilogy, to take their time writing it. Just because you paid 4 billion dollars for the franchise doesn't mean you have to start pre-production like the next season. George Lucas had been cooking the idea for the three part story of The Star Wars in his head for years before he ever filmed the original. Some things obviously changed as they made the films, but it definitely helped having a plan. Next time, the writers should formulate a three part story covering the whole trilogy and then have the producer make sure the directors follow that vision. It's okay if they take a long while to write it. I know one of the reasons Avatar 2 is taking so long is because James Cameron wrote out the whole rest of the series before he began filming the sequels, and I'm sure that will pay off in the end.

For God's sake, stop making the force users so ridiculous. Why in the hell would a force ghost be able to manipulate things in the real world, especially to such an extent? They could be much more helpful if they had that ability.

I have not seen a single Star Wars movie under the Disney label, and I probably never will. This movie bombing is just another validation for me to steer clear of the Star Wars franchise.

I will never understand the allure of the franchise; not even with the original trilogy (average at best, in my opinion), but I do know for sure that Star Wars fans are blatant shills for the franchise and they'll pay for a mound of shit if it's promised to have force powers.

Dig this: so among my coworkers I have are Star Wars fanboys. I have been hearing about the movie from these individuals. What is most striking to me is how Star Wars fanboys are being apologists towards this new movie even though they're trying so hard to hold back the cringe. I'm hearing these people say shit like "yeaaaahhhh this movie was messy and had no focus, but I liked it because I'm a Star Wars fan."

WTF?

I had someone seriously say that yesterday to me. What's the deal, Star Wars fans? Why shill so hard?

No idea, all I can say is that it looks way better, at least to me. You may feel differently.

@judaspete: Rotten Tomatoes isn't the best site to pull user reviews from as they are known to purge certain user reviews.

I would check Metacritic. Over there the critic and user scores are within 5% of each other.

The fact that "critic and user scores are within 5% of each other" isn't necessarily a good thing.

Meh. Same basic problem: user scores can be posted by anyone for any reason, and easily manipulated.

People should really stop putting so much value and authority in simplistic arbitrary numbers.

@madrocketeer: well most fans didn't seem to like this one either.

Sure. I just think people should spend at least some effort to consider why people like or dislike something and see if they apply to themselves. Boiling down detailed and complex opinions into arbitrary numbers is simplistic and intellectually lazy. Giving importance and authority to said numbers is even worse.

@madrocketeer: Yea I think everyone should form their own opinions. I guess it's just a simple way to measure a general opinion.

Review manipulation by a bribed rotten tomatoes, and disney is buying its own tickets to leave verified reviews. between 6000 reviews and 38,600 reviews the score has been locked at 86% lol. the ceo of Fandango Media who owns rotten tomatoes Paul Yanover is a former disney executive.

I don't know about all of the so-called conspiracy theories, but as a Star Wars fan, I will tell you that I thought that both the Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker were superior films when compared to The Last Jedi.

It boils down to this: fans were generally happy with The Force Awakens and they were willing to overlook the film playing things rather safe. Fans were not happy with The Last Jedi and the biggest two complaints that I hear are that they didn't like the political themes in The Last Jedi and characters were not good. Personally I did not like The Last Jedi, but that is because everything that was established in The Force Awakens was either butchered or disregarded altogether. I also felt like Rian Johnson had no idea who Luke Skywalker was as a character and it showed in the terrible writing.

I saw the Rise of Skywalker on Thursday and without giving too much away, I can say that many of the issues I had from the previous two films were fixed. We also got the proper send-offs to many of the original trilogy characters and the writing/story was much better than the previous film.

You are seeing people defend The Last Jedi by saying the reason why the user reviews are so bad is that it was review bombed, but that this is just nonsense. Why wasn't The Force Awakens or The Rise of Skywalker review bombed then? We have a much more likely scenario: The Last Jedi wasn't that great of a movie. I know casuals loved it, but actual fans, eh not so much. Look at HelloGreedo for example- he made a successful YouTube channel because he crapped all over the prequel films, but HelloGreedo is just a casual fan who has even admitted that he hasn't played the video games, he hasn't watched the animated shows (The Clone Wars, Rebels, The Resistance), nor has he read any of the books (nothing from the EU and nothing from Disney's new canon)- this is about as casual as you can get and this also represents most people defending The Last Jedi. This is akin to someone claiming they are an MMA fan, but all they do is watch UFC main events and they skip the UFC fight nights, skip the minor UFC events and they watch nothing from other MMA organizations.

If you average all of the user reviews from IMDb, Metacritic, and Rotten Tomatoes from all 3 films of the sequel trilogy, you will get the following:

The Force Awakens - 77.6%

The Last Jedi - 52.6%

The Rise of Skywalker - 68%

People keep saying that The Last Jedi was review bombed by users, but all of these films were review bombed by users (the prequel trilogy had some serious review bombing) and even with all of that, The Last Jedi still has the lowest user score average out of any film within the entire saga... it's not a coincidence. There is also NO evidence that The Last Jedi was review bombed more than the others.

Completely agree about starting with a solid plan, and a two year development cycle for movies this big was just ludicrous. That said, this is still the second best trilogy in the franchise if you ask me.

The score is irrelevant to my enjoyment of a movie, but I still think the disparity is and interesting topic of discussion.

As a Star Wars fan, I'll just say that J.J Abram did the best he could when he return to film episode 9 and tried to correct Rian Johnson's mistake. I saw Rise of Skywalker this past Friday night and here are my opinions/thoughts. I give Rise of Skywalker a 6/10. The pacing went too fast, this film went all MCU as Rey being Ironman like and the 3rd act tried so hard to mimic Avengers: Endgame and this doesn't work in Star Wars, it only works in superhero comics only. I didn't like how Palpatine was shoehorn into this final conclusion, this trilogy was all about Snoke, not Palpatine at all and the fact Rian Johnson killed him off in TLJ, J.J didn't have much of a choice but to bring in Palpatine and it's understandable. The visual were all on point, the music was on point, Fin this time around has good character development and he's now Force sensitive and adds more character development. Poe is treated well here, BD-8 was useless throughout the film, and as for Rey taking the mantle of Skywalker name, I'm sorry but I had issues with that but that's another paragraph.

Again, it's a 6/10, I enjoy it but this was all nitpicking on my part and despite it's getting slam by critics, it's still a nice conclusion J.J work hard after Rian Johnson's mistake.

Edit: Spoilers ahead and continuing discussing Rey's true heritage:

I mean, it's frackin Star Wars, it will be a good, beautiful time at the very least.

Obviously it's not a masterpiece, but neither were the originals; sub-par writing, unknown and relatively untalented actors (Harrison Ford excluded), but they're still fun.

Not everything has to be a masterpiece to be enjoyable.

@davillain-: glad to hear Fin is a good character this time. I always found him to have potential as the underdog-turned-hero, but I felt his role as comedic relief was abused.

Interesting that he turns out to be force sensitive as well.

I enjoyed this movie like fast food: I knew what I was getting into, felt a bit guilty about it. In the end I was entertained by the lasers and visuals, but obviously the lore and story have not been great.

Alright, so you kind of answered why fans hate TLJ, can you think of any reason why casual fans like it? That's kinda where I meant for this thread to go. What is it that casuals like about TLJ and don't like about RoS, and why does it seem to be the opposite for "real" fans.

@mrbojangles25: They gave Fin a slightly bigger role this time around but, as with most plot points, the movie barely scratched the surface. It was so rushed that there was no time to develop any of the interesting ideas they had.

The lack of a unified direction and plan for the trilogy was apparent throughout. TFA introduced some great characters like Fin (huge potential in exploring his ex-Stormtrooper nature), Snoke, Captain Phasma but both TLJ and ROS failed to do anything interesting with them. Heck, you could remove them and not much would change in the end.

I know they're just movies in the end and I did enjoy them but I can't help but feel disappointed with a wasted opportunity to do the franchise justice.

@johnd13: was very disappointed in Phasma's appearances and ultimately her lame death. She had the potential to be a really cool character. Should have been Kylo Ren's second-in-command or bodyguard or something.

@mrbojangles25: Same thing with the Knights of Ren. They were teased from the beginning and we never got any development whatsoever. They weren't particularly special as fighters, neither were they truly loyal to Kylo Ren.

It baffles my mind how professional filmmakers managed to waste so many interesting characters.

@mrbojangles25: what?

The original Star Wars films were excellent, they would not be nearly so remembered and would not had become such a cultural phenomenon had they suffered “sub-par writing”. Nothing of the sort plagued the originals. Were they cheesy and hokey at some points? Sure, but the character arcs, development and narrative were brilliantly executed, written into mythological construct that became the beating heart of the franchise.

I mean jeeez man. We wouldn’t even be HAVING this conversation if the OTs writing was sub-par as they would’ve been quickly forgotten. The OT films aren’t perfect, but of all their faults, writing wasn’t one of them.

By the way...

So stupid. You're telling me like a quarter of the space station survived THAT in one piece? Disney's fanservice knows no limits.

To be honest, I blame most of the problems of this trilogy on Abrams' introduction, not Johnson. He didn't even TRY to imagine what the galaxy would really be like after the deaths of Palpatine and Vader. I would have imagined a power struggle between the remaining Imperial generals (Why would they just quit?), the Rebels and Leia trying to help govern a new Republic, perhaps General Solo with forces of the new Republic army trying to mop up the remaining Empire, and Luke training new Jedi in Episode VII. I would have actually introduced the Empire as the losing side, from the perspective of Storm Trooper Finn or maybe an Imperial Rey. The first movie would have been about the Empire's resurgance or the First Order rising from the shambles of the Empire, under the leadership of a new force user (Don't know if he should be Sith.) or band of force users.

Instead, that hack Abrams under the poor direction of Disney to do a soft reboot just kept everything the status quo. Another desert protagonist. Rebels against a huge Empire again, barely mentioning the Republic. Another planet-destroying sphere. Solo still smuggling. The Jedi still just Luke, another hermit. Leia still a Guerrilla freedom fighter. Rey another child of a Sith, like everyone in the galaxy has to be related. A Sith lord manipulating the antagonist again. It was all so lazy, safe and unrealistic, demonstrating Abrams has a childish understanding of the universe. **** Abrams. I can see why Johnson wanted to cancel his mistake.

I have no explanation of why they liked it because the writing/story wasn't that good. The music and the visuals were amazing though and I would even argue that the music in TLJ was superior to the music in TFA. One of my biggest gripes with TLJ beyond the writing is how bad they portrayed Luke Skywalker. I am not going to lie, I am a huge Luke Skywalker fan and his story arc from ANH to RoTJ was simply amazing. Luke Skywalker as a character has always been selfless and he has always put others (including his friends) before his needs and he has always done what he believed was right. In RoTJ, Luke decided to go behind enemy lines because he thought his father, who was not only Darth Vader, but a Sith Lord and number 2 bad guy in the galaxy at the time, still had some good in him and he also thought he could be redeemed. After beating his father in a duel, the Emperor wanted Luke to kill Vader (similar to how he convinced Anakin to kill Dooku), but Luke, unlike his father, resisted the temptation to the dark side giving us one of the most badass quotes of all time:

"No, I'll never turn to the dark side. You've failed your Highness. I'm a Jedi, like my father before me."

This and all of the other deeds defined Luke Skywalker as a character and after the Emperor tried to kill him, we all know how that ended with Darth Vader becoming Anakin Skywalker once again and throwing the Emperor to his death.

So this same Luke who always did the right thing did three things in the TLJ that were so unfitting to his character:

-He threw away his father's lightsaber (Anakin's lightsaber)

-He attempted to kill his nephew who was the offspring of his twin sister and best friend (yeah because that makes sense)

-He refused to help the Resistance fight the First Order

Where were the loremasters when they were shooting TLJ? They should have spoken up and told Rian Johnson that he wasn't portraying Luke Skywalker correctly. Also, we have all seen the video of an emotional Mark Hamil proclaiming that he told Rian Johnson that his portrayal of Luke was not fitting and that it was going to upset a lot of people- if you haven't watched the video, here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynBuQoSzeEE

TRoS is not perfect, but it was the best thing we the fans could have hoped for after the disaster that was TLJ. Also, I mentioned HelloGreedo previously, a Star Wars YouTuber who I dubbed as a casual fan. He loved the TLJ, but thought that TRoS was just "OK". His Video review of TRoS has over 5k likes. In contrast, Star Wars Theory is a YouTube channel that does a complete nosedive in all things related to Star Wars lore from books, movies, shows, and video games. In his video review of TRoS, he makes it clear from the beginning that he was not a fan of TLJ, but he loved TRoS... his review has over 64k likes on YouTube.

The 1970s were filled with all kinds of excellent movies, including but not limited to:

• Jaws
• The Godfather
• Taxi Driver
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• Apocalypse Now
• A Clockwork Orange
• Alien (arguably a better sci-fi movie than Star Wars, objectively speaking)
• Rocky
• The French Connection
• Chinatown
• The Deer Hunter
• Serpico
• Patton

....and so on, and so on.

I would not include Star Wars: Episode IV in that list of excellent movies.

And before you take this personally, please don't; I don't mean this as a insult or even a criticism. Star Wars is an entertaining series, yes, and it has a lot of great qualities and an excellent story. Conceptually, it is an excellent idea for all the reasons you mentioned, but as far as execution goes it leave a lot to be desired as a series, and also as Episode IV.

Star Wars, as a whole, is probably my favorite franchise in the entire world. As films, TV series (I still maintain that The Clone Wars and Rebels are two of the greatest TV series of all time), video games, and so on. It's modern mythology, embedded into our culture; it's why when the one person in the room says "I've never seen Star Wars" the room collectively gasps and says "WHaaaaaat?". It's like not knowing what Jesus or Buddha is :D

But if I am being fair about it, the films of Star War (specifically Episodes I-VIII...I haven't seen IX yet) are not well-made films. Sorry but it's true. I am not saying they are not deserving of admiration because of this, but relative to what we can consider good cinema from a critical and objective metric, Star Wars is not that.

And everyone involved knows this. Mark Hammill had to beg Harrison Ford to stick around for the remainder of the series, ultimately convincing him to stay because the merchandising profits would be so great. George Lucas apologized for and on behalf of Hayden Christensen, citing that "I feel terrible for Hayden, he is a good actor, but the writing was terrible in Episodes II and III"; also, Hayden is not a good actor btw just go watch Jumper or whatever. If the films were actually good, the guy in charge would not be going back time and time again, butchering them and adding in special effects and taking away classic scenes and such.

It's currently at 54, tying it with Attack of the Clones as the second worst Star Wars movie, just three points higher than Phantom Menace. The Last Jedi, which I hated, was actually one of the highest rated Star Wars movies there. 86 I think? A New Hope was at 90. I actually enjoyed Attack of the Clones, so who knows.. I'll probably enjoy Rise of Skywalker.

Saw it over the weekend and it was decent IMO. Certainly better than TLJ, and absolutely better than the prequels.

I've just come to the point where Star Wars is more action and set piece material than writing, as far as my expectations are concerned. In reality there has only been one GREAT Star Wars movie and that is the Empire Strikes Back. Star Wars is supposed to be hokey, full of tropes, and prevailing over evil. At least in the new series they've given us the Rey/Kylo relationship which is their interesting shtick.

Once you stop viewing the series with rose tinted glasses you'll probably realize it's a good sci-fi action flick, Star Wars has always been that.

Not based on user reviews... if you look at user reviews on RT then the The Last Jedi ranks dead last. Why trust the opinions of a few (the critics) as opposed the opinions of the many (the fans)?

Here are the RT user reviews for all of the Star Wars films:

The Phantom Menace - 59%

Attack of the Clones - 56%

Revenge of the Sith - 66%

Rogue One - 86%

Solo - 63%

A New Hope - 96%

Empire Strikes Back - 97%

Return of the Jedi - 94%

The Force Awakens - 86%

The Last Jedi - 43%

The Rise of Skywalker - 83%

Because a lot of times I don't agree with the fans. Granted, I don't agree with critics a lot of the time myself, (which was kinda the point at the end of my post) but they usually have sound reasoning in their reviews unlike most user reviews who go "RIAN JOHNSON BLOWS BALLS!" Also, when a film finds itself in controversy, guess who does review bombing?

Well Metacritic and RT have strict review bombing policies now so that really isn't a valid argument anymore. We are talking about hundreds of thousands to millions of reviews here.

I just don't agree with "the fans" people about Luke. We last saw Luke at 23, and now he's more than double that age. A lot can happen in that time. They could have realistically made him the villain of the new trilogy if they wanted to.

Luke lost control came very close to killing Vader in RotJ, but only managed to stop himself at the last minute. What happened with Ben wasn't that much different. He saw the extent of Ben's darkness and for a split second thought of killing him to prevent atrocity, but he immediately regret the instinct. And I love the quote, "The last thing I saw were the eyes of a boy, who's master had failed him". Because he blamed himself for Ben's downfall, and the subsequent rise of the First Order, he exiled himself and disconnected from the force. He thought it was all his fault and that he couldn't fix it.

But here's the part angry fans never bring up, as soon as he reconnected with the force and felt Leia in trouble, he was ready to run back into the fight with his laser sword. The only thing that stopped him was walking in on Ben and Rey, which shocked him back into cynical realism. Helping her could lead to yet another corrupted youth falling to the dark-side, and making the situation worse all over again.

Ultimately he does come to help one last time. He knows he can't single-handedly take on the First Order, but realizes his legend is so big that people believe he could. So he uses that to his advantage and makes it look like he's going to take on an army of AT-ATs. It's just a trick of course (it would have been some ridiculous Dragonball Z crap if he had actually done that), but it gives the Resistance enough time to escape.

This all makes sense to me. Maybe it's because I know of few vets suffering from PTSD, so I'm more primed to accept the idea of fallible heroes than most people. I don't know.

ANY criticism of the OTs is construed as a personal attack, bub. ;P

You're shifting the goalposts. I'd easily place Star Wars amongst the greats of cinema you listed when viewed on objective merit. but that's another debate. You claimed that it suffered from sub-par writing, which I take exception to. I-III and VII-IX do (the ST more so than the PT), but IV-VI do not. Sure they had cheesy dialogue at times, but in terms of a core narrative pillar, competent character development, the proper understanding and execution of the hero's journey, all culminating in a cohesive trilogy arc that led to a very satisfying payoff, I find them to be exceptionally well written films all around. Add into that mythological elements infused and it turned into a cultural phenomenon. In fact I'm hard pressed to think of a better movie trilogy than the OT Star Wars.

Lucas going back doesn't say anything about Star Wars' quality. His changes made them worse in every respect, and the prequels only go to prove that Lucas was off his rocker and that the OTs were a mistake. If the Star Wars films were actually bad and poorly written, there's no way on earth they'd be as popular and culturally relevant as they have become.

Star Wars also isn't a sci-fi movie, it's fantasy. I also wouldn't qualify Alien under sci-fi, it's a horror film, arguably the best one ever created at that.

The problem with Luke in TLJ isn't that he changes, it's that it's not earned. When such a significant shift of characterization is made, you have to show the audience what led to it, and not just a flashback or brief bit of exposition for such a jarring shift. Luke's character was fundamentally antithetical to everything the OTs established prior.

And his circumstances with Ben were very different than when he was fighting Vader. Luke was battling on multiple fronts in RotJ. It was his father which he was attempting to turn who he knew had a long history of incredibly evil acts behind him (and who had murdered his mentor), his friends were in peril who he was witnessing die, it was a time of heightened emotion with the climax of a battle between the Rebels and the Empire, the Emperor was taunting him, and Vader finally broke the camel's back by threatening the unimaginable to Luke about Leia. Versus a Luke in TLJ who was in a time of peace, with a sleeping child who'd done no wrong whatsoever, in the absence of the Emperor and Vader edging his worst vulnerabilities on, with no friends who were in imminent threat of death or family in threat of a worse fate, without a massive conflict around him, AND who had already overcome the hardest trial prior in tossing his saber aside in rejection of the Dark side.

Sure Luke is impulsive, but he was never murderously so. He came close to killing Vader, but that was only after he was pushed from many different sides and thought he had no other option, and that he could even fathom unsheathing his weapon against the defenseless (a relative no less) simply because he had a troubling vision, regardless that he changed his mind, was contradictory to his character to that point. It simply was unearned. Had he been the person he was in the TLJ with Vader, he wouldn't have even humored his father's redemption, much less went to him to be taken to the Emperor. His characterization in TLJ was not only inconsistent, it was a downright regression.

Oh, and this would have been awful.

Luke told her that her lineage doesn't pre-determine who she is. He didn't say she should be proud of being a Palpatine. Would have been the most awkward scene in all Star Wars, to be honest. Luke always knew his name and he was proud of his father in the end, so the comparison is terrible. She can be whoever she wants to be.

In RotJ Luke was in a more intense situation, and that's why he went on a rampage that ended with him cutting off his father's hand. It was only after going that far that he was able to stop himself and regain control.

With Ben, he got spooked by a vision, and for a second thought about killing him to prevent atrocity. And that's as far as it got. The situation was less intense, so he regained control of himself almost immediately. And come on, if you found out you were standing over a sleeping Hitler, even the best of us would consider killing him for a second.

Look, I thought there was enough explanation in the movie to justify Luke's behavior, you disagree, and that's fine. This kind of illustrates what I was getting at when starting this thread, that groups of fans have completely different opinions about the last two movies.

Spoilers I guess

It kinda seems like this single movie should have been the segmented trilogy. It's so rushed but some of the ideas and scenes really aren't bad. Of the three of them this felt the most "star warzy" like it belonged inside the universe than some imitation of it.

Half of the characters and scenes could have easily been chopped out.

C-3PO and Rose, does anyone really give a shit about them? Or low rent Boba-Fett that shows up, potential love interest? Oh wait, doesn't matter. BYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEE.

That's why it was a mistake giving full control to Rian Johnson over TLJ. In the scope of a trilogy, his work was out of place, his movie failed to progress the story in a meaningful way. The Fin & Rose arc was completely useless, runtime which could have been used to develop the plot and/or characters.

Compared to JJ's uninspiring fanservice, I appreciate that Johnson wanted to deviate from the Star Wars formula but it felt out of place in regards to the trilogy as a whole. That forced JJ to cram two movies into one for RoS. Thus, there was no time for the revelation of Rey's lineage or anything else to sink in and be processed by the viewer. I felt nothing throughout the movie, except a slight shock after Chewbacca died. But wait... he came back!

I actually liked C-3PO's more significant involvement this time around but even that failed to have a true emotional impact. In the end, he didn't really say goodbye to his friends as he pretty much came back after a few minutes, courtesy of R2D2's backup...

Just watched it for Palpy. I kind of liked how Luke, Solo and the other old cretins brought back weren't miserable this time, I guess. And the villain wasn't just some shitty Palptine stand in, even if reusing him basically nullified everything else before, which was dumb.

Darth Reddit was kind of great, he's honestly a far more interesting character then Rey, because, he's actually human and shit, and conflicted, and redeemed and all that crap and not just (now literally) Jesus.

I don't think one can truly understand the cultural phenomenon of the first three movies (by release date) unless you saw them first run in the theater. There was nothing like them. And there had never been that type/level of movie merchandising before. The concepts and special effects were amazing at the time. The characters were special and you identified with a simple good vs evil story...but at the same time Vader was more than just a bad guy as he was an anti-hero and putting him behind a mask was genius.

This was a popcorn series and pretending that it was some sort of story/dialogue masterpiece in the first place is mistaken. It was never meant to be that. And now that special effects are everywhere and there are a bazillion comic book movies to choose from the whole concept has been usurped by the competition. The feelings associated with the first three movies that came out cannot be replicated because society/culture has moved on.

@uninspiredcup: Yeah Palpatine deserved a place in this trilogy. He's been the main villain of the entire Skywalker story. Though they went a little overboard imo. I agree, it pretty much nullifies Darth Vader's sacrifice from the OT. I would have been ok with him being a force ghost manipulating everything or something instead of having survived and wielding unlimited power again.

Is Darth Reddit Kylo Ren? Lol. Kylo is the most interesting character in these movies. We pretty much witnessed the conflict inside him in all its glory with him killing his father. I would very much rather he survived in the end instead of Rey. We've seen the bad guy finding redemption by sacrifice before. I want to see him finding redemption AND surviving to face his criminal past moving forward. Plus, he's a Skywalker. Rey is not, regardless of what she said lol.