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The government of Russia is. The average Russian citizen doesn't need to suffer for the actions of their shitty government. We need to support the Ukraine and we need to understand the people of Russia are NOT the bad guys. Support Russian and Ukranian artists and voices, not just the Ukraine. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.
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Let me open this by saying it isn't a bad movie. But it isn't the thing it sets out to be and that is a cardinal sin of any reboot. When I say this film isn't Power Rangers, I do not mean that we, as fans of the series need to reject different takes on it but Power Rangers is a very solidly defined series with very real hallmarks and aspects that the 2017 movie just kind of ignores in an attempt at being a more generic superhero flick because that's what's popular. I got in a fight with a guy about this once and I want to present my arguments in as clear a way as I can, and I hope I can at least get people to understand my perspective on the matter. 1. The powers mean nothing and the zords are weirdly tacked on. In the original show, we got a quick feel for the Rangers and who they were, Jason is strong and willing to help Billy with his lack of confidence, Billy is smart and working on his combat prowess, Zack is one cool mofo who casually made his own fighting style, Kim is adept at gymnastics and Trini is a balanced girl, the latter two both still display combat aptitude when Bulk and Skull hassle them for a double date. Then there's the powers being given to them. Zordon lists the reasons they have what they have, Jason is bold powerful as a person, which we see when he teaches a group of other people martial arts, so becomes the Tyrannosaurus ranger. Zack is clever and brave, thus links up with the Mastodon powers. So on and so forth. This gives every powerset its own distinct reason for being, making the powers feel important for more reasons than just the colors. Adding to this: We have the weapons which I admit were introduced later, and zords. These things were tied into the powers, however. They made the powers feel more complete and distinctive from one another. This gave the Mighty Morphin powers their own senses of identity separate from the rangers... Now lets look at the movie: There is NOTHING that makes the individual powers feel any different from one another save for Jason having a sword for no reason and the suit colors. The powers "Picked" their hosts but for what reasons individually? The powers are cool... I guess, but there's nothing in a story or practical sense that sets them apart. If Billy was Red, Jason was Pink, Trini was black, Zack was blue, and Kim was Yellow, The film would have about the same impact. Red is the leader color, not for any reason in particular but because it just is. And it could have just as easily been any other color. While watching the old show, Jason was the leader in the original team more because he was a natural leader. Not because he was "the red one." The zords. My lord the zords. In the original they were partly the basis of the power, partly extensions of it. A little confusing but it made enough sense. While in the movie it's just like "Oh BTW: Here's some robots that are supposedly based on things but they ended up looking like giant beetle Bayformers instead." They had some individual action which is nice but they lose a lot of the importance and weight the original zords had. Not helped by the fact that they're actually smaller than the OG zords. They do look cool but they just aren't the original zords and take almost no cues from them to the point of being distracting. 2. The designs: Or Genericberg USA. The original designs of the rangers, the zords, Goldar, and even Rita are iconic pieces of pop culture. Goldar is big, intimidating, he's every bit as savage as his design needs with all the elegance that a trained warrior his size needs to sell the idea that he's seen a lot of conflict. Rita's design, while goofy, still sells "Old beyond appearance." and almost demonic given the big hair and all the vague steam punk fantasy junk in her hideout. The Ranger's suits are visually striking, the white offsetting whatever color they wear in such a way that it just catches the eye, and the same can be said for the helmets which can look you straight in the face on their own. The foot soldiers in every season also add to the collective flavors, The original putties having those distinctive black swooshes and those crazy faces. The zords, while boxy are relics of an older time, of a Showa style of mech that still aesthetically flows, they're nice to look at is all I mean. Compare all of those things to the designs in the movie, Goldar has no face and no personality but we'll talk about that later. Compare that to Rita in the new movie which looks kinda like a witch with the heavy use of green and the fake claws but she still just looks like you could slot her in with a bunch of Marvel villains and you would barely notice. The Staff was cool though. Speaking of Marvel: The rangers look like semi organic Ironman knockoffs with less contrasting color and the putties are just hunks of living rock or street. And while that makes them unique, the name "Putties" makes less sense. They also just kinda have random crap from the streets like signs sticking out of them. Which can go a way to individualizing them but nothing is really done with it. Like if one of them used used street signs like wrist blades or something, that would justify the change but nothing does. It's just different to be different. And now we come back to the zords: They look too alien. I understand its alien technology. I understand that they "Grew" which implies at least a semi-organic nature, but as said above the original designs, while boxy and I can admit dated, are still visually powerful. The Mastodonzord is a Mastodon. The Saber-toothed Tigerzord is a Saber-toothed tiger. But the ones in the 2017 movie look, like I said above, a lot more like weird beetle monster Bayformers. Specifically the Triceratops and Mastodon. The Saber-toothed Tiger ends up looking sort of like a primate-feline hybrid instead of just a feline. The other two look fine, I guess but still the carapace-like designs and that just feel weighed down. Not helped by the fact that all of them feel very monochromatic. And then you look at the concept art and wonder what happened. (Link to some scrapped designs: https://www.reddit.com/r/powerrangers/comments/d65pdv/power_rangers_zords/ ) (I wanna stress I think Zordon's new look is an interesting take on it and Alpha is just kinda meh to me) 3. The villains have no personality. The original Rita Repulsa had numerous allies, however, Scorpina, Squat, Baboo, and Finster were all cut from the movie. Why? To make it less cluttered. But it feels like they collapsed Rita and Scopina into one character for the main villain being that Scorpina, while evil, was a no-nonsense fighter. Rita has little moments of being more than "Generic evil lady #1414" but she's just power mad for the sake of being power mad and that's pretty much it. They also took out anything that made Goldar who he was, and even while he's a giant golden behemoth wrecking the city, his thin, almost anorexic look makes him a lot less intimidating than if he was this big dog-faced ape man with elaborate armor like in the original series. Let me make this perfectly clear: BASIC. GOLDAR. From the original series, with no growing and no extra bells or whistles, is more intimidating and fear-inspiring than a multi-story city-leveling monster. How does that even happen? Also the putties in the original series, while goofy on the regular, still had personality. You almost get this sense that they have little quirks to them becasue individual putties did occasionally do little things, that time one chased Billy up a cliff springs to mind but in the movie, all they do is break stuff like a horde of nothings. 4. The action. While the action in the movie is good, pretty high energy stuff, almost all of it is CGI and... a lot of it is the same. Power Rangers' action, as a result of the Sentai, was always about the style. The sparks, the weapons, the explosions, the giant monster suit fights But now all the putties are CGI, Jason uses his sword like once in the whole movie, the Megazord and Goldar are CGI and it all crumbles and moves in the normal way you might expect it to. Power Rangers always had this unique style to its action because it was tokusatsu (Godzilla, basically). The movie isn't. It's just a lot of non-practical special effects. The effects aren't bad. But they, say it with me now: Aren't tokusatsu. And by extension make the movie, say it with me now: more Generic. I wanna end this by saying I still really do like the movie and don't think it's a bad part of Power Rangers as a franchise or anything. It's a good movie, I'm happy it got made. I'm glad a lot of new fans joined the fandom because of it. But ultimately, my feelings can be summed up like this: It isn't Power Rangers. It's just another Superhero flick with Power Rangers trappings. I'm interested in your opinion however, so drop one if you have one.
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Star Wars has a place in all of our hearts, I think. This series has had literally galactic-scale highs and lows. Be it the video games, the movies, the comics, the novels, what have you, Star Wars is one of, if not THE biggest sci-fi universe in the world and one of the most important in all of nerd culture. After the controversial madness that was EVERYTHING about The Last Jedi, I felt the need to see this one. How does this new Trilogy end? Is it any good? Well, let's dig in.
1. Technical aspects
The movie looks good for the most part. It's a lot of good CGI and descent puppetry, a lot of explosions, and a lot of color. All the places that the movie goes do feel genuinely unique to one another, so points there, I guess. But it has some serious issues with the editing. The editing is god awful for most of the movie, the camera flips around too much, I think. I don't want constant tracking shots but they keep jump-cutting all over rooms and very suddenly for scene transitions. There are a fair amount of wipes but only one scene transition actually stood out to me at the very start of the movie, everything else was kinda dull.
This has to be addressed, Carrie Fisher is still in this movie. What they did was cut snippets of her head out of unused footage from Force Awakens and Last Jedi, then put it relatively well over the face of a body double. This allows her to exist in the movie but it isn't good. From an ethical standpoint and from how it affects the flow of her scenes. Her tone of voice doesn't feel right for any of the scenes she's in and her answers to what people say are usually just kinda weird, as well as what people say whilst responding to her.
2. Acting and characters (very lite Spoilers)
The acting in the movie is okay generally. It's nothing to write home about though. It's solid and generally does the job but the characters themselves are a different story. One problem is that the movie introduces a shit ton of them, including but not limited too, (Spoiler warnings for this paragraph), Zorii Bliss, An old Spice running friend of Poe's who is trying to ape a Mandalorian (Like the society) vibe in the look of her outfit but doesn't do it well. Babu Frik, her tiny alien boss and a surprisingly tech-savvy little so-and-so. D-O, a small droid consisting of a cone head and a single wheel, voiced by JJ Abrahms. And Jannah, who like Finn, is a rogue Stormtrooper from the first order. Everyone and everything else introduced are just more generals for the "Final order" (A rebranding of the First Order) and a bunch of background aliens and stuff for the resistance.
The main problem with these characters is none of them have time to develop because of how many are introduced. They try with Zorii, bless them, but her scenes are too short so her character doesn't "Develop" it just starts at one point and changes at the drop of a hat. And the returning Characters honestly aren't handled great either. Rey is okay for the most part, but Finn contributed just about nothing, Poe wasn't worth much more than a ride between planets, Kylo Ren goes back to wearing his old helmet for some reason and again, seems to change without much provocation. Leia's death is weird and kinda pointless, although I'm happy they won't do what they did again. The only consistently good, solid characters in the movie were the droids (Especially C3PO) and Chewbacca. Characters with very few lines or who literally cannot speak. That's such a weird thing to say, honestly.
3. Plot and thoughts as we go (Heavy Spoilers)
A transmission has gone all across the galaxy, Emperor Palpatine lives. Kylo Ren is hunting for a "Sith Wayfinder" and Rey is training under Leia to become a better Jedi. Kylo finds the Wayfinder and goes to a sort of hidden Sith planet whereon he meets Palpatine, here it is revealed that Snoke was a clone made by Palpatine's servants, "The Nights of Ren" and that Palpatine was "Every voice Kylo heard in his head." (Not too subtle change into Darth Vader's voice as he speaks.) Kylo and Palpatine have a short exchange where the younger pledges both his and the First Order's services to him, in exchange, Palpatine will add a whole new fleet of Star Destroyers to them. Star Destroyers he literally just summons up from the ground. Hangar bay doors don't open, these things just slam up from the ground like titans of myth rising from ancient slumbers. And while that might sound cool, it comes with a lot of issues. For starters: Who made these things? The Knights of Ren? How old is that organization, then? How old are these ships? Why don't they have hangar doors overhead? Hell, we learn later that these things will bolster first Order forces by "Ten thousandfold." How many of these things are there? How many ships does the First Order (Now "The Final Order") have at this point?
Anyway, back with the resistance. After a cameo by the best fictional game in the series, Holochess, we find that they're getting information from an ally I never caught the name of, flanked by some sort of weird alien on the ship who's apparently on a first name basis with Finn and Poe. We also learn the Final Order has a spy and a decent chase scene ensues. All well and good, but all this and the conspicuous lack of porgs makes me wonder how much time has actually passed between this movie and Last Jedi. Especially when we cut back to Rey who is trying to hear the voices of past Jedi but just realizes she can't and immediately drops the meditation in favor of running a training course. She ends up getting distracted while running it and accidentally drops a tree on BB8. She says to Leia that she will one day earn the right to use Luke's lightsaber... But it broke in the last movie. Again, can we please get a time stamp?
Poe, Finn, Chewbacca, and their crew return, whereupon there's a kind of funny back and forth about what Rey did to BB8 and what Poe did to the Falcon during the chase. The highlight of which is "At least BB8 isn't on fire!" "What's left of him isn't!" During this breif stop, we learn that The Final Order is broadcasting their plans, in sixteen hours they will lay waste to entire worlds because as it turns out, the new ships that Palpatine gave them all have planet-destroying laser weapons on the bottom. A Fleet of Star Destroyers, each with Death Star-grade power. That's definitely upping the anti, I suppose. During this, we also learn that the "Wayfinder" Kylo went after is important because its the only way to find the planet Palpatine is holed up on, a world called "Exegol," you won't find it on any other maps. So the crew goes on a quest to find a man in service to the Sith, a bloke named "Ochi" who was last spotted on a planet called "Pasaana" because for some reason, Luke and Lando Calrissian were tracking him. The movie doesn't explain why they were after him, nor why they seemed to abandon the search. (Or when any of that happened, for that matter.)
Our heroes journey to Pasaana where, as it turns out, there's a festival happening. One that celebrates family and ancestry. Cue the best comic relief in the movie, C3PO, as when Poe expresses that he isn't psyched about working with a crowd of people all around him, C3PO expresses elation, "We are very lucky, it only comes once every Forty-Two years--" Etc. Honestly, C3PO is the best part of the movie.
As the resistance crew goes about the Festival, Rye gets a necklace from a local who asks for her family name, not just her given, but Rey just says she doens't have a family name. Kylo contacts Rey with their weird psychic bond they had in Last Jedi, and they have an interesting exchange about the last movie and her wanting to take his hand at the end but deciding against it, and how when he offers it this time, she will take it. He steals the necklace Rey got from off her throat because as established in TLJ, he can do stuff like that. He has Final Order members analyze the necklace and learns of the planet Rey and her cohorts are on while they gad about the festival looking for any sort of clues or leads. They end up getting found by Final Order Troopers, but saved by Lando, apparently, Leia told him where they were. They mention the resistance could use his help, but he just says that his flying days are behind him before he sends them off.
The gang is followed by Final Order troopers, resulting in a chase scene, one I quite like. The Final Order has jet troopers now, and the crew basically just have their sidearms as weapons, having stolen vehicles from the locals. It's a very intense action scene, even when the crew crashes into "Not-quite-quicksand." Everyone starts sinking in and Finn says he's always wanted to tell Rey something. What it is goes unanswered as he sinks down. The lot of them have fallen into a cavern of some sort.
They explore the cave until they find two things, Ochi's land cruiser, and Ochi, who as it turns out is long dead, nothing more than bones and whatever he had on him at the time. Rey digs through his body and finds a scary-looking dagger that has most definitely been used for some less than savory deeds, Rey sensing the negative force energy off it. 3PO tells them that the inscriptions all over the dagger are in Sith Runic. He CAN translate it, but he can't say it aloud. It has to do with Old Republic regulations on translation modules. They keep the dagger, at least. There's also a giant serpent, one the cast calm into letting Rey get close, whereupon we learn she has the ability to force-heal injuries. The snake lets them out and she explains that it's basically channeling some of her own life force into whatever she's healing, and when she sees Ochi's ship, she's unnerved. She knows it from the day her parents left her.
Some true madness begins to unfold as Kylo shows up in his ship and Rey cuts one of the wings off, forcing it to crash. Chewbacca is captured and ostensibly killed accidentally by Rey because she summons force lightning and blows his transport's engines. There's another brief exchange with Kylo about him seeing the lightning for real, thus her capacity for darkness, before Finn and Poe tell her they NEED to leave. They do and Kylo radios for pick up as the Final Order literally toes the Millenium Falcon into a Star Destroyer. It is here we learn that Kylo knows about the spy in their ranks and that Chewbacca survived. While they waddle about in Ochi's ship, thinking of a plan, C-3PO reveals that there IS a way to get a translation out of him. Essentially they need to do a factory reset. This means 3PO will lose all memories of his friends and life. But what is that compared to a galaxy dominated by fear?
Poe knows the man for the job, trouble is they need to go to a world called "Kijimi" where Poe made a booboo before joining the resistance. But again, literal planets worth of lives are at stake, so he swallows his lack of pride and they go. A not bad tracking shot of Poe creeping around the streets and finding it crawling with Final Order troopers later, his mistake comes up to him. Both her pistols drawn, and one to his head. We learn that "Zorii" and Poe's old outfit were spice runners, and their old friend "Babu Frik" is the guy they'll need to crack 3PO's head open. Babu only sees people who are part of the crew, which Poe no longer is. They eventually convince her and the other spice runners to let them in. There's a genuinely heart-wrenching moment where 3PO goes completely silent before the process gets going and he says he's just taking one last look at his friends.
Meanwhile, we see Poe and Zorii on top of a building, Poe mentions how no one came after the last movie, their distress call was for nothing. Way to invalidate the most controversial movie in the series, you dolts. Also, Zorii seems to have changed for no reason. She went from not wanting to look in Poe's general direction to inviting him out to her new life as a farmer on some rock at the fringes of the galaxy. Poe turns her down because he has a war to fight, whether or not he wins. She gives him a First Order Captain's badge, which would allow docking in any Final Order ship or planet because the rebranding is only so recent, I guess. C-3PO gets rebooted and the crew learns what the inscription on the dagger means, but again, the cost is 3PO's memory. He reboots and introduces himself as "C-3PO, human-cyborg relations, who are you?" Babu introduces himself and Rey fixes the wheel on a robot found on Ochi's ship, a little cone head thing we don't learn the name of until about an hour later, "D-O."
At about this point, Rye realizes what's in orbit just over head, Kylo's flagship... And Chewbacca inside. The crew boards the ship to free Chewy and get the Falcon back, along the way, Rey mind tricks a couple of troopers, the crew shoots a few dead, and then she goes off on her own, trying to find something. Her scenes on the flagship are pretty awesome, as she enters Kylo Ren's quarters and starts not only talking to him again but also fights him. This leads to some very interesting cinematography, a fight where when they accidentally break things in their respective locations, they appear in front of the other, so for example, Kylo is in the streets of the city the crew was in, specifically a market in it. He cuts open a pot full of berries/nuts and they all appear on the ground in his chamber while Rey is fighting him. It's pretty impressive. During the fight we also learn A. the real reason Rey's parents sold her: Protecting her from her grandfather. B. Who this grandfather is. The Emperor. Rey is seriously Palpatine's granddaughter. C. Rey's parents died protecting her.
Kylo learns she's in his quarters when she accidentally destroys a podium, on which was resting Darth Vader's semi-melted helmet. From there, it all spirals out, Ren has them lock down the ship, Rey snags the dagger and Chewy's gear, Chewy, Finn, and Poe are caught, only to find out that general Hux is the spy who saves them When his motives are questioned, Hux says he doesn't care if the resistance wins. He wants Kylo to lose.
Rey and Kylo have one more confrontation before the falcon shows up and Rey literally leaps into space to get on the entrance to the falcon. Where Finn is. Audibly screaming at her. Y'all can say what you want about a downward bombing in space probably not working very well in Last Jedi, but this is a whole new level of bullshit. Rey leams OUT OF A RAY SHIELD into the vacuum of space. I don't care that Leia survived being out way longer in TLJ, at least she wasn't audibly saying things as she went, at least it felt like she was in space instead of just a big random fall. Also worth noting, to ver their escape, they blast the bad guys with the Falcon's engine trails, this burns or knocks back all the Troopers but Kylo, who is standing roughly the same distance as at least two of them, and Rey, who is closer than ANY of them are unaffected. This one moment is more agitating to me than most of The Last Jedi, honestly. There's Wardian grade plot armor, and then there's this.
The crew gets away and Hux is killed by another general because he figured out that Hux was the spy, they end up at another planet because of the inscription and the Falcon crashes, drawing the attention of "Jannah" and her random tribe of people. They resolve to fix the Falcon while waiting for the water to calm, something they at once have zero choice or time for. Turns out the Sith Wayfinder is on a hunk of the second Deathstar. Rant to come. While waiting for the water to calm and repairing the Falcon, we learn Janna is a rogue Storm Trooper, just like Finn. Her entire company was meant to open fire on civilians, but ALL OF THEM refused. Finn mentions he didn't think there were others but I have to question where Jannah's entire unit gets off doing that. How did all of them fight their programming? Moving on, BB8 raises a concern, he hasn't seen Rey in a while. Turns out she stole the rogue trooper's sea skimmer and rides the waves JUST right, so she can make it to the chunk of Deathstar. I was never big into the idea that Rey was a Mary Sue until this happened. I was willing to write everything else off up to this point but NO. She has NEVER used something like this. She spent most of her damn life on a planet with NO water and no point actually drove anything like this save for the land boat she stole from the natives during the festival but even then, it didn't have the quirks this thing had (It's a repurposed ship of some sort, she needs to constantly raise and lower an arm of the ship to reduce drag, I suppose.) I know this seems like the most random thing to officially stand in that camp, but what's that old saying about straws and camel's backs?
Rey goes to the shard of the Deathstar and starts exploring, it's full of old classic Storm Trooper outfits, mostly helmets. She goes to the Emperor's old throne room and through an old door, she ends up in a kind of trippy, maze-like space until she finds the Wayfinder and faces a seemingly Sithified version of herself with a dark robe and a collapsable double-sided lightsaber. This version of her fights her for all of four seconds and is never seen again because normal Rey flees out of the room and into Kylo Ren's waiting gaze. Now, my question is WHY would Palpatine keep one of these things on the Deathstar 2? In case he wanted to go to Exegol? Why not keep it in a more remote location than about thirty feet to your left? It's an ancient Sith artifact, you'd figure he'd be more protective of it. But nooo. So Kylo breaks the Wayfinder Rey found, wasting all of our time, before engaging in a lightsaber fight on the outside of the ruins. Finn and Jannah catch up to see this but can't do anything, partly because if they don't hug the ground, the turbulent water below will likely send a wave up just high enough to knock them into the ocean, Rey and Kylo, however, are clear I guess because they have higher ground away from the tides, they still get sprayed a lot. The fight ends with Leia dying from using what's left of her energy to reach her son, Rey stabbing and then healing Kylo before she leaves in his ship.
The crew, save for Rey, and Jannah's rogues join up with the rest of the resistance where they find out what happened, and Chewbacca loses it. The Wookie collapses to his knees and starts screaming and wailing, beating into the ground, etc. He's lost all his human friend, 3PO's mind is wiped, the thing left from the good old days is R2 and the Falcon. This is a genuinely harrowing moment for longtime fans, I think. Meanwhile, Rose Tico shows up for the second time this entire movie, the first time being her explaining why she can't go with, she has lines that could have been given to almost any rando in the resistance which is honestly a shame.
Then we cut to Ahch-To, The planet Luke exiled himself to in Force Awakens and TLJ, to find Rey burning Kylo's ship and very nearly, Luke's lightsaber. Luke's ghost shows up, catching the saber, and giving her a pep talk, telling her he knows now that exiling himself was stupid and that she needs to face the darkness in herself and the galaxy head-on. That delusion she saw getting her Wayfinder wasn't the first, she's seen herself ruling at Kylo's side as the empress, but given Luke's Pep talk, him showing her a spare lightsaber that used to belong to Leia, and the fact that Kylo had HIS Wayfinder in his spare ship, Rey agrees to continue fighting the good fight. But how will she leave the planet? Luke's force ghost raises Red five from the ocean. I'm not kidding, he literally just force lifts it with some show-offy joy. That thing has been waterlogged for how long? Even assuming Rey could fix it, where the hell is she getting fuel for it?
Back with Kylo, we see him gawking out over the sea, a familiar old voice starts talking to him. Han Solo's ghost shows up and they start having a heart to heart oddly reminiscent of the one they had in Force Awakens. Han says he knew his son was in there somewhere, and when Ren says "Your son is dead" Han says "No, Kylo Ren is." In that spirit, I will now refer to Kylo as "Ben" for the rest of the review. Ben throws his lightsaber into the ocean and is left to his own devices by his dad's ghost.
The resistance somehow knows that there are radio towers on Exegol that help the ships navigate through the constant storms and rain, Poe and Finn organize a plan, to distract the ships while a ground force attacks the tower and Chewbacca will go off and send another distress signal, allowing others to join the battle if they can. They come up with this because D-O has the plans for the ships and the like stored in his head if memory serves, and also 3PO gets his memory back, R2 had a back up, wouldn't you know it? The Resistance charges into battle against the Final Order over Exegol, And thus begins a fun clusterfuck of lasers and explosions. As one expects from this trilogy.
Now, the first order has this actually brilliant moment when they realize they can shut down the tower, and start broadcasting the same helpful signals from one of the ships themselves. Which they do, this allows them to down some Resistance ships before Finn sees what's happening and has them do a ground invasion style attack ON that ship. As in they deploy troops over the top of it ON HORSEBACK. Honestly one of those things that's so loveably stupid. They end up in conflict with a bunch of troopers on top of the ship as they look for weak spots to plant bombs or the like.
Rey, meanwhile, has snuck into the Emperor's hiding place, just as Ben lands on the planet. There's a lot of running around on all sides, dogfights under and around the larger ships, Ben fighting knights of Ren with just his bare hands and the Force, Rey being lured into Palpatine's grasp, Finn and Jannah's group shooting at troopers and passing ships as they look for weak spots. It would have all been fairly tense if the editing wasn't done by a coked-up squirrel. Almost nothing feels impactful in the fights, there are too many cuts in scenes largely about singular or just two characters. There are good elements to all this but I didn't care enough about most of these people. for it to mean much.
Also worth noting: not much can be done. They've already lost so many pilots, soldiers, and fighters, Finn and Jannah's group haven't fulfilled their goal yet, Palpatine is giving Rey a very "Let the hate flow through you" speech about how it's all pointless and her friends are doomed, but if she kills him, and becomes the empress, the Final Order will be hers to control, she agrees for a moment, letting a bunch of the Knights of Ren and Palpatine begin ritual chanting as a horde of them look on, Poe is out of hope. Rey is about to give in and Ben is surrounded with no weapon. All hope is lost... Until Rey enters another sort of shat with Ben and gives him the lightsaber she was moments ago going to kill the Emperor with. Ben strikes down his aggressors and makes his way to Rey and the Emperor, they slaughter the knights in the immediate vicinity. While that's happening, an entire fleet of random people shows up to help the resistance. Zorri and Babu are right next to the Falcon, which contains not only Chewbacca but Lando. The fight begins anew as Finn and Jannah blow the antennae in the ship they're on and cripple the Final Order Fleet. Now all the Resistance has to do is blast the planet-killing lasers and the entire ship they're rigged up to will also be destroyed... Which makes some sense but is still a pretty massive design flaw.
Down with Rey, Ben, and Palpatine, the youngsters try to strike the Emperor down, only to basically have their life forces partly fed upon. Ben goes flying down a naturally formed cave shaft, presumably to his doom. Palpatine has regenerated from the life steal thing and sits on this massive stone Sith throne just under the battle in the sky, and in a moment so absurd I was dumbstruck when it happened, sends lightning up into the sky. A massive MASSIVE pillar of it, so massive that not only does it reach the sky, but when it does, it fans out and strikes dozens, if not hundreds, of resistance ships, taking them right out of the sky.
This guy is over a hundred years old, several of which he was DEAD for and for some reason now, he has power I would only be able to describe as "Godlike" for no damn reason. I forgot to mention earlier that he didn't live through being exploded in ep 6. He brought himself back to life somehow, just wrote it off as his access to the dark side. He still looked terrible though, like he was actually a corpse with rotten hands and pure white eyes and all that. But somehow, two random idiot children's life forces, nowhere near in their totality, are enough to rejuvenate him and give him power unseen by most of the deadliest Sith in all of Star Wars. Vader's apprentice from The Force Unleashed wasn't this fucking OP. The worst he did could be chalked up to gameplay, this one-man lightning storm bullshit is actually canon, though. So this creates a problem: How does Rey defeat someone with the power of a god on her own? She ignites Leia's old lightsaber from when Luke was training her and then redirects the Emperor's lightning back into his face, destroying his head. From there, the Final Order's fleet is destroyed and Finn and Jannah are rescued from a fiery death as the ship they're on starts crashing to the ground, I guess being the only surviving members of their attack squad.
Ben climbs out of the shaft and gives his life force to bring Rey back from the dead, they share a kiss and Ben dies, allowing Rey to flee in the Red Five, much to everyone's relief. There are celebrations and hints of things to come, including Lando taking Jannah with him on adventures through the stars, Rose hugging some dude who ISN'T Finn, much to Finn's annoyance, and Zorii and Poe exchanging wordless gestures.
The final scene is Rey going to the old Skywalker Moisture farm to burry Luke and Leia's lightsabers just outside the house. How she knew where the farm was or why she buries them is anyone's guess. She pulls out a new lightsaber, a Yellow one. Which... Okay, I guess but where did she get it? Did she make it? How? Where? Did she just find it somewhere? How? Where? But anyway, an old woman comes walking by and mentions that the hasn't been anyone at the farm in so long and asks Rey who she is. Rey says "My name is Rey." "Rey Who?" Luke and Leia's force ghosts appear and smile at Rey. She proudly announces that she is "Rey Skywalker." And her and BB8 watch the suns over Tatooine set. The end.
4. A Nitpick?
Some of these are just little things I couldn't find a good place to put elsewhere: In flashbacks, we see Luke training Leia a bit, in those scenes, her lightsaber is green. In the modern-day, for whatever reason, it's blue. I'm not sure if that's an oversight or not. Also worth asking: Where is Luke's personal saber? I did some research and he apparently reclaimed it at some point in the EU (Which is no longer canon) but even in Last Jedi, the last we see of it is him almost using it on a young Ben Solo. Where the hell did it go?
5. Conclusion
I see this movie has but it isn't enough to make up for how shoddy the overall product is. There are too many new characters to let even the pre-established ones breathe, let alone each other, the editing was total garbage to the point where I genuinely got a headache, the plot invalidates both episodes eight AND six, while itself being kind of terrible... Nothing can Star Wars for me. This movie certainly tried.
TL;DR: Do not watch this trash, I don't care if it's your first Star Wars film of if you're a long-time viewer, it isn't worth your time or money.
Merry Christmas, everyone, and a happy new year.
1. Technical aspects
The movie looks good for the most part. It's a lot of good CGI and descent puppetry, a lot of explosions, and a lot of color. All the places that the movie goes do feel genuinely unique to one another, so points there, I guess. But it has some serious issues with the editing. The editing is god awful for most of the movie, the camera flips around too much, I think. I don't want constant tracking shots but they keep jump-cutting all over rooms and very suddenly for scene transitions. There are a fair amount of wipes but only one scene transition actually stood out to me at the very start of the movie, everything else was kinda dull.
This has to be addressed, Carrie Fisher is still in this movie. What they did was cut snippets of her head out of unused footage from Force Awakens and Last Jedi, then put it relatively well over the face of a body double. This allows her to exist in the movie but it isn't good. From an ethical standpoint and from how it affects the flow of her scenes. Her tone of voice doesn't feel right for any of the scenes she's in and her answers to what people say are usually just kinda weird, as well as what people say whilst responding to her.
2. Acting and characters (very lite Spoilers)
The acting in the movie is okay generally. It's nothing to write home about though. It's solid and generally does the job but the characters themselves are a different story. One problem is that the movie introduces a shit ton of them, including but not limited too, (Spoiler warnings for this paragraph), Zorii Bliss, An old Spice running friend of Poe's who is trying to ape a Mandalorian (Like the society) vibe in the look of her outfit but doesn't do it well. Babu Frik, her tiny alien boss and a surprisingly tech-savvy little so-and-so. D-O, a small droid consisting of a cone head and a single wheel, voiced by JJ Abrahms. And Jannah, who like Finn, is a rogue Stormtrooper from the first order. Everyone and everything else introduced are just more generals for the "Final order" (A rebranding of the First Order) and a bunch of background aliens and stuff for the resistance.
The main problem with these characters is none of them have time to develop because of how many are introduced. They try with Zorii, bless them, but her scenes are too short so her character doesn't "Develop" it just starts at one point and changes at the drop of a hat. And the returning Characters honestly aren't handled great either. Rey is okay for the most part, but Finn contributed just about nothing, Poe wasn't worth much more than a ride between planets, Kylo Ren goes back to wearing his old helmet for some reason and again, seems to change without much provocation. Leia's death is weird and kinda pointless, although I'm happy they won't do what they did again. The only consistently good, solid characters in the movie were the droids (Especially C3PO) and Chewbacca. Characters with very few lines or who literally cannot speak. That's such a weird thing to say, honestly.
3. Plot and thoughts as we go (Heavy Spoilers)
A transmission has gone all across the galaxy, Emperor Palpatine lives. Kylo Ren is hunting for a "Sith Wayfinder" and Rey is training under Leia to become a better Jedi. Kylo finds the Wayfinder and goes to a sort of hidden Sith planet whereon he meets Palpatine, here it is revealed that Snoke was a clone made by Palpatine's servants, "The Nights of Ren" and that Palpatine was "Every voice Kylo heard in his head." (Not too subtle change into Darth Vader's voice as he speaks.) Kylo and Palpatine have a short exchange where the younger pledges both his and the First Order's services to him, in exchange, Palpatine will add a whole new fleet of Star Destroyers to them. Star Destroyers he literally just summons up from the ground. Hangar bay doors don't open, these things just slam up from the ground like titans of myth rising from ancient slumbers. And while that might sound cool, it comes with a lot of issues. For starters: Who made these things? The Knights of Ren? How old is that organization, then? How old are these ships? Why don't they have hangar doors overhead? Hell, we learn later that these things will bolster first Order forces by "Ten thousandfold." How many of these things are there? How many ships does the First Order (Now "The Final Order") have at this point?
Anyway, back with the resistance. After a cameo by the best fictional game in the series, Holochess, we find that they're getting information from an ally I never caught the name of, flanked by some sort of weird alien on the ship who's apparently on a first name basis with Finn and Poe. We also learn the Final Order has a spy and a decent chase scene ensues. All well and good, but all this and the conspicuous lack of porgs makes me wonder how much time has actually passed between this movie and Last Jedi. Especially when we cut back to Rey who is trying to hear the voices of past Jedi but just realizes she can't and immediately drops the meditation in favor of running a training course. She ends up getting distracted while running it and accidentally drops a tree on BB8. She says to Leia that she will one day earn the right to use Luke's lightsaber... But it broke in the last movie. Again, can we please get a time stamp?
Poe, Finn, Chewbacca, and their crew return, whereupon there's a kind of funny back and forth about what Rey did to BB8 and what Poe did to the Falcon during the chase. The highlight of which is "At least BB8 isn't on fire!" "What's left of him isn't!" During this breif stop, we learn that The Final Order is broadcasting their plans, in sixteen hours they will lay waste to entire worlds because as it turns out, the new ships that Palpatine gave them all have planet-destroying laser weapons on the bottom. A Fleet of Star Destroyers, each with Death Star-grade power. That's definitely upping the anti, I suppose. During this, we also learn that the "Wayfinder" Kylo went after is important because its the only way to find the planet Palpatine is holed up on, a world called "Exegol," you won't find it on any other maps. So the crew goes on a quest to find a man in service to the Sith, a bloke named "Ochi" who was last spotted on a planet called "Pasaana" because for some reason, Luke and Lando Calrissian were tracking him. The movie doesn't explain why they were after him, nor why they seemed to abandon the search. (Or when any of that happened, for that matter.)
Our heroes journey to Pasaana where, as it turns out, there's a festival happening. One that celebrates family and ancestry. Cue the best comic relief in the movie, C3PO, as when Poe expresses that he isn't psyched about working with a crowd of people all around him, C3PO expresses elation, "We are very lucky, it only comes once every Forty-Two years--" Etc. Honestly, C3PO is the best part of the movie.
As the resistance crew goes about the Festival, Rye gets a necklace from a local who asks for her family name, not just her given, but Rey just says she doens't have a family name. Kylo contacts Rey with their weird psychic bond they had in Last Jedi, and they have an interesting exchange about the last movie and her wanting to take his hand at the end but deciding against it, and how when he offers it this time, she will take it. He steals the necklace Rey got from off her throat because as established in TLJ, he can do stuff like that. He has Final Order members analyze the necklace and learns of the planet Rey and her cohorts are on while they gad about the festival looking for any sort of clues or leads. They end up getting found by Final Order Troopers, but saved by Lando, apparently, Leia told him where they were. They mention the resistance could use his help, but he just says that his flying days are behind him before he sends them off.
The gang is followed by Final Order troopers, resulting in a chase scene, one I quite like. The Final Order has jet troopers now, and the crew basically just have their sidearms as weapons, having stolen vehicles from the locals. It's a very intense action scene, even when the crew crashes into "Not-quite-quicksand." Everyone starts sinking in and Finn says he's always wanted to tell Rey something. What it is goes unanswered as he sinks down. The lot of them have fallen into a cavern of some sort.
They explore the cave until they find two things, Ochi's land cruiser, and Ochi, who as it turns out is long dead, nothing more than bones and whatever he had on him at the time. Rey digs through his body and finds a scary-looking dagger that has most definitely been used for some less than savory deeds, Rey sensing the negative force energy off it. 3PO tells them that the inscriptions all over the dagger are in Sith Runic. He CAN translate it, but he can't say it aloud. It has to do with Old Republic regulations on translation modules. They keep the dagger, at least. There's also a giant serpent, one the cast calm into letting Rey get close, whereupon we learn she has the ability to force-heal injuries. The snake lets them out and she explains that it's basically channeling some of her own life force into whatever she's healing, and when she sees Ochi's ship, she's unnerved. She knows it from the day her parents left her.
Some true madness begins to unfold as Kylo shows up in his ship and Rey cuts one of the wings off, forcing it to crash. Chewbacca is captured and ostensibly killed accidentally by Rey because she summons force lightning and blows his transport's engines. There's another brief exchange with Kylo about him seeing the lightning for real, thus her capacity for darkness, before Finn and Poe tell her they NEED to leave. They do and Kylo radios for pick up as the Final Order literally toes the Millenium Falcon into a Star Destroyer. It is here we learn that Kylo knows about the spy in their ranks and that Chewbacca survived. While they waddle about in Ochi's ship, thinking of a plan, C-3PO reveals that there IS a way to get a translation out of him. Essentially they need to do a factory reset. This means 3PO will lose all memories of his friends and life. But what is that compared to a galaxy dominated by fear?
Poe knows the man for the job, trouble is they need to go to a world called "Kijimi" where Poe made a booboo before joining the resistance. But again, literal planets worth of lives are at stake, so he swallows his lack of pride and they go. A not bad tracking shot of Poe creeping around the streets and finding it crawling with Final Order troopers later, his mistake comes up to him. Both her pistols drawn, and one to his head. We learn that "Zorii" and Poe's old outfit were spice runners, and their old friend "Babu Frik" is the guy they'll need to crack 3PO's head open. Babu only sees people who are part of the crew, which Poe no longer is. They eventually convince her and the other spice runners to let them in. There's a genuinely heart-wrenching moment where 3PO goes completely silent before the process gets going and he says he's just taking one last look at his friends.
Meanwhile, we see Poe and Zorii on top of a building, Poe mentions how no one came after the last movie, their distress call was for nothing. Way to invalidate the most controversial movie in the series, you dolts. Also, Zorii seems to have changed for no reason. She went from not wanting to look in Poe's general direction to inviting him out to her new life as a farmer on some rock at the fringes of the galaxy. Poe turns her down because he has a war to fight, whether or not he wins. She gives him a First Order Captain's badge, which would allow docking in any Final Order ship or planet because the rebranding is only so recent, I guess. C-3PO gets rebooted and the crew learns what the inscription on the dagger means, but again, the cost is 3PO's memory. He reboots and introduces himself as "C-3PO, human-cyborg relations, who are you?" Babu introduces himself and Rey fixes the wheel on a robot found on Ochi's ship, a little cone head thing we don't learn the name of until about an hour later, "D-O."
At about this point, Rye realizes what's in orbit just over head, Kylo's flagship... And Chewbacca inside. The crew boards the ship to free Chewy and get the Falcon back, along the way, Rey mind tricks a couple of troopers, the crew shoots a few dead, and then she goes off on her own, trying to find something. Her scenes on the flagship are pretty awesome, as she enters Kylo Ren's quarters and starts not only talking to him again but also fights him. This leads to some very interesting cinematography, a fight where when they accidentally break things in their respective locations, they appear in front of the other, so for example, Kylo is in the streets of the city the crew was in, specifically a market in it. He cuts open a pot full of berries/nuts and they all appear on the ground in his chamber while Rey is fighting him. It's pretty impressive. During the fight we also learn A. the real reason Rey's parents sold her: Protecting her from her grandfather. B. Who this grandfather is. The Emperor. Rey is seriously Palpatine's granddaughter. C. Rey's parents died protecting her.
Kylo learns she's in his quarters when she accidentally destroys a podium, on which was resting Darth Vader's semi-melted helmet. From there, it all spirals out, Ren has them lock down the ship, Rey snags the dagger and Chewy's gear, Chewy, Finn, and Poe are caught, only to find out that general Hux is the spy who saves them When his motives are questioned, Hux says he doesn't care if the resistance wins. He wants Kylo to lose.
Rey and Kylo have one more confrontation before the falcon shows up and Rey literally leaps into space to get on the entrance to the falcon. Where Finn is. Audibly screaming at her. Y'all can say what you want about a downward bombing in space probably not working very well in Last Jedi, but this is a whole new level of bullshit. Rey leams OUT OF A RAY SHIELD into the vacuum of space. I don't care that Leia survived being out way longer in TLJ, at least she wasn't audibly saying things as she went, at least it felt like she was in space instead of just a big random fall. Also worth noting, to ver their escape, they blast the bad guys with the Falcon's engine trails, this burns or knocks back all the Troopers but Kylo, who is standing roughly the same distance as at least two of them, and Rey, who is closer than ANY of them are unaffected. This one moment is more agitating to me than most of The Last Jedi, honestly. There's Wardian grade plot armor, and then there's this.
The crew gets away and Hux is killed by another general because he figured out that Hux was the spy, they end up at another planet because of the inscription and the Falcon crashes, drawing the attention of "Jannah" and her random tribe of people. They resolve to fix the Falcon while waiting for the water to calm, something they at once have zero choice or time for. Turns out the Sith Wayfinder is on a hunk of the second Deathstar. Rant to come. While waiting for the water to calm and repairing the Falcon, we learn Janna is a rogue Storm Trooper, just like Finn. Her entire company was meant to open fire on civilians, but ALL OF THEM refused. Finn mentions he didn't think there were others but I have to question where Jannah's entire unit gets off doing that. How did all of them fight their programming? Moving on, BB8 raises a concern, he hasn't seen Rey in a while. Turns out she stole the rogue trooper's sea skimmer and rides the waves JUST right, so she can make it to the chunk of Deathstar. I was never big into the idea that Rey was a Mary Sue until this happened. I was willing to write everything else off up to this point but NO. She has NEVER used something like this. She spent most of her damn life on a planet with NO water and no point actually drove anything like this save for the land boat she stole from the natives during the festival but even then, it didn't have the quirks this thing had (It's a repurposed ship of some sort, she needs to constantly raise and lower an arm of the ship to reduce drag, I suppose.) I know this seems like the most random thing to officially stand in that camp, but what's that old saying about straws and camel's backs?
Rey goes to the shard of the Deathstar and starts exploring, it's full of old classic Storm Trooper outfits, mostly helmets. She goes to the Emperor's old throne room and through an old door, she ends up in a kind of trippy, maze-like space until she finds the Wayfinder and faces a seemingly Sithified version of herself with a dark robe and a collapsable double-sided lightsaber. This version of her fights her for all of four seconds and is never seen again because normal Rey flees out of the room and into Kylo Ren's waiting gaze. Now, my question is WHY would Palpatine keep one of these things on the Deathstar 2? In case he wanted to go to Exegol? Why not keep it in a more remote location than about thirty feet to your left? It's an ancient Sith artifact, you'd figure he'd be more protective of it. But nooo. So Kylo breaks the Wayfinder Rey found, wasting all of our time, before engaging in a lightsaber fight on the outside of the ruins. Finn and Jannah catch up to see this but can't do anything, partly because if they don't hug the ground, the turbulent water below will likely send a wave up just high enough to knock them into the ocean, Rey and Kylo, however, are clear I guess because they have higher ground away from the tides, they still get sprayed a lot. The fight ends with Leia dying from using what's left of her energy to reach her son, Rey stabbing and then healing Kylo before she leaves in his ship.
The crew, save for Rey, and Jannah's rogues join up with the rest of the resistance where they find out what happened, and Chewbacca loses it. The Wookie collapses to his knees and starts screaming and wailing, beating into the ground, etc. He's lost all his human friend, 3PO's mind is wiped, the thing left from the good old days is R2 and the Falcon. This is a genuinely harrowing moment for longtime fans, I think. Meanwhile, Rose Tico shows up for the second time this entire movie, the first time being her explaining why she can't go with, she has lines that could have been given to almost any rando in the resistance which is honestly a shame.
Then we cut to Ahch-To, The planet Luke exiled himself to in Force Awakens and TLJ, to find Rey burning Kylo's ship and very nearly, Luke's lightsaber. Luke's ghost shows up, catching the saber, and giving her a pep talk, telling her he knows now that exiling himself was stupid and that she needs to face the darkness in herself and the galaxy head-on. That delusion she saw getting her Wayfinder wasn't the first, she's seen herself ruling at Kylo's side as the empress, but given Luke's Pep talk, him showing her a spare lightsaber that used to belong to Leia, and the fact that Kylo had HIS Wayfinder in his spare ship, Rey agrees to continue fighting the good fight. But how will she leave the planet? Luke's force ghost raises Red five from the ocean. I'm not kidding, he literally just force lifts it with some show-offy joy. That thing has been waterlogged for how long? Even assuming Rey could fix it, where the hell is she getting fuel for it?
Back with Kylo, we see him gawking out over the sea, a familiar old voice starts talking to him. Han Solo's ghost shows up and they start having a heart to heart oddly reminiscent of the one they had in Force Awakens. Han says he knew his son was in there somewhere, and when Ren says "Your son is dead" Han says "No, Kylo Ren is." In that spirit, I will now refer to Kylo as "Ben" for the rest of the review. Ben throws his lightsaber into the ocean and is left to his own devices by his dad's ghost.
The resistance somehow knows that there are radio towers on Exegol that help the ships navigate through the constant storms and rain, Poe and Finn organize a plan, to distract the ships while a ground force attacks the tower and Chewbacca will go off and send another distress signal, allowing others to join the battle if they can. They come up with this because D-O has the plans for the ships and the like stored in his head if memory serves, and also 3PO gets his memory back, R2 had a back up, wouldn't you know it? The Resistance charges into battle against the Final Order over Exegol, And thus begins a fun clusterfuck of lasers and explosions. As one expects from this trilogy.
Now, the first order has this actually brilliant moment when they realize they can shut down the tower, and start broadcasting the same helpful signals from one of the ships themselves. Which they do, this allows them to down some Resistance ships before Finn sees what's happening and has them do a ground invasion style attack ON that ship. As in they deploy troops over the top of it ON HORSEBACK. Honestly one of those things that's so loveably stupid. They end up in conflict with a bunch of troopers on top of the ship as they look for weak spots to plant bombs or the like.
Rey, meanwhile, has snuck into the Emperor's hiding place, just as Ben lands on the planet. There's a lot of running around on all sides, dogfights under and around the larger ships, Ben fighting knights of Ren with just his bare hands and the Force, Rey being lured into Palpatine's grasp, Finn and Jannah's group shooting at troopers and passing ships as they look for weak spots. It would have all been fairly tense if the editing wasn't done by a coked-up squirrel. Almost nothing feels impactful in the fights, there are too many cuts in scenes largely about singular or just two characters. There are good elements to all this but I didn't care enough about most of these people. for it to mean much.
Also worth noting: not much can be done. They've already lost so many pilots, soldiers, and fighters, Finn and Jannah's group haven't fulfilled their goal yet, Palpatine is giving Rey a very "Let the hate flow through you" speech about how it's all pointless and her friends are doomed, but if she kills him, and becomes the empress, the Final Order will be hers to control, she agrees for a moment, letting a bunch of the Knights of Ren and Palpatine begin ritual chanting as a horde of them look on, Poe is out of hope. Rey is about to give in and Ben is surrounded with no weapon. All hope is lost... Until Rey enters another sort of shat with Ben and gives him the lightsaber she was moments ago going to kill the Emperor with. Ben strikes down his aggressors and makes his way to Rey and the Emperor, they slaughter the knights in the immediate vicinity. While that's happening, an entire fleet of random people shows up to help the resistance. Zorri and Babu are right next to the Falcon, which contains not only Chewbacca but Lando. The fight begins anew as Finn and Jannah blow the antennae in the ship they're on and cripple the Final Order Fleet. Now all the Resistance has to do is blast the planet-killing lasers and the entire ship they're rigged up to will also be destroyed... Which makes some sense but is still a pretty massive design flaw.
Down with Rey, Ben, and Palpatine, the youngsters try to strike the Emperor down, only to basically have their life forces partly fed upon. Ben goes flying down a naturally formed cave shaft, presumably to his doom. Palpatine has regenerated from the life steal thing and sits on this massive stone Sith throne just under the battle in the sky, and in a moment so absurd I was dumbstruck when it happened, sends lightning up into the sky. A massive MASSIVE pillar of it, so massive that not only does it reach the sky, but when it does, it fans out and strikes dozens, if not hundreds, of resistance ships, taking them right out of the sky.
This guy is over a hundred years old, several of which he was DEAD for and for some reason now, he has power I would only be able to describe as "Godlike" for no damn reason. I forgot to mention earlier that he didn't live through being exploded in ep 6. He brought himself back to life somehow, just wrote it off as his access to the dark side. He still looked terrible though, like he was actually a corpse with rotten hands and pure white eyes and all that. But somehow, two random idiot children's life forces, nowhere near in their totality, are enough to rejuvenate him and give him power unseen by most of the deadliest Sith in all of Star Wars. Vader's apprentice from The Force Unleashed wasn't this fucking OP. The worst he did could be chalked up to gameplay, this one-man lightning storm bullshit is actually canon, though. So this creates a problem: How does Rey defeat someone with the power of a god on her own? She ignites Leia's old lightsaber from when Luke was training her and then redirects the Emperor's lightning back into his face, destroying his head. From there, the Final Order's fleet is destroyed and Finn and Jannah are rescued from a fiery death as the ship they're on starts crashing to the ground, I guess being the only surviving members of their attack squad.
Ben climbs out of the shaft and gives his life force to bring Rey back from the dead, they share a kiss and Ben dies, allowing Rey to flee in the Red Five, much to everyone's relief. There are celebrations and hints of things to come, including Lando taking Jannah with him on adventures through the stars, Rose hugging some dude who ISN'T Finn, much to Finn's annoyance, and Zorii and Poe exchanging wordless gestures.
The final scene is Rey going to the old Skywalker Moisture farm to burry Luke and Leia's lightsabers just outside the house. How she knew where the farm was or why she buries them is anyone's guess. She pulls out a new lightsaber, a Yellow one. Which... Okay, I guess but where did she get it? Did she make it? How? Where? Did she just find it somewhere? How? Where? But anyway, an old woman comes walking by and mentions that the hasn't been anyone at the farm in so long and asks Rey who she is. Rey says "My name is Rey." "Rey Who?" Luke and Leia's force ghosts appear and smile at Rey. She proudly announces that she is "Rey Skywalker." And her and BB8 watch the suns over Tatooine set. The end.
4. A Nitpick?
Some of these are just little things I couldn't find a good place to put elsewhere: In flashbacks, we see Luke training Leia a bit, in those scenes, her lightsaber is green. In the modern-day, for whatever reason, it's blue. I'm not sure if that's an oversight or not. Also worth asking: Where is Luke's personal saber? I did some research and he apparently reclaimed it at some point in the EU (Which is no longer canon) but even in Last Jedi, the last we see of it is him almost using it on a young Ben Solo. Where the hell did it go?
5. Conclusion
I see this movie has but it isn't enough to make up for how shoddy the overall product is. There are too many new characters to let even the pre-established ones breathe, let alone each other, the editing was total garbage to the point where I genuinely got a headache, the plot invalidates both episodes eight AND six, while itself being kind of terrible... Nothing can Star Wars for me. This movie certainly tried.
TL;DR: Do not watch this trash, I don't care if it's your first Star Wars film of if you're a long-time viewer, it isn't worth your time or money.
Merry Christmas, everyone, and a happy new year.
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I grew up watching Power Rangers. I loved watching as the monster of the week got its keester kicked by the ever-changing suited up heroes of the year. There are so many memorable characters, fights, monsters, big bosses, locations, weapons, and giant robots that if you approached me with a contract to make a Power Rangers fighting game, I wouldn't know where to start as far as roster and the like, the obvious being "Mighty Morphin'" 1993/2017, So why then do we have only nine characters and five maps on the console game of this IP made by people who previously brought us a mobile game with far more variation on both fronts?
I want to stress that Battle for the Grid is, at the time of writing, a new release on PS4. I am NOT talking about features, characters, skins, etc. that it may or may not have in a week, a month, or a year from its PS4 launch. This is the launch. As such, NO, I don't care for whatever BS N Way trots out after the fact, at the end of the season I'll revisit and make a second review but until then, please, don't bring it up because I do not care.
I also bought this game with my own money. I Pre-ordered the collector's edition, so I really do like to think I have some authority when I speak. Let's get on with this review.
1. Story
There isn't one. At Launch there's an "Arcade" mode that pretends for the last round or two to actually have a story, usually the second-to-last boss is Goldar flanked by a Mastodon Sentry, and then depending on who you play, the last mission has some dynamic stuff to it, namely whether or not you fight either Ranger Slayer (We'll get to it) And a Mastadon Sentry, usually followed by Lord Drakkon, or MMPR Pink and Red, sometimes followed by Green. Usually, there are Dialogue balloons before and after these fights to tell you why your chosen character is fighting who they're fighting, But that's only ever in the last two fights and sometimes it's completely nonsesnsical. Everything else is contextless brawls. In short: There's really nothing.
2. The Roster/maps
The Power Rangers Multiverse is filled to the absolute brim with memorably mad and awesome characters who can hold their own in a fight. Anubis Kruger, The Psycho Rangers, The original Mighty Morphin' cast, the guys from the 2017 movie. So forgive my somewhat agitated mood as I bring up the simple fact that the Roster we have for the potential of this license is inexcusably small and still somehow has filler characters. How does it do that? Well, let's dig in.
Jason Lee Scott, the MMPR Red Ranger. Solid if predictable pick.
Tommy Oliver, The MMPR Green Ranger. Also Solid but I think most fans still saw this one coming.
Gia Morgan, The Super Megaforce Yellow Ranger. I'm sorry what? I know she's the character from Megaforce everyone likes, But almost no one, if anyone, likes that season. So it's a moderately baffling pick.
Ranger Slayer(Kimberly Anne Hart/MMPR Pink), another somewhat strange choice. I KNOW the boom comics are a thing and that they're pretty big, But why isn't this character's base skin MMPR Pink? Pre-orders, I bet, because if you wanted to play as MMPR pink, you needed to pre-order.
Kat Manx, The SPD Kat Ranger, a form she appeared in once in her entire season. I'm not sure what the fan consensus is but I really do think this a slot filled by her specifically for gender balancing, insane as that might sound.
Magna Defender, I'm not sure if it's the original Magna Defender or Mike Corbett, the guy who took the title over because even his dialogue in his arcade mode is confusing, but honestly, he's one of the best possible picks from Lost Galaxy.
Lord Drakkon, Again, a fairly major antagonist from the comics, not a bad pick but I don't know why he's his own character and not just a skin for Tommy. You could have used this slot for say... Lord Zedd?
Goldar, Another kinda solid pick but the question of "Anyone else" immediately comes to mind again. If this was only MMPR, okay, but it isn't. I feel like he's only here to add a big beefcake because the game doesn't really have any, save for Magna Defender.
Mastodon Sentry, One of my favorites to play but fairly obviously filler for this Roster... at least he could be if they had more characters. And NOTHER Boom Studios comic pick. I feel like just about every other Ranger-related source got the shaft on this one.
The choices for the game's launch are generally just strange. While a lot of fighting games can get away with small rosters, that's usually because they have their own universe to build, hell the only fighting games I can think of that have rosters this size are early 90's ones like the original Mortal Kombat. The most recent one I can think of with a starting roster near this size was War of the monsters, which was more of a four-person Arena Brawler and still, through the use of really unique skins, made its own roster feel somehow larger, also worth pointing out: That game came out in 2003 for the Playstation 2. Rosters are significant parts of brawlers and fighters alike, and when you're using someone else's IP, one with slightly over two and a half decades of memorable characters, picking some of the least interesting and lesser known for the big console outing you've been put on is just head-tilting at best, ESPECIALLY when Power Rangers Legacy Wars, a mobile fighting game made by the same people, had more characters from a wider range of seasons and such at launch.
(Side tangent: How did they miss putting a blue ranger of any sort in? Like, of all colors, you forgot to put in a primary. Yeesh.)
And on that note, we NEED to talk about the levels on offer because quite often, those also contribute to what makes a fighting game memorable.
Zordon's Training Room: I.E. Nothing. It's just a standard "Training room map" with a couple of different textured tiles and a line across the floor for the X and Y axises of the map itself. There's nothing of note.
Harwood City: Which just appears to be a wrecked cityscape with an alien ship in the back. Even I didn't recognize the name and that's because it was the city from Mega Force. A city no one name-dropped once. Again, an odd choice because no one likes Mega Force.
Mystic Forrest: The Dev's took some real liberties with how things were laid out, but it's fairly obviously from Mystic Force. Which just makes me ask why they don't have a Mystic Force character or why it isn't the SPD Rec Room or something.
Lord Drakkon's Throne: An appropriate boss room, honestly. It's big, it's dark, broken power weapons are on pedestals, there's even a little gold morpher on the ground. I'm only pointing this out because it's really a "Huh, neat." moment when you see it and that's actually indicative of a much larger problem with the game. We'll get to it.
Command Center: A classic location with a cool Zordon effect in the background. The problem is that the layout and colors are all kinds of wrong, though that was most-likely for making the fights better looking.
And that's your lot. Again, N-Way has done better. In Legacy Wars, advancing in ranks unlocks new stages. Lord Zedd's throne room, The Shiba House from Samurai complete with Sakura trees and ranger helmet banners, or the Dino Lab From Dino Charge. Just backgrounds, maybe, but they gave a sense of progression as you moved through them, and in other fighting games, levels exist to prevent staleness from setting in.
The small roster and genuine lack of places to fight contribute to an overall feeling of constant "Seen it." Which makes the fights boring to watch... and to play. Almost like when a lot of Power Ranger crossover fights happened in quarries but far worse, because at the very least, there were significant roster changes when those happened.
3. Graphics
The Graphics of the game are fairly solid. I have no genuine complaints save for some background stuff looking a bit lower res than the fighters, or the odd bit of clipping when you hit assists and their leaders, but you don't tend to notice that unless you're watching like a hawk. All the visors, armor, and helmets are slick and shiny, the attacks look like there's a lot of energy just radiating off them, as they should, and no one has a face to fall into the uncanny valley with, save for Goldar but he's a monster and looks okay. Overall, the game looks solid as stone.
4. Gameplay
Now, why, in a fighting game, did I go through seemingly everything else first? Gameplay should come first. Logically, it should. But I wanted to get as much negative as possible out of the way. That's because the gameplay is Morphenominal. I'm serious. The system is brilliant, it's a logical evolution of the fighting in Legacy Wars and is more balanced with a console in mind. Let me explain:
In Legacy Wars, the Player characters are set up in the following way: one in the lead and two assists. Matches are fought with single button taps for attacks to be used, chaining hits is considered a combo. Assist characters and lead characters are different in both the pools they come from and abilities, and sometimes even factors like rarity and what kind of character they are (Defense, offense, and balance) are different. Assists only show up during the fight, attack once and retreat. All these factors make for a fast and somewhat frantic fighter. Now how is Battle for the Grid (BFG) different?
In BFG, the player characters have the character that starts the match and does the opening pose, the other two characters, who must be someone other than your first guy, start the match as assists and can be called upon to either do their assist attack or take over the fight for you. Now, why would you want to have them take over? In most fighting games, there is a sort of health bar regen system where, after being hit, the player can recover at least some of their health if untouched afterward, in this game, the recovery potential is ridiculous, but the only way the bar goes back up is if you swap to someone else and only use the character currently healing for assists, if you trade back, or are forced to do so, you lose all that potential recovered health. This makes the whole thing a six-man tag match of unparalleled epicness. The game brings to mind Marvel Vs. Capcom in all the right ways, given the fast, fluid, easy to pick up but middling to master fighting and makes me feel like I'm using a (Somewhat rag-tag) team of warriors.
Another little thing I like is that by default, everyone's inputs for specials and basic attacks are the same but what they do is different. For example, when playing the Mastodon sentry, Pressing "X" makes him fire his gun. It's pretty instant. When Playing Tommy Oliver, the MMPR Green Ranger, He charges up a random Hadooken like Ryu from Street Fighter. Stuff like that might come out of nowhere from the perspective of a power rangers fan, but it's liberties taken to make the fighting in the game work properly. No one has unique inputs but everyone has unique moves.
The real problem with this system and how the game plays, however, is the small roster. With only Nine characters at launch and this whole three v three system, it's pretty easy to see every combination of characters and fight in every environment right away, making the game staler quicker. The Roster is such a problem that it undercuts one of the most novel approaches to fighting games that I've ever played. For the love of the Omnissiah, people!
It's also fairly easy to back another player into a corner and just beat on them. It happens enough that I felt the need to mention it, but with a bit of button mashing when trapped, you can also break that cycle. Good luck staying out of it though.
Something else worth pointing out: There is zero sense of progression. None. Because everything unique you could have got at launch was through pre-orders that the devs screwed up partially so started giving away two of them for completely free. Again, going back to legacy wars, you build up an army of legendary and interesting characters to pick from and fight with, in this game? All nine characters are unlocked from the word "Go." along with all five maps and the only alt skins to get were/are the pre-order ones.
5. Conclusion
For every little detail this game adds, neat alt skins, the Morpher on the ground in Drakkon's throne room, the fighting systems, it does something else that massively undercuts whatever goodwill I get going for it. The fact that those skins are pre-order only, the lack-luster (at best) narratives, The tiny roster and map select, etc.
I want to say I love this game but I can't recommend a buy in its current state. It's either a rush job, even for a budget title, or a somewhat lazy cash grab, but given the dev's history, the latter seems considerably less likely. All I know is that between the limited roster, small map pool, janky and nonsensical narratives, etc, N-Way has something of a black mark on their record as a dev in my opinion. I hope more comes from this game, but honestly? It's just so it will feel like a full one.
In short: "Wait to buy this game." -A quote from myself I cannot stress enough.
I want to stress that Battle for the Grid is, at the time of writing, a new release on PS4. I am NOT talking about features, characters, skins, etc. that it may or may not have in a week, a month, or a year from its PS4 launch. This is the launch. As such, NO, I don't care for whatever BS N Way trots out after the fact, at the end of the season I'll revisit and make a second review but until then, please, don't bring it up because I do not care.
I also bought this game with my own money. I Pre-ordered the collector's edition, so I really do like to think I have some authority when I speak. Let's get on with this review.
1. Story
There isn't one. At Launch there's an "Arcade" mode that pretends for the last round or two to actually have a story, usually the second-to-last boss is Goldar flanked by a Mastodon Sentry, and then depending on who you play, the last mission has some dynamic stuff to it, namely whether or not you fight either Ranger Slayer (We'll get to it) And a Mastadon Sentry, usually followed by Lord Drakkon, or MMPR Pink and Red, sometimes followed by Green. Usually, there are Dialogue balloons before and after these fights to tell you why your chosen character is fighting who they're fighting, But that's only ever in the last two fights and sometimes it's completely nonsesnsical. Everything else is contextless brawls. In short: There's really nothing.
2. The Roster/maps
The Power Rangers Multiverse is filled to the absolute brim with memorably mad and awesome characters who can hold their own in a fight. Anubis Kruger, The Psycho Rangers, The original Mighty Morphin' cast, the guys from the 2017 movie. So forgive my somewhat agitated mood as I bring up the simple fact that the Roster we have for the potential of this license is inexcusably small and still somehow has filler characters. How does it do that? Well, let's dig in.
Jason Lee Scott, the MMPR Red Ranger. Solid if predictable pick.
Tommy Oliver, The MMPR Green Ranger. Also Solid but I think most fans still saw this one coming.
Gia Morgan, The Super Megaforce Yellow Ranger. I'm sorry what? I know she's the character from Megaforce everyone likes, But almost no one, if anyone, likes that season. So it's a moderately baffling pick.
Ranger Slayer(Kimberly Anne Hart/MMPR Pink), another somewhat strange choice. I KNOW the boom comics are a thing and that they're pretty big, But why isn't this character's base skin MMPR Pink? Pre-orders, I bet, because if you wanted to play as MMPR pink, you needed to pre-order.
Kat Manx, The SPD Kat Ranger, a form she appeared in once in her entire season. I'm not sure what the fan consensus is but I really do think this a slot filled by her specifically for gender balancing, insane as that might sound.
Magna Defender, I'm not sure if it's the original Magna Defender or Mike Corbett, the guy who took the title over because even his dialogue in his arcade mode is confusing, but honestly, he's one of the best possible picks from Lost Galaxy.
Lord Drakkon, Again, a fairly major antagonist from the comics, not a bad pick but I don't know why he's his own character and not just a skin for Tommy. You could have used this slot for say... Lord Zedd?
Goldar, Another kinda solid pick but the question of "Anyone else" immediately comes to mind again. If this was only MMPR, okay, but it isn't. I feel like he's only here to add a big beefcake because the game doesn't really have any, save for Magna Defender.
Mastodon Sentry, One of my favorites to play but fairly obviously filler for this Roster... at least he could be if they had more characters. And NOTHER Boom Studios comic pick. I feel like just about every other Ranger-related source got the shaft on this one.
The choices for the game's launch are generally just strange. While a lot of fighting games can get away with small rosters, that's usually because they have their own universe to build, hell the only fighting games I can think of that have rosters this size are early 90's ones like the original Mortal Kombat. The most recent one I can think of with a starting roster near this size was War of the monsters, which was more of a four-person Arena Brawler and still, through the use of really unique skins, made its own roster feel somehow larger, also worth pointing out: That game came out in 2003 for the Playstation 2. Rosters are significant parts of brawlers and fighters alike, and when you're using someone else's IP, one with slightly over two and a half decades of memorable characters, picking some of the least interesting and lesser known for the big console outing you've been put on is just head-tilting at best, ESPECIALLY when Power Rangers Legacy Wars, a mobile fighting game made by the same people, had more characters from a wider range of seasons and such at launch.
(Side tangent: How did they miss putting a blue ranger of any sort in? Like, of all colors, you forgot to put in a primary. Yeesh.)
And on that note, we NEED to talk about the levels on offer because quite often, those also contribute to what makes a fighting game memorable.
Zordon's Training Room: I.E. Nothing. It's just a standard "Training room map" with a couple of different textured tiles and a line across the floor for the X and Y axises of the map itself. There's nothing of note.
Harwood City: Which just appears to be a wrecked cityscape with an alien ship in the back. Even I didn't recognize the name and that's because it was the city from Mega Force. A city no one name-dropped once. Again, an odd choice because no one likes Mega Force.
Mystic Forrest: The Dev's took some real liberties with how things were laid out, but it's fairly obviously from Mystic Force. Which just makes me ask why they don't have a Mystic Force character or why it isn't the SPD Rec Room or something.
Lord Drakkon's Throne: An appropriate boss room, honestly. It's big, it's dark, broken power weapons are on pedestals, there's even a little gold morpher on the ground. I'm only pointing this out because it's really a "Huh, neat." moment when you see it and that's actually indicative of a much larger problem with the game. We'll get to it.
Command Center: A classic location with a cool Zordon effect in the background. The problem is that the layout and colors are all kinds of wrong, though that was most-likely for making the fights better looking.
And that's your lot. Again, N-Way has done better. In Legacy Wars, advancing in ranks unlocks new stages. Lord Zedd's throne room, The Shiba House from Samurai complete with Sakura trees and ranger helmet banners, or the Dino Lab From Dino Charge. Just backgrounds, maybe, but they gave a sense of progression as you moved through them, and in other fighting games, levels exist to prevent staleness from setting in.
The small roster and genuine lack of places to fight contribute to an overall feeling of constant "Seen it." Which makes the fights boring to watch... and to play. Almost like when a lot of Power Ranger crossover fights happened in quarries but far worse, because at the very least, there were significant roster changes when those happened.
3. Graphics
The Graphics of the game are fairly solid. I have no genuine complaints save for some background stuff looking a bit lower res than the fighters, or the odd bit of clipping when you hit assists and their leaders, but you don't tend to notice that unless you're watching like a hawk. All the visors, armor, and helmets are slick and shiny, the attacks look like there's a lot of energy just radiating off them, as they should, and no one has a face to fall into the uncanny valley with, save for Goldar but he's a monster and looks okay. Overall, the game looks solid as stone.
4. Gameplay
Now, why, in a fighting game, did I go through seemingly everything else first? Gameplay should come first. Logically, it should. But I wanted to get as much negative as possible out of the way. That's because the gameplay is Morphenominal. I'm serious. The system is brilliant, it's a logical evolution of the fighting in Legacy Wars and is more balanced with a console in mind. Let me explain:
In Legacy Wars, the Player characters are set up in the following way: one in the lead and two assists. Matches are fought with single button taps for attacks to be used, chaining hits is considered a combo. Assist characters and lead characters are different in both the pools they come from and abilities, and sometimes even factors like rarity and what kind of character they are (Defense, offense, and balance) are different. Assists only show up during the fight, attack once and retreat. All these factors make for a fast and somewhat frantic fighter. Now how is Battle for the Grid (BFG) different?
In BFG, the player characters have the character that starts the match and does the opening pose, the other two characters, who must be someone other than your first guy, start the match as assists and can be called upon to either do their assist attack or take over the fight for you. Now, why would you want to have them take over? In most fighting games, there is a sort of health bar regen system where, after being hit, the player can recover at least some of their health if untouched afterward, in this game, the recovery potential is ridiculous, but the only way the bar goes back up is if you swap to someone else and only use the character currently healing for assists, if you trade back, or are forced to do so, you lose all that potential recovered health. This makes the whole thing a six-man tag match of unparalleled epicness. The game brings to mind Marvel Vs. Capcom in all the right ways, given the fast, fluid, easy to pick up but middling to master fighting and makes me feel like I'm using a (Somewhat rag-tag) team of warriors.
Another little thing I like is that by default, everyone's inputs for specials and basic attacks are the same but what they do is different. For example, when playing the Mastodon sentry, Pressing "X" makes him fire his gun. It's pretty instant. When Playing Tommy Oliver, the MMPR Green Ranger, He charges up a random Hadooken like Ryu from Street Fighter. Stuff like that might come out of nowhere from the perspective of a power rangers fan, but it's liberties taken to make the fighting in the game work properly. No one has unique inputs but everyone has unique moves.
The real problem with this system and how the game plays, however, is the small roster. With only Nine characters at launch and this whole three v three system, it's pretty easy to see every combination of characters and fight in every environment right away, making the game staler quicker. The Roster is such a problem that it undercuts one of the most novel approaches to fighting games that I've ever played. For the love of the Omnissiah, people!
It's also fairly easy to back another player into a corner and just beat on them. It happens enough that I felt the need to mention it, but with a bit of button mashing when trapped, you can also break that cycle. Good luck staying out of it though.
Something else worth pointing out: There is zero sense of progression. None. Because everything unique you could have got at launch was through pre-orders that the devs screwed up partially so started giving away two of them for completely free. Again, going back to legacy wars, you build up an army of legendary and interesting characters to pick from and fight with, in this game? All nine characters are unlocked from the word "Go." along with all five maps and the only alt skins to get were/are the pre-order ones.
5. Conclusion
For every little detail this game adds, neat alt skins, the Morpher on the ground in Drakkon's throne room, the fighting systems, it does something else that massively undercuts whatever goodwill I get going for it. The fact that those skins are pre-order only, the lack-luster (at best) narratives, The tiny roster and map select, etc.
I want to say I love this game but I can't recommend a buy in its current state. It's either a rush job, even for a budget title, or a somewhat lazy cash grab, but given the dev's history, the latter seems considerably less likely. All I know is that between the limited roster, small map pool, janky and nonsensical narratives, etc, N-Way has something of a black mark on their record as a dev in my opinion. I hope more comes from this game, but honestly? It's just so it will feel like a full one.
In short: "Wait to buy this game." -A quote from myself I cannot stress enough.
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An adult team, but less "Nerds being rangers" and more "The power is granted to one dude who takes it seriously and four chuck wagons." There are no real fight scenes in this as it's just the Senshi BSing after work, but it's very much worth a watch.
Say it with me now: Kanpai Senshi, AFTER V!
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