Spoiler warning. If you haven’t seen Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, this will either tick you off or not make any sort of sense.
Star Wars Movies in Order from Least Favorite to Favorite
Jeremy Jahns asked that question. I answered it, but I’m not sure I answered the same as I’m going to here.
Revenge of the Sith, Attack of the Clones, The Last Jedi, The Phantom Menace, The Empire Strikes Back, A New Hope, The Rise of Skywalker, The Force Awakens, Return of the Jedi.
Comments about the order:
- Revenge of the Sith ended on a really dark note, and they missed a huge opportunity for Padme’s death. She just gave up felt like a lame excuse of a reason to off her.
- Attack of the Clones had some important plot development, but it also had a lot of political mumbo jumbo that stunk. I hate politics in real life… why would I want to watch it unfold in my fantasy?
- The Last Jedi had porgs, which were a huge redeeming value, but it felt like half a story.
- The Phantom Menace at least had a hugely awesome lightsaber battle and 20 minutes of awesome fighting at the end. I’m going to purposefully ignore the Gungan battle scene…that was the only unawesome part. Favorite moment is still the scaling of the palace walls with ascension guns.
- The Empire Strikes Back was awesome but ends on a really dark note. It doesn’t feel complete.
- A New Hope is classic Star Wars and a self-contained story.
- The Rise of Skywalker brings the story to a close. You can nitpick a lot of stuff, but it does a pretty good job of gathering all the flapping threads and tying them off.
- The Force Awakens has the advantage of being like A New Hope since it’s essentially that with a different cast. It breathes new life into the saga after a long, long time.
- Return of the Jedi was a fine end to the story. You could have stopped there with a “they lived happily ever after.”
Spoilers from Star Wars 9:
- Old school people took a backseat. Star Wars has always had a lot of characters. The old school ones were there for great cameos, but they didn’t fulfill much more of a role than that. I get it, the whole passing on the torch and so forth, but if you’re gonna have them present, you might as well make them a tad more integral.
- They didn’t end up doing much with the dynamics between Rey, Finn, and Poe. There was some bickering, but I expected more speeches. Rose shows up for a few scenes but very much in cameo mode. They started to have that go somewhere, but this movie, she was sidelined.
- Rey’s overpowered. It doesn’t bother me. It bothered me that her lightsabers were able to withstand that kind of lightning. It just wrecked a fleet…and now two puny lightsabers are okay? I’d have believed it more if it was just her…like the purity/goodness in her standing strong. I guess visually, it looks cooler with the lightsabers, but even if she did something to them to make it more powerful, it would have been a tad more believable. Scifi should break laws of physics where needed, but it should also strive to explain when it’s gonna go all rogue on us.
- The end makes me appreciate that fight scene in The Last Jedi a little more. I may actually enjoy TLJ a lot more now that I have the option of watching Ep IX soon thereafter. It might be nice to do the whole trilogy someday.
- I loved the fact that they made us think that Chewie died by Rey’s hand for a time. That was awesome. It’s a tad disturbing that once they learned it was a different transport, Rey turned 100% okay with it. Doesn’t change the fact that it still blew up and people died.
- I enjoyed the explanation for the connection between Ben and Rey. Finally, something made sense. Their ability to pass objects and affect things in each others’ surroundings was downright cool.
- Ben’s death was unnecessary. They passed life energy back and forth like a ping-pong ball in this movie. The snake healing part was awesome and panned out later. Rey stabbing then saving Ben made sense. Even him saving her made sense. Him dying for it doesn’t make sense. It’s not like he’s a threat to her power. If they didn’t go the whole YA romance thing. There’s a lot of room for them to have been allies, friends, maybe even lovers in time.
- Ben and Rey’s kiss was okay, but I also feel like the only reason for it was to make it YA friendly. I would have believed it more if it were on the forehead, like sibling love not romantic love. They were essentially functioning as a unit at the end, two halves of the same. I think that’s how it was explained anyway.
- Rey taking on the mantle of Skywalker at the end fits and is nostalgic for the audience, but it doesn’t make much sense from her point of view. Unless there was a lot in between that we didn’t see, like her essentially having a lot of heart-to-hearts with Leia and feeling like her daughter or something, I’m not getting a clearcut reason for her to do that. She has a name, albeit an infamous one. I guess that would be enough to legally change it, but she could also own it. Probably safer for her to be a Skywalker.
- The scenes with Rey’s parents drop a few thought bombs on the audience. Palpatine had a kid? Since when. I like the twist, but it’s very much got the feel of a hail mary thanks to a “shoot, we wrote ourselves into a corner” moment. Also, if Palpatine had those kind of resources, I don’t believe they wouldn’t have been able to find Rey as a kid. He pretty much could have just Force whammied his son and his son’s wife if he wanted to.
- Speaking of Force whammying, Palpatine’s also overpowered. Twice now (three times?), we get awesome fight scenes that end with the moral choice to stand for good and *POW*, bad guy pulls the gloves off and zaps the good guys. Game over. Until the power of love fights back.
Conclusion:
The Rise of Skywalker is certainly worth watching. It’s an entertaining battle of good vs. evil and a satisfying conclusion to the Disneyfied Star Wars trilogy.
Associate links to follow…
Note: I’m starting to use a few ad sites for audiobooks, so codes are disappearing quickly.
Available Audiobooks: I have free codes for almost everything. That will change very soon.
New Release: The Shadow Council Series 1: Money Makes it Deadlier – An FBI agent gets caught up in a robbery gone wrong.
Shadow Council Book 2: Revenge Makes it Sweeter – A midnight summons calls FBI Special Agent Megan Luchek into a fight for a young girl’s life.
Shadow Council Book 3: Christmas Makes it Chaos – The FBI agent gets a strange ally in the quest to prevent chaos from rocking a lot of people’s holiday season.
Shadow Council Book 4: Treachery Makes it Tense – The agent and the assassin have to team up if they want to survive.
Shadow Council is also available as a ~13 hr bundle.
The Collins Case – 2 FBI agents track down a kidnapped family. Kid friendly.
If fantasy’s more your thing, go Redeemer Chronicles. The first, Awakening, is available as an audiobook.
Ashlynn’s Dreams Shorts – a kid deals with her parents’ divorce, bullies, and the wonder of discovery.
Try The Dark Side of Science – Genetically altered kids fight for the right to live.
Beyond Broken Pencils – Contemporary literary tale of a school shooting. Ian unleashes his inner demons on his classmates and teachers…
Scratched Off – FBI agent vs a serial killer. When Sam Kerman sets out to hunt a serial killer, he has no idea how personal the case will become.
