Saturday, December 21, 2019

Ralph Breaks the Internet

Year 11, Day 355 - 12/21/19 - Movie #3,397

BEFORE: I don't know how else to describe my process for movie selection, other than to say that it's a bit like a jigsaw puzzle - when I start the year all the pieces are laid out in front of me (it's actually more confusing than a commercial jigsaw puzzle, because some of those pieces aren't going to fit at all, and belong to the NEXT puzzle, and some necessary pieces aren't even in the pile yet, but let's work with this metaphor, because it's all I have...).  I'll start with an important corner piece, as one should, and then the February romance chain is like a whole side piece that's already put together right out of the box, which is a big help.  Slowly over the spring and summer the puzzle comes together, and then once the October horror chain came into focus, I realized that I had a great view of what the final picture was going to be.  So I'm at the stage of the puzzle-solving where there are just four little holes left, and four pieces left to fit into them, and I can see exactly where everything needs to end up, I just have to go through the motions and fit them in, one by one.  Then next week I can step back and take a look at the whole puzzle and review that, just my way of saying, "Whoa, that was a lot of work, but it's done.  Now clear this puzzle out of here so I can start solving the next one."

I'm catching this film on Netflix in what I assume to be the end of its run there, for sure when that licensing term runs out this film will migrate over to Disney Plus - I was covered either way because I got my free year of that service starting in November, so I could catch "The Mandalorian" and those Marvel TV shows, assuming they get made and premiere early next year.

Anthony Daniels carries over from "Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker", to voice the same character, C3P0, in animated form here.


FOLLOW-UP TO: "Wreck-It Ralph" (Movie #1,609)

THE PLOT: Ralph and Vanellope, now friends, discover a wi-fi router in their arcade, leading them into a new adventure.

AFTER: I was apprehensive for a long time about watching this film, because of two scenes from the films preview (you may call it a "trailer", but really, it's a preview because it comes BEFORE the movie you paid to see, they no longer "trail" after.).  The first was the glimpse of Vanellope somehow ending up in a room containing all of the Disney princesses (more on that in just a bit) and the other was a scene with Ralph and Vanellope doing some kind of internet search for a place that's "super-intense and fun" on the internet, and being told that there's "EXACTLY one place to go for that", and that turns out to be Disney.com, of course.  By extension, I was therefore afraid that "Ralph Breaks the Internet" was just going to be one giant commercial for the Disney brand, and the story would therefore just be 90 minutes of Disney Corp metaphorically fellating itself in front of a captive audience.

Look, I get it, the internet is still like the Wild West in many ways, you can still say or do just about anything there without worrying about being fact-checked or held accountable, plus there's click-bait, spam, internet scams, phishing, identity theft, other forms of fraud, and that's not even taking into account the Dark Web or how few clicks you are from porn at any given moment.  And now we're going to set a KID'S MOVIE in that location?  And all at a time when we should be encouraging kids to spend LESS time on their devices, and not more?  Sure, by all means, let's sugar-coat the internet experience so kids can't wait to explore it, what a terrible idea.  Geezus, I set out to hold Disney to task in the last paragraph for claiming they were the only fun AND safe site on the web, and now I'm practically agreeing with them on that point in this one.

But wouldn't you know, that scene where Ralph and his little friend are told that there's "just one safe place to go on the internet" is no longer in the film, so I wonder what happened.  Was it a scene made just for the trailer?  Did someone realize that it sounded too much like self-promotion, and suggest that it be removed from the final film?  Or was it a simple editing thing, like they tried a couple different approaches for that scene and just landed on a different one for the final cut?   A glimpse at the "Trivia" Section on the film's IMDB page reveals that the original plan was to have this film's characters visit the web-site for the videogame "Disney Infinity" (I recall having to buy several Disney figures for my niece and nephew, which also unlocked characters for their copy of that game) but during production that game series was cancelled, so then changes had to be made to this film's script.

During the closing credits of the film, there's a scene where a little girl in a car is complaining to her mother about how the film they just saw didn't include one of the scenes from the internet trailer - so how's that for an in-joke?  Though I don't think little kids in car seats are usually that hyper-aware of every single shot seen in a promo clip, I thought that was just my childhood.  I think there was also a second scene from this film's preview, a discussion over whether Ralph would "wreck" the internet with his popularity as opposed to "breaking" it - that scene didn't make the final cut either, apparently.

But there are still all kinds of terrible ideas here, from telling kids that there IS such a thing as the dark web, implying that internet "likes" can somehow be converted to cold hard cash, and showing characters bidding on an eBay auction without understanding how money works.  (This could encourage kids to go there and bid ridiculous sums of money that they don't have for every little thing they want...)  And in many ways, this is still Disney Corp just showing off, since they have the legal rights to use all those princesses PLUS Marvel heroes PLUS Star Wars characters in the same film.  It feels a bit like Disney's version of "The Lego Movie", or perhaps "Ready Player One", which had everything from Mecha-Godzilla to the Iron Giant to the car from "Back to the Future" in it.  So really, Disney got scooped and was a little bit behind the curve on this one, since mega-franchise films with collections of characters from all over already existed.  (But then again, they released the first one of its kind, which was "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", back in 1988.)  Yeah, I kind of wish I could just watch a film and enjoy it for what it is, and not also try to figure out what its proper place is in the big pantheon of movies, but I guess that ship sailed long ago.

Still, I feel the need to try - because this SHOULD have just been the story about two video-game characters who leave their games, and their whole arcade, on a quest to find a replacement piece for a video-game console so that the "Sugar Rush" game won't be permanently unplugged, leaving its characters homeless.  Like the toys in the "Toy Story" franchise, Wreck-It Ralph and Vanellope are two characters who have to follow the rules, like they can only interact with each other and visit other video-games when the arcade is closed, and they can't ever let humans know that they have consciousness and free will and can DO things and FEEL emotions.  Because humans have not yet created A.I. life with those things, and suggesting that such things are possible would blow our little minds, or something.  But then once they leave the arcade and hit the internet, they start interacting with avatars, each one representing a human in the real world, and that's oddly a little too close to breaking the rules.  In the virtual world, however, it's almost like the video-game characters are the smart ones who learn how to manipulate the system, while the avatars represent the mindless humans (sheeple) who follow clickbait and distribute their likes willy-nilly and leave hurtful comments on videos.  This may be somewhat accurate, but it also hits way too close to home.

How come we've had the internet for 20 years and this is the FIRST studio film to use that word in a title?  Why is this the first major film set there, except for "The Emoji Movie"?  Why does it seem like the Disney storytellers only JUST learned about wi-fi and internet videos and memes - or is it the studio executives who've been using the interwebs as a promotional tool since day one, but never realized the storytelling potential of it?  For too many years the future has looked like "The Matrix" or more recently "Ready Player One", but did everyone forget that the virtual world of tomorrow starts with the online world of TODAY?  I've got so many questions...

But let's get back to those Disney princesses, because that seems to be why many people came here in the first place.  Even if we discount the dissonance of having native characters like Pocahontas and Moana, and also fairy-tale characters like Cinderella and Snow White (from when, medieval times?  The 1500's?) appearing in an internet-based setting, they've got all of these princesses in some kind of green room or holding room, just waiting to take place in some kind of "Which Disney Princess Are You Most Like?" quiz.  Umm, isn't there a fine line between being held prisoner in a castle tower, and being held virtually behind the scenes at Oh-My-Disney.com, just waiting for someone to click on some survey button?  That seems a little off message.  Plus, putting all the princesses together and poking fun at all the things these characters have in common just sort of highlights Disney's terrible track record dating back to the 1950's of showing women characters in peril, having been enslaved or charmed or kidnapped by witches, or worse, needing to be rescued by a stronger male prince character.  Yes, times have been changing, and they're shown here taking actions and helping to save Ralph when he falls from a great height, but to me they're still reminders of a less enlightened time, when gender roles in fairy tales had much more disparity.  "Mulan" and "Brave" and even "Tangled" were steps in the right direction, but "Sleeping Beauty", "Snow White" and "The Little Mermaid" all need to be updated for modern sensibilities.  Leaning on the history of princesses here for the sake of a joke doesn't really accomplish much in that regard.

Fix-It Felix and Calhoun are a great couple - though they seem mismatched, they found a way to make it work, even though she's the tough one, the fighter, and he's the soft one, the builder, the nurturer.  They adopt several homeless racer children in this film, and I wish we could have seen more of their home life, but that sub-plot was also jettisoned due to time constraints.  But then the characters say they're going to reveal their advice for perfect parenting, only twice a series of racecars speed by and (intentionally, on the part of the filmmakers) makes their advice impossible for the audience to hear.  What a cop-out.  OK, maybe there is no magical advice on how to be a perfect parent, but then don't TELL ME that there is, and essentially bleep it.  It's damn near cowardly.

The only message left that's worth a darn, therefore, is the same one that came from the ending of "Toy Story 4", which is that sometimes you have to say goodbye to a close friend, because you just have different dreams.  (Parents, you can at least use this when you have to tell your kids that you're getting divorced, plus don't forget to mention to your kids that they'll have TWO Christmases from now on...). I've already seen Woody and Buzz Lightyear go their separate ways this year, because Woody reunited with Bo-Peep and found a new mission to help lost toys find new owners - and now Vanellope got bored with "Sugar Rush" and has moved on to a new game called "Slaughter Race", (which I thought was based on "Grand Theft Auto", but I guess is really more based on "Twisted Metal").  But even this was a bit confusing - she left one console game, traveled to the internet, and ended up finding a new home in a different video-game?  Is that an online game, or is she living in a new arcade somewhere else?  It's a bit unclear.  Here I suspect the screenwriter doesn't know the difference between an arcade game, a home video-game, and an MMO game.

What I mean to say is, Vanellope is a console game character - she's like 8-bit, or maybe 16.  Her old arcade game probably isn't even 3-D, and yet she goes from there to racing in a huge online game created years later, with VR players connecting from all over, full 3-D, greater resolution - and there are NO conversion issues with her entering that world?  Meanwhile, I couldn't play old Mac games like "At the Carnival" or "3 in Three" for about 10 years because Mac created a new OS at some point that didn't recognize the old software.  I just recently got new versions of those games after somebody created a patch, but that's the kind of thing that SHOULDN'T HAPPEN.  Sony also promised that every version of the PlayStation would be able to play the all games from the previous consoles, but that promise got broken when the PS 3 wouldn't play PS1 or PS2 games. Yeah, I'm still not over it.

Also starring the voices of John C. Reilly (last seen in "The Sisters Brothers"), Sarah Silverman (last seen in "The Last Laugh"), Gal Gadot (last seen in "Justice League"), Taraji P. Henson (last seen in "Top Five"), Jack McBrayer (last seen in "Movie 43"), Jane Lynch (last seen in "Mascots"), Alan Tudyk (last seen in "Welcome to Me"), Alfred Molina (last seen in "The Front Runner"), Ed O'Neill (last heard in "Finding Dory"), Bill Hader (last heard in "Toy Story 4"), Melissa Villasenor (ditto), June Squibb (ditto), John DiMaggio (last heard in "Zootopia"), Fuchsia! (ditto), Katie Lowes (ditto), Della Saba (ditto), Phil Johnston (ditto), Rich Moore (ditto), Sean Giambrone (last heard in "The Emoji Movie"), Flula Borg (last seen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip"), Timothy Simons (last seen in "The Boss"), Ali Wong (last seen in "The Hero"), Hamish Blake, GloZell Green (last heard in "Trolls"), Rebecca Wisocky (last seen in "Hello, My Name Is Doris"), Sam Richardson (last seen in "Game Over, Man!"), Jaboukie Young-White (last seen in "Rough Night"), Maurice LaMarche (last seen in "Ghostheads"), Jamie Elman (last heard in "Wreck-It Ralph"), Horatio Sanz (last seen in "Lucky You"), Alex Moffat, Michaela Zee, Roger Craig Smith (last heard in "Planes"), Ana Ortiz, Dianna Agron, Colleen Ballinger, Dani Fernandez, Tiffany Herrera, with vocal cameos from Tim Allen (also last heard in "Toy Story 4"), Corey Burton, Adam Carolla (also last heard in "Wreck-It Ralph"), Vin Diesel (last heard in "Avengers: Endgame"), Brad Garrett (last seen in "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work"), Jason Mantzoukas (last seen in "Adult Beginners"), Kristen Bell (also last seen in "The Boss"), Jodi Benson (last heard in "Thumbelina"), Auli'i Cravalho (last heard in "Moana"), Nicole Scherzinger (ditto), Jennifer Hale (also carrying over from "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"), Kate Higgins (last heard in "Norm of the North"), Linda Larkin, Kelly Macdonald (last seen in "Special Correspondents"), Idina Menzel (last heard in "Frozen"), Mandy Moore (last seen in "American Dreamz"), Paige O'Hara (last seen in "Enchanted"), Pamela Ribon, Anika Noni Rose (last heard in "The Princess and the Frog"), Ming-Na Wen (last heard in "Mulan 2").

RATING: 6 out of 10 pop-up ads

Friday, December 20, 2019

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Year 11, Day 354 - 12/20/19 - Movie #3,396

BEFORE: If you've read my blog for any length of time, then you know the "Star Wars" saga is a driving force, no pun intended.  It's what keeps me going - it's what got me interested in filmmaking as a career, and for the last 40 years it's brought me (mostly) joy and sparked countless conversations and debates with fellow fans all over the damn place.  I've collected well over a hundred autographs from the actors in the saga and interacted in person with, well, let's say a couple dozen of them.  So this is big big BIG when the "last" Star Wars film hits the screen, at least until they reboot the franchise or start up another round of sequels about five years down the road.

First off, let's catch up because it's been a while since I last rapped at ya.  My last post was dated November 7, which was over a month ago as I write this intro (on December 9) and by the time December 20 gets here, that will mark 43 days since I last watched a movie.  As I've said before, watching 295 movies in a little over 300 days is fairly easy for me - it's NOT watching any movies for over a month that's the tough part.  But I've tried to keep busy - I made myself a list of things to do, like re-organizing the comic book collection, captioning my vacation photos, and I've got it all done except for sending out Christmas cards with my annual mix CD, and then the Christmas shopping itself.  Yeah, I've got 11 days left before "Star Wars" so I'd better get on that ASAP.  I'm using Episode 9 as the motivator to get the Christmas presents bought, and if I don't do the task, then I don't deserve the prize.

But it's hard to find motivation when I'm not in the mood - we had to say goodbye to our oldest cat, Data, who was at least 15 years old (he was a stray so we count from when we took him indoors) and while we were consoled by reminding each other that he had a darn good life, and probably lived a lot longer than he would have if we hadn't taken him in, that didn't make driving him to the vet that last time any easier.  I'll probably have more to say about Data in my first post of 2020, especially if I dedicate next year's musings to him - he had been watching nearly every movie with me since I started this project.  (I won't say he understood them, but he joined me to watch them, even if he usually fell asleep during them.)

So that's one reason that's it been tough lately, and then there's also this planned break of over a month.  I'm like an addict in desperate need of a fix - so I'm thinking that watching the new "Star Wars" movie is going to be THAT MUCH more impressive when I haven't seen a new film in over a month.  I've been catching up on TV, though - like I watched all 3 seasons (39 episodes) of "Daredevil" on Netflix, while also dramatically reducing the number of shows stored on my DVR devoted to TV.  (The DVR devoted to movies, however, is still about 70% full.)  After "Daredevil" I started up with "The Punisher", but then also caught up on the new HBO "Watchmen" series, which was just darn amazing.  Hard to understand at first, but eventually the pieces fell into place and it became this glorious, elegant, well-put-together thing.  My one nitpick is that it referenced the ending of the comic book, which got changed (I thought for the better) in the conclusion of the Zack Snyder film.  I would have preferred for the TV series to act as a sequel to the film and not the comic book on this point, but I guess I'm in the minority.

But "Watchmen" happens to share something with the recent "Star Wars" films (Episodes 7-9).  In both cases there's an attempt to continue a franchise, build on what has gone before and extrapolate a new narrative, even though the creator(s) of the source material are no longer involved.  George Lucas and Alan Moore have both signed away their rights and privileges, so Disney and DC Comics are free to continue the franchises as they see fit.  Yeah, maybe this is just the way of the world now, and if I tried I could probably come up with many more examples of this phenomenon, in franchises like "Godzilla", "Creed" and "The Terminator", among others.  Today's filmmakers have tough challenges ahead, based around questions like "How do we create a new story that also pays tribute to what has gone before, make a new narrative that feels organically grown from the old one, as if our movie is the logical continuation of that older story, but still feels timeless, or at least new-ish?"  Yeah, I don't know the answer to that one, I guess you just have to keep making movies with the same characters until the audience tells you to stop.

Oh, and then there's "The Mandalorian", of course.  I got a free year of Disney+ when we upgraded our phone to unlimited data (this was necessary when I upgraded my phone in Vegas, and also in one of the hotels we couldn't get the wifi to work) and so that's helped greatly, to have a new episode of a "Star Wars" TV show every week to look forward to.  My other challenge during this drought has been trying to prepare for "The Rise of Skywalker" without learning too much about the storyline.  I made the mistake of buying the paperback novelization of "Return of the Jedi" before the movie came out in 1983, and reading half of it the night before the film's premiere.  And so I went in knowing way too much, and I vowed to never let that happen again.  I've watched a couple of the previews, because the filmmakers apparently WANT me to know whatever's in them, but I've tried to let those go in one ear and out the other.  Come December 20, I want to go in as cold as I can, even though I realize that's probably an impossible goal.  But hey, I once thought that linking 300 films together by actors in a year was an impossible goal, and right now I'm only FIVE films away from making that a reality.

Richard E. Grant carries over from "Can You Ever Forgive Me?" - at least, I sure HOPE he does.  I had several good ways to get here, via Adam Driver or John Boyega - and God knows I watched more than my share of Oscar Isaac movies this year, same goes for Domhnall Gleeson.  I passed on all those opportunities and went all in, counting on Richard E. Grant to carry over.  Was I right?


FOLLOW-UP TO: "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" (Movie #2,796)

THE PLOT: The surviving Resistance faces the First Order once more in the final chapter of the Skywalker saga.

SPOILER ALERT: I'm a notable Star Wars early adopter and influencer (I've got the street cred to prove it, I was interviewed in a documentary called "The People vs. George Lucas", plus I've built my lifestyle around an appreciation for this franchise above all others.) so if you're not like me and you didn't go to see Episode IX on opening day, please TURN BACK now!

STILL BEFORE: As I write this second introduction, it's still December 18, 2 days before the final (yeah, right...) episode in the "Star Wars" saga opens, a culmination of 42 years of storytelling.  So thanks for making me feel very old, JJ Abrams...

But I've got a lot of questions right now, and since I haven't been scouring the internet for information, I don't know if this film will be answering those questions or not.  Let's start with the title - "The Rise of Skywalker".  Which Skywalker are we talking about?  Luke? He's probably only in this film as a Force Ghost.  Leia?  She's a Skywalker, though she hasn't tended to use that name - but her presence in today's film is probably reduced because they didn't create a CGI Carrie Fisher, so they were limited to using unused footage from the last two films.  Kylo Ren is technically also a Skywalker, so is he the one rising?  Or is there another Skywalker yet to be revealed?  Jeez, the filmmakers really may have tipped their hat with this one, via the title alone.

As I said above, and in my reviews of "The Force Awakens" and "The Last Jedi", the big trend these days is continuing a franchise's storyline to make new material, in a way that both pays tribute to the past and also feels fresh and new, but with "echoes" of the things that have gone before.  Episodes 7 and 8 were filled with callbacks to the previous "Star Wars" films, like the battle on Crait that felt a lot like the snowspeeder/AT-AT battle from "The Empire Strikes Back", only in salt instead of snow.  And the Starkiller Base seen in "The Force Awakens" was an obvious echo of the Death Star, only on a larger scale and with more power.  So getting ready for "The Rise of Skywalker", I'm expecting to see some callbacks to "Return of the Jedi", the film where teddy bears rose up and took down the Empire.  Baby Yoda is a thing now, so I'm fearing we'll see even cuter creatures taking up arms in Episode IX.

And remember that "Return of the Jedi" was the film that revealed the family connection between Luke and Leia (despite the fact that they'd made out a couple times in the first two films, they were allegedly "always" designed to be brother and sister.  Sure, George, that's your story and you stick to that...)  So perhaps we'll see another callback when we find out who Rey really is, who her parents were and how she came to be abandoned on Jakku.  Or, maybe we won't - Episode 7 teased this, and then Episode 8 really backed away from it.  What's the connection between Kylo Ren and Rey?  Are they brother and sister?  Cousins?  Future lovers?  Some combination of these?  It's been implied that Supreme Leader Snoke created the mental connection between the two, but what if that was a lie?

I know these stories aren't considered canonical any more, but there was an entire book series written where Han and Leia had twin children, Jacen and Jaina, and they studied as Junior Jedi Knights at Luke's training academy on Yavin IV.  As a teenager, Jacen fell under some bad influences while fighting the Yuuzhan Vong and determined that there was no light side or dark side to the Force, there was just the Force.  But he eventually took up the identity of a Sith Lord named Darth Caedus, and Jaina had to study Mandalorian combat techniques under Boba Fett in order to take him down.  Again, these stories no longer exist as part of the "Star Wars" story, but as we saw from the film "Solo: A Star Wars Story", today's filmmakers were able to read all the (many) interpretations of Han's infamous "Kessel Run" tale, and cherry-pick the pieces and parts that they wanted to use when they made the "official" film version.  The story of Jacen and Jaina Solo could have been tweaked and adjusted to fit the tale of Ben and Rey Solo, except then you'd expect that Ben should probably remember that he had a sister, and therefore not be surprised when he meets Rey years later.

Similarly, the whole "what went wrong at Luke's Jedi Academy" story has yet to be fully explained.  We saw a few glimpses of it in "The Last Jedi", but it wasn't enough.  Whatever sent Luke into exile for 20 years may be fully detailed in a future TV series or film, or comic book, in the future.  But the fact remains that Luke WAS in exile for 20 years, his whereabouts were unknown, and it's not too far of a stretch to think that he might have had a relationship or fathered a child somewhere along the line.  The Jedi of the Republic were instructed to not have any "attachments", but it's possible that Luke never got that memo, or was in the process creating a new kind of Jedi Order, without all the arcane rules.  So perhaps the two big force-users are cousins?  Anything is possible at the moment, but I'm counting on Episode IX to PICK A GOD-DAMNED LANE already!

The cast list alone (and this is public information, thanks to IMDB) reveals that two important characters are coming back to the "Star Wars" saga, Lando Calrissian and it seems Emperor Palpatine as well.  How Palpatine survived the fall down the reactor core of Death Star II, and the subsequent explosion, also has yet to be revealed.  But looking at another book tie-in, which I think also has been removed from the official canon, we could get another idea about this.  "Dark Empire" was a 1991 Dark Horse comic book that was also made at a time when it was believed there would be no more movies with Luke, Han and Leia, so they were free to continue their story in any direction, and this has since been retconned out of the SW Universe - but the comic introduced Grand Admiral Thrawn, who over the last few years has been re-added to the canon via the "Star Wars: Rebels" TV show and a couple of new books, also.  In that comic, Luke battled against a clone of the Emperor - his mind, spirit and memories that had found their way into a young, fit clone body.  Clones are not a new storytelling tool in the Star Wars universe, and it's even possible that Baby Yoda could be a clone of the original.  The timeline could allow for Jedi Sifo Dyas and the Kamino cloners to have done more work besides cloning Jango Fett, and in "Revenge of the Sith" Palpatine discussed (very cryptically with Anakin) that there might be ways for Jedi or Sith to conquer death itself.

So there you go, now I'm ready.  Whatever "The Rise of Skywalker" wants to bring my way, whether it's lost twins, secret cousins, clones or something else entirely, let's get it over with!

AFTER: Right after watching the film (2 pm showing, AMC Empire on 42nd St. in Manhattan) with my friend Adam, who bought the ticket for me months ago, I went back to the snack counter to start buying up the collectables - an AMC R2D2-shaped popcorn and drink holder for my friend Charles in Hawaii (by special request) and two metal popcorn tins (clean, unused) - one blue one for the "light side" and a red one for the "dark side" of the Force.  The concession stand had run out of the red ones, so I decided to try the snack counter upstairs.  Yep, there they were - and as the man behind the counter sold me the red (clean, unused) popcorn tin, he saw me holding the giant plastic R2D2 and asked if I had just seen the movie.  (No, I often just hang out randomly in movie theater lobbies, holding large plastic R2D2-shaped popcorn holders...). OK, so it was a valid question, because maybe I was on my way IN to see the movie, I mean, what kind of a person goes BACK to the snack counter after the movie?  (Just me, apparently.). When I said that yes, I'd just seen the film, he asked, "Is it any good?"

I know, I pretty much rate movies around the clock, but I found his question difficult to answer.  I'm well aware that everyone's mileage varies, and different people can have vastly different opinions about the same movie.  To properly answer his question, I'd need to know more about him as a person.  I wanted to say, "That depends, do you have a long, enduring relationship with this film franchise?  One that stretches back, say, 40 or so years?  Did you grow up watching the original trilogy or the prequel trilogy?  Did you get exposed to the "Star Wars" films in the proper order (4, 5, 6, then 1, 2, 3) or did you (shudder) watch the prequels first?  Do you like the "Special Editions" or do you long for the classic versions?  Who do you believe shot first, Han or Greedo?"

Had he watched 295 films this year in preparation for THIS one?  (No, that's probably just me...). Had he avoided watching films for the last month so that he'd really, really appreciate the next one that he saw?  (Again, probably just me...)  Had he had a particularly challenging time in the last 30 days, what with his cat dying and his boss riding his ass and was he using the promise of seeing the new "Star Wars" film as his sole motivation for getting his Christmas cards sent out and his holiday shopping done?  Did he, like me, really really NEED this film to be good?  Because that's all important stuff to know about him if I was going to properly answer his question.

Instead, I sort of punted and said, "Well, a lot of stuff happens in it, so there's that."  What a terrible non-answer, and now I regret it, of course - but what if I said the movie was really, really great, and then he went on break or stayed late to catch the midnight show and he didn't like it, would that then be my fault?  Better to undersell it, right?  So there you go, there's my review, "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" is a film where a lot of stuff happens.  And hey, that's spoiler-free as a bonus!  It's nearly two-and-a-half hours of "Star Wars" stuff, in fact, so they crammed more Star Wars into a Star Wars film than ever before, I think.  Our heroes go to several different planets, looking for stuff, going on personal quests of various natures in order to find a way to defeat the evil power.

Jesus, what more do you people WANT from me?  If you want to know the whole plot, you can look elsewhere, go read it on Wikipedia, it's all there.  There were droids, there were lightsaber battles, there was John Williams music, space battles, and the good guys win and the bad guys lose, but you knew all that already, right?  It's "Star Wars" so it has all the characters and all the things that you'd expect from a movie in this franchise - and then probably a bit more, too.

I don't even feel bad about mentioning above that the Emperor is back, because literally that's the FIRST thing you learn in "The Rise of Skywalker", like it's the first line in the opening crawl - see?  That's followed by about 2 1/2 hours of stuff that I'm not even going to mention.  (And the few cameos that COULD make any difference to your enjoyment are withheld below, for safety's sake.)

This is the big question, however - did J.J. Abrams get the trilogy back on track, after Rian Johnson decided to fill the slower parts of "The Last Jedi" with a bunch of human rights and animal rights activism issues that really just clouded the main character arcs for Rey, Finn and Poe? "Come on, we have to get back to the fleet, the First Order's been inching closer to them for the last hour of this story!"  "Hang on, I'll be right with you, but first I have to free these horse-like creatures from their servitude, because animals are people too."  WHAT?  Then Chewbacca went vegetarian and I'm screaming "HOW IS THIS A PLOT POINT?"

Then we got to the relationship stuff, and this was the OTHER maddening thing about "The Last Jedi".  In "The Force Awakens", it looked like they were setting up Rey and Finn as romantic partners, but then in the next film, it seemed more like Rian Johnson wanted to explore the bond between Rey and Kylo (or "Reylo" if you ship) and OK, that's a bold new direction, let's bring in Rose as a new potential love interest for Finn, and everyone's happy, right?  WRONG, because here comes J.J. Abrams again, and he wants to explore both Rey/Finn AND Rey/Kylo in Episode IX.  Wait, I thought it was suggested that Snoke made the mental connection between Rey and Kylo, but now it seems they've got real relationship potential?  Only she's a Jedi and he's a Sith, how's that going to work out?  Is she going to turn him good or is he going to lure her to the Dark Side?  Ah, now maybe we're getting somewhere meaty, right?

But still, "The Rise of Skywalker" storyline seems determined to fire in every direction possible, all at once.  All this romantic potential, and in the end, nobody's getting any action!  Everybody just seems like they're co-workers in the Resistance now and they're afraid of getting in trouble with H.R. so everybody's cool with being friends, and that's boring as hell.  And then after the racists started hating on having a prominent Asian character in "The Last Jedi", it seems like THIS movie is afraid now to explore Finn/Rose or even Finn/Rey, so they bring in BRAND NEW love interests for Finn, and even Poe, and poor Rose is now left out in the cold.  Is that fair?  Do we let the racists win?  In the old days, the big love triangle was between Han, Leia and Luke (umm, we didn't know at the time about the brother-sister thing) but we knew in the end Leia was going to choose SOMEBODY.  Now we've got love quadrangles and pentangles and I'd settle for a Finn/Poe romance if it meant that something would finally get resolved.  The good news here is that no matter which two characters you see romantic potential in, there's something in this movie for you.  AND that's also the bad news, if you think about it.

However, when you consider how Abrams had to bend the storyline over backwards (and sideways, and sort of pretzel-shaped) to undo some of the directions that "The Last Jedi" took, I think the effort that it took to right this ship was something close to super-human.  My friend Andy used to say about the "Star Wars" films directed by Lucas, whenever something weird came in to the mix, "It's OK, Daddy's driving..."  By which he meant that someone responsible was behind the wheel, and if you want to feel like a kid in the back-seat it's OK to relax or take a little nap even, because your father's going to make sure that you get home OK.  (Still, even with that there's the possibility of another careless driver on the road, or an unwanted appearance of Jar Jar Binks...). Where Abrams excels is his ability to examine the films Lucas made, and then continue the story in a new direction, while still paying tribute to what has gone before, so that the end result FEELS like maybe it was made by the original creator.  He did this with "Star Trek" in 2009 - it was a new movie, new timeline, but it had to also FEEL like the old TV series in some way, and that's a difficult row to hoe.

So to do this, there are a lot of callbacks in the sequel trilogy.  I mentioned several of them already, like the Battle of Crait resembling the Battle of Hoth in some ways, but it also had to be a new thing at the same time.  And as I correctly predicted, there are many callbacks here to "Return of the Jedi" - not just the presence of Palpatine being alive and Lando Calrissian flying the Falcon, but there are sets designed to look like old locations, just in a new way.  And some scenes are direct visual references to ROTJ, like a conversation between Rey and her old mentor that neatly mirrors one that Luke had with his.

In fact there are a lot of "ghosts" in this film - some literal force-ghosts and other symbolic ones.  At one point a character was searching through the wreckage of a familiar "Star Wars" set for a useful object, and I thought, "Wow, there's a metaphor.  This film is searching through the wreckage of the previous trilogy to find something that could propel THIS story forward."  And that's what writers do now, they go through the old stories in a franchise and they look for gaps, or story possibilities between the scenes we know, and they try to make something new that fits between the other things or is a logical extension of them.  Comic-book writers do this all the time, the new writer on "Spider-Man" is eventually going to consider the older stories and maybe say, "Well, it's now time for Spider-Man to fight the Green Goblin again..." but the better writers will also say, "What can I do differently this time he fights the Green Goblin, so it's not like every OTHER time they fought before?"

Stan Lee created Spider-Man, and also most of the other major Marvel super-heroes, but after a couple of decades he let other writers pick up most of the workload.  I don't think he wrote a decent comic-book story himself after the late 1970's, but I could be wrong.  In the same way, George Lucas created this universe, but when he sold out to Disney, it became an opportunity for other people to play with the toys he created.  So like it or not, "J.J. Abrams is my master now."  I'll defend the job he did here, even though he still left a LOT of questions unanswered...and I just KNOW that's going to piss a lot of people off.

Who, exactly, are the Knights of Ren?  Was "Ren" a person, or a planet or another thing?  There's fertile ground between Episodes 6 and 7 for more stories, and Marvel Comics (also a Disney subsidiary now) is going to start exploring that in a new Kylo Ren comic.  How, exactly, did Palpatine survive his fall to the reactor core in Episode 6?  Again, yet to be revealed - basically if you're looking for clear answers in "The Rise of Skywalker", you'd better get used to disappointment.  Do we finally learn who Rey's parents were?  Thankfully, there's a resounding YES here.  So there you go, take some comfort in the fact that the war is finally over, Rey finally has a last name, the good guys win and the bad guys lose, and I think Lando FINALLY gets his spaceship back, but I could be wrong about this, too.  I hope he does, I think he deserves it.

But it already seems like the reviews of this film are either middling or poor - yet it's sold more advance tickets than just about any film, other than "Avengers: Endgame".  It seems like as on nearly every other issue, our populace is split right down the middle - you're probably either going to REALLY love this film, or REALLY hate it.  That's it, there's no in-between.  Get on board and enjoy the ride, or else don't show up at all, there's just no middle ground.  I just don't expect many people to say, "Eh, this film was just OK for me."  You either go all in or you don't.

I'm sure I left some NITPICK POINTS around here somewhere, let me take some time to think about it, and if I come up with any this weekend I'll add them right here.  (or maybe I'll add them after a second viewing in January...)  Beyond R2-D2 being CRIMINALLY under-used in this installment, that is.  Or was that a callback to "The Force Awakens", where he spent nearly the whole film deactivated and just taking up space in a storeroom?

Wait, I've got one - what about this Force healing?  It's a new power we've never seen before, so very obviously it's here because it needed to be to make this plot work.  So how come we've never seen the Force used this way before, except for last week in an episode of "The Mandalorian"?  Why didn't any Jedi use this power while fighting the Clone Wars?  "Screw it, they're clones, we've got like a zillion of them, let 'em die..."  Why didn't Obi-Wan use this power when Qui-Gon or Padme were dying?  Was he not aware of it, or is it some recent innovation in the use of the Force?  Either way, I'm not buying it...

UPDATE: I went to see Episode IX a second time on New Year's Day, with my wife who was seeing it for the first time. She really enjoyed it, which helps me justify my rating a bit - but she was also left emotionally drained afterwards, and that was how I felt after my first viewing, too.

Part of what stuck with me the first time I saw it was how Rey's battle with the Emperor (and to a lesser extent, her ongoing relationship (?) with Kylo Ren, and how they seemed to be riffing off of issues of sexual harassment.  I know, there's not really any SEX in "Star Wars", so I don't know how all the space people manage to have space babies, but I digress.  OK, you have to admit that even if it's not sexual, what's been going on in the new trilogy is a form of harassment.  Kylo and Rey are mentally connected somehow, and they've been sharing intimate conversations over vast distances for several films now, but sometimes on Kylo's end these devolve into threats, mixed with offers for Rey to come to the Dark Side so they can rule the galaxy together.  Putting aside the fact that these mental confabs can happen at even the most inconvenient times (like, what happens if Rey's in the shower or something?) they've put her through the emotional wringer, with Kylo being somewhat kind, then taunting her about her parents, then threatening her life.  It's like some kind of emotional abuse cycle, where the abuser keeps saying whatever he has to in order to maintain contact, and after a while, the victim doesn't know which end is up, whether to hate or love in return.  It's been like some ongoing form of mental rape, right?

Then to make matters worse, the Emperor comes back - and he's the classic example of the white man (really really white, like super-pale) in power, and to him Kylo's a joke, and the young girl's a pawn, someone who lives just to service his needs.  He's like super-replusive Harvey Weinstein, or Trump, and/or Epstein all rolled into one.  Emperor Trumpatine, or Palp-Weinstein maybe.  Forget the connection between them, he just wants her body (OK, not like THAT exactly, but is there really a difference?).  And she can't strike him down, because then he gets what he wants, which is for her to demonstrate hatred and join the Dark Side, so it seems like she can't win - much like how a harassed woman can't fight back against her accuser, because she'll lose her job and maybe become an outcast, and who's going to believe her story anyway?

Anyway, that was my first impression, and this stuff bothered me a little less during the second viewing, but it's still THERE.  Still, since I knew the major plot points, the second time I could relax a bit and pay more attention to things like foreshadowing, and how the whole movie flows, and really just the elegance of clues being placed in the early parts that tip off the twists in the later parts.  I think the film will hold up over time, there's just so much there that can be analyzed by the experts, so many little callbacks and Easter eggs and winks at the fans about Star Wars ephemera.

Also starring Daisy Ridley (last heard in "Peter Rabbit"), Adam Driver (last seen in "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote"), John Boyega (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi"), Oscar Isaac (last seen in "Triple Frontier"), Lupita Nyong'o (last seen in "Black Panther"), Domhnall Gleeson (last seen in "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"), Kelly Marie Tran (aslo last seen in "Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi"), Mark Hamill (ditto), Jimmy Vee (ditto), Mike Quinn (ditto), Joonas Suotamo (last seen in "Solo: A Star Wars Story"), Anthony Daniels (ditto), Billie Lourd (last seen in "Billionaire Boys Club"), Naomi Ackie, Keri Russell (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Billy Dee Williams (last seen in "Quincy"), Greg Grunberg (last heard in "The Cloverfield Paradox"), Dominic Monaghan (last seen in "Mute"), Ian McDiarmid (last seen in "The Lost City of Z"), Jodie Comer, Billy Howle (last seen in "Outlaw King"), with archive footage of Carrie Fisher (last seen in "The 'Burbs") and cameos from (REDACTED - but last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), (REDACTED) and (ALSO REDACTED), John Williams, Lin-Manuel Miranda (last seen in "Mary Poppins Returns"), Jeff Garlin (last heard in "Toy Story 4"), Kevin Smith? (if so, last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Dhani Harrison and the voices of J.J. Abrams, Shirley Henderson (last seen in "Stan & Ollie"), Andy Serkis (last heard in "Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle"), James Earl Jones (last seen in "The Comedians"), Alec Guinness (ditto), Hayden Christensen (last seen in "Factory Girl"), Olivia d"Abo (last seen in "Kicking and Screaming"), Ashley Eckstein (last heard in "Star Wars: The Clone Wars"), Jennifer Hale (last heard in "Superman/Batman: Public Enemies"), Samuel L. Jackson (last seen in "Glass"), Ewan McGregor (last seen in "Christopher Robin"), Frank Oz (last seen in "Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey"), Angelique Perrin, Freddie Prinze Jr., Liam Neeson (last seen in "Widows"), Matthew Wood and Debra Wilson.

RATING: 8 out of 10 Star Destroyers