Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker REVIEW (SPOILER FREE)

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I've been an unapologetic proponent of the sequel trilogy, and Disney's iteration of Star Wars, basically since the beginning. I maintain that The Force Awakens, while every bit the retread of A New Hope it's accused of being, was all it needed to be at the time it was released to introduce Star Wars to a new generation and show them what made Star Wars great in the first place. Followed by The Last Jedi, a deconstruction of Star Wars that challenges, but then ultimately affirms those ideals. So what I was expecting of Rise of Skywalker was some sort of thematically resonant thesis on Star Wars and it's legacy, that hopefully says something new or different.

I did not get that. and in hindsight, I feel a little foolish having expected such a thing from JJ Abrams of all people.

So this is a fundamentally bad movie, I'll come right out and say it, this movie is fucking dumb. The entire motivation of Kylo Ren for his whole life is basically handwaved away in 5 seconds of dialogue at the beginning, and that basically sets the tone for the entire movie. it goes a mile a minute in the hopes that you don't notice that JJ Abrams doesn't have a clue how to tell a complete story. The whole thing feels like it was written by a forum thread with about as much cohesion. The film constantly threatens to be more interesting by doing something bold, and then immediately walking it back as if terrified of upsetting anyone. It answers None of the questions brought up by the trailers, and the narrative consists largely of two hours of fetch-quests to get to a massive conflict we're told is coming right from the off. There's precious little character work to speak of, Rey and Kylo being really the only people to have something resembling arcs, and one of the details of each was just irritating to me, but I can't tell you which without spoilers.



The Rise of Skywalker is Star Wars as directed by fanfiction.net an overly-plotted, but somehow still under-written sightseeing tour with no room to breathe, no commitment to its own story, let alone the previous two, and a climax that feels like it belongs in a Shonen Jump anime rather than Star Wars.



And yet...I can't help but like it. John Williams brings it as ever with a great score, particularly strong in variations on themes, the visuals are stunning, and the scenery is every bit as lovingly crafted as you're expecting, it is Star Wars after all. This film has a hell of a lot of fan service and fun cameos in it, and while I should roll my eyes at that, I'm just not made of stone, there are some great setpieces and I had a blast watching this in spite of the flaws. They may not have arcs to speak of, but the big 3 have fun banter for days and C-3PO provides some of his best comic relief. I do have to mention Carrie Fisher, I think they did the best it was realistically possible to do with her given the circumstances, there is a debate to be had on whether or not it would've been better to write her out of the movie, but I feel like that would run counter to the feel of the film, and I think things were well-handled given the circumstances.



I heard conflicting reports that this film shits on The Last Jedi, and having seen it twice now. I think if you're determined enough to see that, there are parts you could take that way, but you do have to squint a fair bit and ignore more than a little context.



The Rise of Skywalker is less of a film than a Star Wars-themed rollercoaster and fireworks display in celebration largely of the existence of it's own franchise, I wanted more out of Star Wars than that, but I think it has earned that right this once. If you're wondering, I'd put this at a similar level of overall quality to the higher-points of the prequels, definitely flawed, but nonetheless entertaining



6.5/10 for the fun I had with it, a Good 6.5, I did enjoy it, it's a fun movie, but I can't honestly score it higher than that.

Review: X-Men: Dark Phoenix (Spoiler-free)

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X-Men: Dark Phoenix review



Okay, so annoyingly I was too late to catch the start of Godzilla so I ended up
seeing X-Men: Dark Phoenix instead.

The X-Men films were never reliable in terms of quality
assurance in my opinion, the first two were great for their time and haven’t
aged TERRIBLY but I don’t really feel the need to watch them these days, First
Class breathed new life into the franchise only for Days of Future Past to suck
it right out again, and basically the mainline X-Men movies have been a
nebulous haze of mediocrity ever since, but every so often they have to be total
pricks and inconsiderately make a really good one like Logan so I can’t just
write off the franchise completely. Having said that since Future Past there
hasn’t been much of a continuity worth following just the odd few details here
and there that are largely ignored between movies until they’re not, so with
suitably cautious expectations, X: Men the last stand rema-I mean uh, Dark
Phoenix.

Without going into spoiler territory this is…an X-Men movie,
for good and for ill, you know whether or not you like these by now, I’m sure
it’ll have its fans but since everyone knows Disney are just gonna hit the
reset button in a few years if that there’s really very little reason to be
invested in this. Anyway. While it might just make top half for an X-Men movie,
taken strictly as a piece of cinema it’s still…not very good. Sorry, I wanted
it to be better too. If you can manage to turn your brain off and ignore the
fact that the story kind of just *is* without much explanation as to how it got
there, you might have a good time. There are a ton of characters in this movie
each with a fair few character beats, which would be great if more than maybe
three of them made any narrative sense. But the plot is a mess and the
characters follow suit, even more than usual, the star of the cast I would say
has to be Michael Fassbender as Magneto, who, incidentally, is looking great
for someone who canonically would be in his 60s by now. But I don’t think we’re
supposed to think about that, the writers certainly didn’t.

As for the rest of the plot, it goes eight-ways crazy with
what I imagine are supposed to be surprising twists but just come off as
happening because the plot needs them to happen. As I said, very few of the
character beats make any sense, and partly because of that the scenes that are
supposed to evoke emotion fall kind of flat. The acting is good, but the scenes
are too hard a sell.

One positive thing I will say though is that Dark Phoenix
has some of the better action sequences in the series, I don’t know if I’d say “best”
but the fight scenes are definitely top half for me, even if it’s hampered some
by, at times questionable decisions therein. They’ll probably all be up on
Youtube in a week or two, if you just wanted to see the fight scenes I wouldn’t
blame you.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix is a tonally confusing, narrative mess
with a few good action setpeices thrown in. Every actor involved deserved
better and frankly, so did we. It’s a 4/10 from me, I wasn’t bored, but that’s
about the best I can say.  

Review: Pokemon: Detective Pikachu (spoiler-free)

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I think before I start I should mention my bias, in that I
was 5 years old when Pokemon first hit my TV in the 90s, and I knew the
original Red and Blue Gameboy releases inside out, in fact, there was a time I
could recite the gen-1 Pokedex from memory and tell you where any given Pokemon
was, and which version you needed to get it. Kids on the playground used to
come to me before they learned how to use the internet. I haven’t followed it
ever since exactly, had a play of Gold, got back into it around black and white
time, and now take the odd pokemon walk with Pokemon GO, so, I guess you could
say I know a little bit about Pokemon and have a vested interest in this movie,
okay, I think that’s enough context.

The first thing I have to say in regards to this movie is “what
a time to be alive.” The fact of this film’s very existence is a marvel in and
of itself to me. If you’d have told me, even a year or two ago that we’d be
getting a live-action Pokemon movie of any sort, set in something close to the
real world, and that not only would it be a good time, but it would also star
Ryan Reynolds as a Pikachu, I’d have told you that whatever you’re on, I want
some. But that sure as hell ended up being the world we live in.

So as you’ve probably guessed by now, I quite liked
Detective Pikachu. I won’t spoil anything in this review, but I do have to say
that seeing Bill Nighy talk so enthusiastically and straight-faced about
Pokemon is worth the ticket price on it’s own.

The film puts me in mind somewhat of the old Scooby Doo
movies in terms of tone, but in the best possible way, this is “the real world,
but with Pokemon in it” and on that note you really should bring a bingo card
of some sort, there are a lot of fun cameos by a lot of different Pokemon. The
story is a pretty straight-forward mystery plot, and the film seems to lean
pretty heavily on the presence of pokemon to be the main distinguishing feature
there, indeed there are one  or two
swerves the story takes that are very uniquely “Pokemon” but I like that about
it. If you’re not initiated in the lore of pokemon, that’s not a deal-breaker,
but I feel like you’ll miss out on some of the fun. Even taken independently of
the fandom this is a perfectly serviceable movie, but fortunately it’s one that
knows it’s audience, you’re here first and foremost because it’s a Pokemon
movie, and maybe because Ryan Reynolds is voicing a Pikachu (there is an
in-movie explanation for that by the way, that’s all I’m saying)

Justice Smith has pretty good chemistry with Pikachu Ryan
Reynolds, who, I’ll be honest, I was worried was gonna invoke a little too much
Deadpool here, but no, he doesn’t his Pikachu is a little sarcastic, but also
innocent and naïve. And what else should Pikachu be? There are also some
emotional gut-punches that’ll have you forgetting that he’s CGI

On the human side, Justice Smith has some good comic timing
of his own, though he doesn’t get many chances to show it, what he does get he
makes good on.

Kathrin Newton gives a good turn as Lucy, the aspiring reporter
with a Psyduck sidekick, I do kind of wish they’d used the Psyduck voice I
remember though, but that’s just me.

Bill Nighy is…well Bill Nighy, if you know his work you know
what to expect, and he doesn’t disappoint.

The way the pokemon are brought to life has…a little uncanny
valley here or there, but in at least one case I can think of that actually
worked in the favour of the film, and even when it didn’t any given
non-Ryan-Reynolds-voiced Pokemon won’t be on screen for long enough for it to
be a problem.

Pokemon: Detective Pikachu is “one for the fans” in every
respect, but not in the way studios say that when they’ve just made a bad film,
this is “for the fans” in the best way possible, if you don’t know your
Pokemon, I imagine it’s still enjoyable, though you might be a little lost, but
if you do, I think you’ll find this film every bit as good as the trailers made
it look. It’s an 8/10 from me, the story’s not winning any awards, but it’s a
LOT of fun, and you should definitely check it out.

Avengers Endgame: a brief (Spoiler-free) review

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I didn’t plan to review Endgame, I figured that ground would
be well covered by so many more notable people than I that there was little
point. But the film so completely blew away all my expectations that I feel
like I have to put my thoughts out there even if nobody hears them.

But this presents another challenge because I want to keep
at least this review spoiler-free, if I find the words for a longer, more
in-depth one with spoilers I may or may not make that one too. I’ll level with
you guys, I’m writing by the seat of my pants here, I have no idea how I can
articulate my thoughts on Endgame without going into spoiler territory because
to quote Luke Skywalker, this is not going to go the way you think. To the
point then, Endgame is absolutely incredible. It is scary how good this film
is, and how well they managed to make 11 years, and 21 films worth of build pay
off and feel not only satisfying but also natural, while somehow at the same
time defying all expectations.

I don’t even feel like I can tell you what I mean by that
without going into spoiler territory, but nothing in this film unfolded like I
thought it would going in. This film is over three hours long and I felt almost
none of that runtime, those three hours flew by. Not only is this film a worthy
conclusion of the 21 that preceded it, it even manages to build upon them and
add more context. But if you haven’t seen it yet, you NEED to go in blind, I
would say remaining unspoiled is even more important now than it normally is.

Endgame is like the final performance after a long, long
period of rehearsals and every beat is hit. I actually cannot conceive of
anyone being disappointed by this film, I certainly wasn’t, it is absolutely
worth the price of admission and if there was one film I’d say you HAD to see
in theatres, it would be this one.

Captain Marvel: a brief review

Captain Marvel: a brief review


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I have to say that during the lead-up to this film I repeatedly forgot it was even coming out. So much of the MCU hype in my online and social circles has been around Avengers: Endgame which comes out surprisingly closely following this, and I’ve made a concerted effort to avoid the shitstorm of whining crybabies who can’t handle that less than 5% of the MCU is now female-led and the other shitstorm of people who think Brie Larson didn’t want white men to see her movie or something Someone told me people were mad about? Which, if true, doesn’t even approach what she actually said. But whatever I’m not a drama channel. So my attention vis-à-vis the MCU has been more Endgame-centric than not as of late. As such this one kinda crept up on me, Now, from a technical and narrative standpoint the movie’s about as good as I expected it to be, Perfectly enjoyable, if not exactly ground-breaking, with a lot of fun 90s references some nice humour and special effects aplenty. Which is why I was pleasantly surprised with how much I found myself enjoying this one.

So Captain Marvel takes us back to the 90s, but also into space, with an amnesia-stricken Carol Danvers, known only to her Cohorts as “Vers” fighting for the Kree empire alongside a band of soldiers, one of whom is the guy from the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy…oh and Ronan the Accuser shows up too, they’re working for him at this point. She basically has ki powers and isn’t sure how she got them. So a mission goes Awry and she crashlands on earth into a Blockbuster just to drive home the fact that it’s the 90s and her journey of self-rediscovery begins.

So basically I’m pretty sure you’ll feel like you know where the movie is going like, 5 minutes in. But there are some interesting developments to keep you on your toes and some nice character backstory for the younger Nick Fury. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the amnesia plot-device but as a mechanism for suspense it does the job. A LITTLE of the tension is undercut by the fact that we know certain characters survive, but not much.

The films visuals are great as always, in fact a lot of Danvers third act scenes put me in mind of Dragon Ball, which is basically one of, if not my favourite thing, so that stylistic choice was absolutely my bag and put me in a good mood. There’s also plenty of humour as I mentioned, in particular there’s one part near the end that put me in mind of one of my favourite parts of Raiders of the Lost Ark, you’ll know what it is when you see it.

Overall, when compared with the rest of them I’d say, not top 5 but maybe top 10? It’s a fun adventure with spaceships and superpowers, definitely worth watching if you go in for that sort of thing. A solid 7.5/10 from me, would watch again, I look forward to seeing where this goes, roll on Endgame. 

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