Joe B's review of "The Rise of Skywalker"

[JoeB131]

Well.
The best of all the bad. Although the Wookie has the best acting in the rest.
Thing is, it impressed me as a kid. Not so much anymore as there is far better sci fi being done.
Like I said, they should have wrapped it up years ago when the franchise was fresh.

Here's the thing.. I think the Prequels are actually okay movies. The original trilogy came out when the idea of big budget special effects being used in story telling was a new thing. A New Hope's 9 million dollar budget was considered astronomical at the time, but ti was new and fresh.

The Prequels came out when special effects were considered the norm. But there was enough of a story in them to keep you interested.

(Why George waited 16 years for the prequels is a matter of debate. He says he wanted to wait for the technology, others say that he wanted to cheat his ex-wife out of her share of the profits.)

The Sequels are retreaded garbage made in a corporate boardroom where a bunch of suits reviewed every creative decision, and it shows.

"We have to have Rose Tico as a major character, because we want to break into the Chinese Market".

"But her character is stupid and the girl who plays her is fat and can't act!"

So when poor Rose became the focus of a lot of the ire of the fan base, they pretty much wrote her out of the next movie.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

My biggest problem with Star Wars is that it just sucks
It exists to sell toys.

I’m no expert, but the writing and acting is noticeably bad. They have gotten some fantastic actors in Star Wars, but they are given childish dialogue and show no emotion.

I have to disagree. The original Trilogy were great movies. They revolutionized movies in not only how they were made, but how they were marketed and produced.

I have some kind words for the Prequels as well. They aren't as bad as everyone says.

The Sequels and Stand alone movies are garbage, though, made by Corporate Committee.

Rogue One was on par with the first three

 

[Olde Europe]

Imperial subjects debating the nuances of their the two-bit simplicity, good vs. "dark side" programming, at the hands of oh-so-liberal Hollywood.

Now, that's funny.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

Are you kidding? Rogue One is an awful movie. It if wasn't connected to Star Wars, if it was just "Generic Evil Bad Guys" instead of "The Empire", it would be kind of a downer. Everyone dies just to get some plans to someone?

We knew going in that most, if not all, of the main characters were going to die. The whole story is built off of a brief line in the original Star Wars (A New Hope, episode 4) about those who gave their lives to steal the plans to the Death Star, and Rogue One is their story.

I was startled by just how bad the brief depiction of Leia at the end came out. I assume similar methods were used to zombify Peter Cushing, to play his role in this film, and that was done well enough that I never noticed anything amiss about the depiction of his character. But in the brief appearance at the end, just to deliver one line, one word, the Leia zombie just came out so badly, that it was jarring to watch.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

Oh, yeah (Spoilers), and we find out that Rey is Palpatine’s Granddaughter. Didn’t even know Palpy had a son or was even into chicks, but apparently, he was.

I've spent the entire time, since somewhere through my first viewing of “The Force Awakens”, absolutely convinced that Rey had to be a descendant of Anaiken, and that Luke would most likely be revealed to have been her father.

When we first see Luke, at the end of The Force Awakens, he is standing in front of what appears to be a grave. I've assumed that that was probably his wife, and that it was in the darkness surrounding her death, perhaps leading up to it, that he/they abandoned Rey on Jakku, or perhaps less directly, that Rey wound up in the custody of someone else, who ended up abandoning her there.

Is there any explanation finally given for the grave that Luke was standing in front of when first see him in The Force Awakens?

 

[iamwhatiseem]

And the guy they got to play Anakin Skywalker may be the worst actor of all time.

I know right?
I have said this for years!!!... and not only was he a terrible actor, but not the right physical characteristics.
The original Darth Vader was a large 6' 7" man. Annakin Skywalker was a skinny 5' 11" with an accent.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

And the guy they got to play Anakin [sic] Skywalker may be the worst actor of all time.

I have said this for years!!!... and not only was he a terrible actor, but not the right physical characteristics.
The original Darth Vader was a large 6' 7" man. Annakin [sic] Skywalker was a skinny 5' 11" with an accent.

That could be explained away by Anaikin's original body having been so profoundly damaged in the lava, that rather obviously, they had to rebuild him as a cyborg, and if they were going to do so, they might as well build his cyborg body up to be bigger and more intimidating.

 

[JoeB131]

Rogue One was on par with the first three

No, it really wasn't. First, you have the main character, Jyn Erso (I had to look that up, that's how forgettable she was), who never seems to have a clear motivation. She goes from "not giving a shit" to "Let's go get killed fighting the Empire". Really?

You also have the exceptionally creepy way they used CGI to bring back Grand Moff Tarkin, because Peter Cushing died back in 1994.

If it was such a strong story, why did they need to inject all these classic characters? Hey, look there are the two guys who got into a fight with Luke in the Cantina! What are you guys doing here?

If you stripped out all references to other movies from this one, it would be a confused plot that you don't care about.

I've spent the entire time, since somewhere through my first viewing of “The Force Awakens”, absolutely convinced that Rey had to be a descendant of Anaiken, and that Luke would most likely be revealed to have been her father.

When we first see Luke, at the end of The Force Awakens, he is standing in front of what appears to be a grave. I've assumed that that was probably his wife, and that it was in the darkness surrounding her death, perhaps leading up to it, that he/they abandoned Rey on Jakku, or perhaps less directly, that Rey wound up in the custody of someone else, who ended up abandoning her there.

Is there any explanation finally given for the grave that Luke was standing in front of when first see him in The Force Awakens?

Um, yeah, if you had seen the Last Jedi, you'd know those graves were the people at his new Jedi School that Kylo Ren killed.

Also, if that were the case, then Rey and Kylo's kind of romantic tensions would have been even creepier than it was.

 

[JoeB131]

We knew going in that most, if not all, of the main characters were going to die. The whole story is built off of a brief line in the original Star Wars (A New Hope, episode 4) about those who gave their lives to steal the plans to the Death Star, and Rogue One is their story.

I was startled by just how bad the brief depiction of Leia at the end came out. I assume similar methods were used to zombify Peter Cushing, to play his role in this film, and that was done well enough that I never noticed anything amiss about the depiction of his character. But in the brief appearance at the end, just to deliver one line, one word, the Leia zombie just came out so badly, that it was jarring to watch.

Yes, that was creepy, in both cases. I thought that Uncanny Valley Tarkin didn't really look that Good.

The bigger question is, why did we need a whole movie to explain one line in a movie... especially when the rebels in the one line movie were better equipped than they were in the new Hope, where all they had were some fighters. In this movie, they had a bunch of capital ships. (Yes, they had some of these ships in Return of the Jedi, but that was assumed to be after they spent years building their forces.)

All the Disney Star Wars movies are crap.

The ironic thing is, what made the original Star Wars great was that George Lucas was a rebel against the Studio System who did things his own way, and he created something truly unique.

The anthology movies and the Sequels are corporate board room produced crap.

"Hey, we just checked our market research, and found that everyone hates Rose Tico. Let's marginalize her in the next movie, after we made this big deal out of her in the last one."

Of course, why was Rose Tico included to start with? Because they wanted to break into the Chinese Market, so let's introduce an Asian character.

The Rise of Skywalker is entirely a "Let's take everything the toxic fan boys hated about "The Last Jedi" and try to undo it"

 

[rightwinger]

We knew going in that most, if not all, of the main characters were going to die. The whole story is built off of a brief line in the original Star Wars (A New Hope, episode 4) about those who gave their lives to steal the plans to the Death Star, and Rogue One is their story.

I was startled by just how bad the brief depiction of Leia at the end came out. I assume similar methods were used to zombify Peter Cushing, to play his role in this film, and that was done well enough that I never noticed anything amiss about the depiction of his character. But in the brief appearance at the end, just to deliver one line, one word, the Leia zombie just came out so badly, that it was jarring to watch.

Yes, that was creepy, in both cases. I thought that Uncanny Valley Tarkin didn't really look that Good.

The bigger question is, why did we need a whole movie to explain one line in a movie... especially when the rebels in the one line movie were better equipped than they were in the new Hope, where all they had were some fighters. In this movie, they had a bunch of capital ships. (Yes, they had some of these ships in Return of the Jedi, but that was assumed to be after they spent years building their forces.)

All the Disney Star Wars movies are crap.

The ironic thing is, what made the original Star Wars great was that George Lucas was a rebel against the Studio System who did things his own way, and he created something truly unique.

The anthology movies and the Sequels are corporate board room produced crap.

"Hey, we just checked our market research, and found that everyone hates Rose Tico. Let's marginalize her in the next movie, after we made this big deal out of her in the last one."

Of course, why was Rose Tico included to start with? Because they wanted to break into the Chinese Market, so let's introduce an Asian character.

The Rise of Skywalker is entirely a "Let's take everything the toxic fan boys hated about "The Last Jedi" and try to undo it"

Star Trek beat them to it

 

[Bob Blaylock]

Is there any explanation finally given for the grave that Luke was standing in front of when first see him in The Force Awakens?

Um, yeah, if you had seen the Last Jedi, you'd know those graves were the people at his new Jedi School that Kylo Ren killed.

I don't think so at all. There appeared to be only one grave. And it was made clear that Luke vanished shortly after that incident, with it being suspected that he was looking for some long-lost Jedi Temple. The planet on which he is found, Ahch-To (geshundheit!), is the site of that Temple. I don't know that any movie makes it clear where Luke's Jedi school was, but I think it clearly was not on Ahch-To (geshundheit!), and that he did not wind up there until well after that incident. We did, at some point, see the remains of his single-seat X-Wing fighter, so I think it's also pretty safe to say that he did not transport the bodies of his dead students to Ahch-To (geshundheit!).

]I've spent the entire time, since somewhere through my first viewing of “The Force Awakens”, absolutely convinced that Rey had to be a descendant of Anaiken, and that Luke would most likely be revealed to have been her father.

Also, if that were the case, then Rey and Kylo's kind of romantic tensions would have been even creepier than it was.

If Luke was Rey's father, then that would make them first cousins, which, even in our culture, is about the closest familial relationship where a romantic relationship is not considered out of bounds.

And don't forget the romantic tension between Luke and Leia, and the triangle with them and Han, before it was revealed that Luke and Leia were siblings.

 

[JoeB131]

I don't think so at all. There appeared to be only one grave. And it was made clear that Luke vanished shortly after that incident, with it being suspected that he was looking for some long-lost Jedi Temple. The planet on which he is found, Ahch-To (geshundheit!), is the site of that Temple. I don't know that any movie makes it clear where Luke's Jedi school was, but I think it clearly was not on Ahch-To (geshundheit!), and that he did not wind up there until well after that incident. We did, at some point, see the remains of his single-seat X-Wing fighter, so I think it's also pretty safe to say that he did not transport the bodies of his dead students to Ahch-To (geshundheit!).

Lot's of speculating on stuff we didn't actually see.

The part of the problem here was that they never had an outline for three movies. Abrams handed it off to Johnson, who did his own hting.

If Luke was Rey's father, then that would make them first cousins, which, even in our culture, is about the closest familial relationship where a romantic relationship is not considered out of bounds.

And don't forget the romantic tension between Luke and Leia, and the triangle with them and Han, before it was revealed that Luke and Leia were siblings.

Yeah, okay, outside the red states, fucking your cousin is still considered creepy.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

I don't think so at all. There appeared to be only one grave.

Lot's of speculating on stuff we didn't actually see.

So, no answer on whose grave we saw, or even confirmation that it was, for sure, a grave. I take it, then, that there's nothing about any sort of lover, wife, friend, or other acquaintance who would have been with Luke on Ahch-To (geshundheit!), died there, and be buried there.

If Luke was Rey's father, then that would make them first cousins….

And don't forget the romantic tension between Luke and Leia, and the triangle with them and Han, before it was revealed that Luke and Leia were siblings.

Yeah, okay, outside the red states, f•••ing your cousin is still considered creepy.

I suppose it depends on just where you are in out culture, but it seems to me that romantic relations between first cousins are very close to the boundary; either just barely creepy, or just barely not creepy. But that does seem to be the point where our culture draws that line.

In any event, if Rey and Ben are first cousins, and don't know it, then the movies didn't go anywhere with them and their relationship that they didn't already go much further with Luke and Leia.

 

[JoeB131]

I suppose it depends on just where you are in out culture, but it seems to me that romantic relations between first cousins are very close to the boundary; either just barely creepy, or just barely not creepy. But that does seem to be the point where our culture draws that line.

In any event, if Rey and Ben are first cousins, and don't know it, then the movies didn't go anywhere with them and their relationship that they didn't already go much further with Luke and Leia.

i think she kissed him twice... and then not knowing they were related.

But, um, yeah, Good thing they didn't make Rey and Kylo cousins... that would have been weird. Not that making her a Palpatine was less weird.

I kind of wished they stuck with Johnson's original concept, that her parents were "nobodies", but anyone can access the force. I kind of thought this whole concept of the Force being passed down through bloodlines was kind of silly, given that the Jedi insisted on celibacy.

but if they really, really wanted to do something interesting, have it be revealed she was the granddaughter of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Then you could go into a whole sub-plot in a future Obi-Wan movie about how maybe he had doubts about the Jedi Lifestyle and took a wife for a while.

 

[Montrovant]

Warning- Spoilers ahead if you haven't seen this movie and can't see tried cliches coming a mile off.

Star Wars, the Rise of Skywalker. Hopefully the last Star Wars Movie.

How did Disney’s Billion Dollar investment go so horribly wrong?

So really, you have to start with how the first two "Sequel" movies messed everything up. The Force Awakens decided to essentially undo all the happy ending aspects of the Original Trilogy to set up the new Trilogy. This is really where it all went wrong because it rendered the OT meaningless. Luke gives up, Leia and Han don't stick together and their Emo kid goes bad. The Empire comes back in the form of the "New Order" and heck, they're even building a new Death Star because the first two worked out so well.

Then you get The Last Jedi, where Rian Johnson decided to stick a big old thumb in the eye of the hardcore fan base. They decide to tell us the force is nothing special, and engage in an absolutely silly plan that gets most of the rebels killed. And they waste about half the film with Fin hanging out with the human equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, Rose Tico. Oh, were you waiting for Snoke to be a big deal? Nope, they kill him off without telling us anything about him and where he came from. Fans hated it, complained about it and even organized a boycott of the next Stand-alone film, Solo.

JJ Abrams was brought back to fix the mess, and just ended up making a bigger mess… kind of like the third car in a three-car pileup.

So, let’s start with the silliness of it all. Turns out Emperor Sheev Palpatine/Darth Sideous isn’t quite as dead as we thought he was. (Monty Python voice “I’m not quite dead. I’m getting better!”) Yes, despite being thrown down a ten-mile chasm into a reactor on a station that then blew up, he's apparently alive and well on the Sith Planet, where he’s building a new fleet that he wants to give Darth Emo…. I’m sorry, Kylo Ren. All he has to do is find Rey. Maybe he cloned himself. Maybe Snoke was something he grew in a lab. Whatever.

What we get is a convoluted chase sequence to find a dagger to find a Wayfinder to find the lost planet of the Sith that he’s hiding on. Except they have to go on another couple of side quests to reprogram C3PO and rescue Chewbacca. This leads to a massive reveal at the end where Kylo and Rey fight a resurrected Palpatine and Kylo redeems himself before dying… um, wait, isn’t this all terribly familiar? Don’t worry about spoilers, kids, if you’ve seen past Star Wars movies, you’ve seen this one.

And this is the problem, I think with a franchise like this. Whether it be Doctor Who, Star Trek or Star Wars, you have to strike this fine balance between Fan Service and innovation. To much fan service, and you just get something that looks retreaded. Too much innovation, you risk making the fans upset that you are marring up their childhood memories.

Johnson went too far in “innovation” with Jedi. Abrams is going too far with "Fan Service, trying his very best to erase everything Johnson did to cheese off the fans. In the process, he made a movie where every story beat was kind of predictable.

All that said, let’s look at some of the characters, and how they messed them up. It's a pity, most of the actors are likable enough, and they are reading the awful dialog as best they can.

First, Princess/General Leia Organa… which has a problem in that Carrie Fisher died before filming started. Invoking the spirit of Ed Wood, they took some clips off the cutting room floor, used the Dark Arts and CGI and inserted her into parts of the movie. While not as unsettling as the insertion of the late Peter Cushing into Rogue one, they really don’t work that well.

Lando’s back… because they ran out of other characters that they haven’t killed off yet. Luke and Han’s ghosts show up to tell our heroes to not be as tired of this stuff as we are.

Then we have Rey. This is her story, mostly. The complaint about her is that she’s a Mary Sue, being perfect in every way. We have a montage of her Jedi-Training at the beginning of this one, which really should have happened two movies ago. Why does she need to train, she can do stuff we never saw other Jedis do? Literally. Like the new Jedi Healing Power- Nothing like pulling new powers out of your backside to make a story work. (Oddly, this magic power also appears in the Mandolorian.)

Oh, yeah (Spoilers), and we find out that Rey is Palpatine’s Granddaughter. Didn’t even know Palpy had a son or was even into chicks, but apparently, he was.

Kylo Ren/AKA Ben Solo/ Aka Darth Emo. – Well, wow, big surprise, this movie is about how he redeems himself, even getting a visit from Ghost Dad to say that he forgives him for the whole murder thing. Ugh.

Fans will be happy to see much, much less of Rose Tico. It’s like they realized the fans hated her with Jar-Jar Binks levels of contempt and decided to not use her that much. They did introduce two new female characters so we know that Fin and Poe have a case of the Not-Gays. I’m so bored with it I’m not even going to bother looking up the names of these characters.

The whole ending involves them leading an attack on Palpatine’s new fleet of Star Destroyers all equipped with Planet Killing Weapons because you can't have a Star Wars movie without planet-killing weapons. How these ships got built, who was crewing them… ah, who cares, it just means the First Order will have 100 times more ships and can conquer all the free people of the Galaxy who couldn't be bothered fighting them up until this point.

The movie was too predictable and too concerned with reminiscing, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

 

[Montrovant]

My biggest problem with Star Wars is that it just sucks
It exists to sell toys.

I’m no expert, but the writing and acting is noticeably bad. They have gotten some fantastic actors in Star Wars, but they are given childish dialogue and show no emotion.

I have to disagree. The original Trilogy were great movies. They revolutionized movies in not only how they were made, but how they were marketed and produced.

I have some kind words for the Prequels as well. They aren't as bad as everyone says.

The Sequels and Stand alone movies are garbage, though, made by Corporate Committee.

I will never understand putting the sequels below the prequels. The prequels are basically all bad. Jar-jar is probably the worst character I have ever seen in a movie and he was in all 3. The roger-roger battle bots were a constant annoyance. The acting was terrible and wooden from so many main characters. They were, simply, garbage.
The sequels are certainly flawed, but in almost every aspect superior to the prequels. A poor rehash of the original movies is better than the trash we got with the prequels.

 

[Montrovant]

One of our greatest actors of all time, Alec Guinness was humiliated at what he had to do in Star Wars.
Natalie Portman is an exceptional actress who was laughable in Star Wars
And the guy they got to play Anakin Skywalker may be the worst actor of all time.

Yes, Alec Guinness was so humiliated, he showed up for two sequels... and a big fat paycheck. And he was kind of a dick to fans.

While he did get an Oscar for "The River Kwai" he was also in some real crap, like "Murder by Death", a kind of unfunny comedy.

We'd have never heard of Natalie Portman if it wasn't for the Prequels.

I knew Portman long before the prequels from The Professional.

 

[JoeB131]

I will never understand putting the sequels below the prequels. The prequels are basically all bad. Jar-jar is probably the worst character I have ever seen in a movie and he was in all 3. The roger-roger battle bots were a constant annoyance. The acting was terrible and wooden from so many main characters. They were, simply, garbage.
The sequels are certainly flawed, but in almost every aspect superior to the prequels. A poor rehash of the original movies is better than the trash we got with the prequels.

Have to disagree. Yes, despite the silliness of the characters in a movie about space wizards made for children, there was an actual attempt to tell a story in the Prequels.

The Sequels narratively are a hot mess. There isn't an underlying story plan behind them, which is why you get this video game shit of the Emperor being brought back as a Super Boss, and don't worry, that Palpatine you saw in the OT/Prequels was just a clone, making all the story beats with him meaningless.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

I just got back from seeing this movie. Here's a very rare chance to see me mostly agreeing with JoeB131. I didn't dislike the movie as much as JoeB131 did, nor as much as most critics seem to, but it could definitely have been better. Most of JoeB131's specific criticisms, I agree with.

Usually, a deux ex machina is a poor way to end a story. Here, the story starts with something akin to a beginning-of-a-story counterpart to a deux ex machina, in bringing back Palpatine. We all saw him die in Return of the Jedi, and it just doesn't make sense to bring him back. (Similarly, they brought back Darth Maul in Solo, apparently with a semi-plausible explanation having been offered outside that movie as to how, after Maul was cut into two pieces, the upper piece survived, and went on to give up his Sith career and become some sort of organized crime lord.)

Anyway, having brought Palpatine back, once you accept that they brought him back in spite of it making no sense, his role in this story works.

I spent the previous two movies, being absolutely convinced that Rey was going to turn out to be a descendant of Anaikin Skywalker—that the Skywalker bloodline was uniquely powerful in The Force, and to be as powerful as she was, she had to be of that line. (After all, in The Force Awakens, without any training, and without anyone even telling her it was possible, she was able to do the Jedi Mind Trick, not just on any mere Storm Trooper, but on no one less than James Bond 007, version 6.0.) No, I now have to accept, that Rey is not of the Skywalker bloodline. I'm struggling to accept that the Palpatine line could have been as powerful as the Skywalker line, given all that they went to in the first (chronologically) trilogy to establish an objective measure of one's potential power in the Force, and Anaikin depicted as measuring off that scale far higher than anyone had ever measured before.

But here we have it. Rey is of the Palpatine bloodline, and not the Skywalker line, and she's as powerful as any Skywalker. We do finally get a reasonable explanation about who her parents were, and why the left her on Jakku; and it's not anything that I would have guessed, but in this story, as it unfolded, it makes sense.

I'm left wondering how Ben Solo (having cast away his Kylo Ren) identity, got from where he had been left apparently stranded on the Death Star 2.0 wreckage on Kef Bir, to Exegol to join Rey in confronting Palpatine.

And now that it's been revealed, by Luke's ghost, on Ahch To (gesundheit), that Leia was trained as a Jedi, I'm left wondering why we have only twice ever seen her doing stuff with The Force (that being how she apparently survived, in The Last Jedi, when she was blown into the vacuum of space, and how she used up her last reserve of life force to get through to Ben.)

As JoeB131 replied, when I asked about it earlier, no, there is no explanation for what appears to be a grave, that Luke is standing before when we first see him near the end of The Force Awakens. No confirmation, even, that that's what it was. When I first noticed that, I thought it had to be significant, and that before the story was over, we'd learn of some important character who was buried there. The writers must have meant something by it when they put it there, but then they forgot about it.

The title really doesn't make sense. As it turns out, at the start of this movie, there are only two remaining living members of the Skywalker bloodline, and both of them are dead before the movie is over, and neither of them really “rises” in any manner that is significant enough to justify making it part of the title.

Only after all the action is over, and the story, is over, does Rey claim the name for herself, after travelling to the abandoned home where Luke grew up on Tatooine, with the apparent intent to settle there. An old woman observes that there's been no one there for a very long time, and asks Rey her name, and with the Force ghosts of Luke and Leia looking on approvingly, she identifies herself as “Rey Skywalker.”

———

Am I the only one who, as The Force Awakens was nearing release, heard that Carrie Fisher's daughter would be in it, saw footage of Daisy Ridley in the promotional material, and that at first that that must be her? Ms. Ridley does look very much like she could be the daughter of Carrie Fisher, but no, she's not related at all.

Billie Lourd appeared in The Force Awakens as a character credited as “Lieutenant Connix”, a very minor character. I don't think she even had any spoken lines in that movie. Once you know what she looked like, you can see in that movie that she just happens to appear in almost every shot where Carrie Fisher appears, usually in the background, with a similar “donut on each side of the head” hairstyle to that which Carrie Fisher sported in most of the middle trilogy, but blonde instead of brunette. Her role in The Last Jedi was much bigger, but I didn't notice her at all in The Rise of Skywalker, but the Wikipedia says she was there. I think she looks less like Carrie Fisher than Ms. Ridley does.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

A bit more, not so much about the movie, but the experience of seeing in in 4DX.

First, it was expen$ive. I was going to wait 'til it came out on RedBox, but someone gave me $30 worth of gift cards for one of the local theater chains. The admission price was twenty one dollars and some cents, for a matinée showing, plus a three dollars and change “convenience fee”. By the time I bought a burger, fries, and a soft drink at the concession, I had used up my gift cards, and ended up spending about ten dollars of my own money.

RealD 3D is an included subset of 4DX. I found that on this viewing, in this theater, I experienced a lot more ghosting and double-vision that I usually have experienced. I don't know if it was because something was out of adjustment in this theater, or the supplied glasses wee of poorer quality, or something else. It was much worse on some of the various previews that showed before the movie, not so bad on some others, and tolerable in the movie itself.

I expected the 4DX experience to be more impressive than it turned out to be. It was kind of neat, but not really worth more than doubling the admission price, compared to a basic 2D showing. It did seem too me that there is room to considerably improve it; I felt like I was beta-testing a crude, early, experimental version.

As implemented in this viewing, there were four “practical effects” that I noticed.

The seat would vibrate, when the movie depicted considerable motion or vibrations. I think it was intended, with motion, to make me feel more like I was experiencing that motion, but that didn't rally work for me. More meaningfully, when there was something on the screen that you'd expect to cause rumbling noise and vibration, the vibrating seat made that seem more realistic.

There was a bright strobe light, somewhere behind me to my left, that would flash when events on the screen suggested that there should be a bright flash of light. In some cases, it helped, and in some, it just seemed odd; like when there was a flash of lightning on the right side of the screen, accompanied by this strobe to my left. I think to really work, there needed to be strobes both to the left and the right, and perhaps directly behind as well, and they needed to be better coordinated with the locations of flashes depicted on the screen.

At times, big clouds of fog would billow from the floor, to each side of the screen. It was apparently meant to echo clouds of smoke, fog, mist, or whatever on the screen, but it really didn't work.

The effect that seemed most worthwhile as actually the most subtle. Wind. It seems that the room was ventilated in such a manner as to allow the 4DX system to create wind in any direction through it, and this seemed, at times, to meaningfully enhance depictions of motion, wind, or disturbance on the screen. It wasn't perfect, though. I particularly took notice, in a scene where a loose strand of Rey's hair was blowing around, and thinking that there, I should feel the wind that was blowing it, but I didn't.