Star Trek vs. Star Wars (and a collection of memes)

Well, I’ve seen Episode IX, and here’s my review:

Spoiler: Don’t read until you’ve seen it yourself!

I think it was good. Better than VII and VIII, certainly. Not as good as Rogue One or Episodes I-III, but I still enjoyed it a lot.

The opening was amazing, I have to say. Really different to any opening in the others. Kylo discovers what looks like a Holocron (the first time such a device has been seen in the films) that shows him the way to Palpatine’s lair, where he has his first encounter with the man himself. Believing Palpatine to be as much of a threat to his power as Rey, Kylo threatens the Sith Lord:

“I killed Snoke, and I can kill you.”

To which Palpatine replies:

“I made Snoke.”

This was very close to a theory I had been formulating in the last couple of weeks, where I had been thinking that Snoke had simply been a placeholder as Palpatine’s apprentice, like Maul and Dooku has been, until he could get Kylo to join him. The only difference was that I envisioned that Snoke had been recruited from an alien species native to the unknown regions, whereas in actuality Palpatine made him, probably through a cloning facility.

To top it all, this awesome scene then closes with one of Palpatine’s best quotes from Episode III:

“The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities that some consider to be unnatural.”

I also enjoyed watching the search for Palpatine’s lair, with the discovery of the ancient Sith dagger and the translation of the Sith runes, and liked the symbolism of Kylo Ren being killed when Rey stabbed him during the duel on the moon of Endor where the Death Star wreckage crashed, and the act of healing him being used to resurrect Ben Solo, his light side persona - that was really good. Also I love the idea that Rey was Palpatine’s granddaughter rather than something more obvious like Luke’s daughter, as it further heightens Sheev’s evilness as we find that he had his son and daughter in law murdered in his attempts to find Rey and turn her to the Dark Side.

Of course the film does have its flaws as well - there were some purist moments (J.J. couldn’t resist adding yet more planet-killers into the mix, although at least they were Star Destroyers as opposed to a killer planet/star space station) and some woke moments (Rey being the one to kill off Palpatine, Kylo using all his life force to resurrect her e.t.c), but I was largely expecting these given that J.J. was coming back and that the previous two films in the trilogy had been about wokeness being the only weapon that could defeat the Sith once and for all as well.

I have to say Hux was used even less well in this one than in Episode VIII, with the moment where he claims that he was a spy for the Resistance all along just to get Kylo to fail, and then him being shot and replaced by a new First Order character all in the space of about five minutes being a pretty stupid end to his character.

Additionally, the new Sith Troopers that were revealed with so much pomp turned out to be hardly any better than the ordinary First Order Troopers (I was really hoping that they would have been actually very skilled troops and a deadly enemy to face like the Death Troopers had been in Rogue One, and it would have been great to have them press the advance and kill off some of the main characters in the segment where Palpatine used his Force lightning to destroy the Resistance fighters, so that it would really look like they would lose), and the Knights of Ren did very little apart from following Kylo around and then attacking him when he turned to the light, only to die from the Lightsaber Rey gave him.

At the end we then see Rey had a Lightsaber in her quarterstaff after all - why didn’t we have that at the beginning to add a bit more originality to the extremely bland Farce Awakens?

However, I did enjoy the more original parts of it (and Palpatine was great as always) so personally I think this is the best of the Sequel Trilogy (I know this isn’t saying much, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be).

Also I don’t know if any of you noticed that Rose was cut a lot from the film after her escapades in The Last Jedi, and that we see Luke’s Force Spirit raising his X-Wing from the depths as he encourages Rey to avoid making the same mistake he did, which was a bit of redemption to his character.

 

Just to add something Trek-oriented into the mix, have you seen this final trailer for Star Trek: Picard?


This series looks brilliant, and I'm really looking forward to when it (eventually) comes out on mainline TV - given that Discovery has just started airing over here in Britannia, I'm guessing Picard will be too at some point in the future.

 

I think I might just have a look at them

 

Darth Maul made that exact same face yet he ultimately lost

 

Maul's face was quite a bit more "scowly"

 

Spoiler: Endgame

 

Hey this picard show might be all right? Looks pretty cool.