Friday 31 July 2020

July 2020 Points Changes - Republic & Rebels

A couple of days ago I wrote about my first reactions to the July points changes for Empire and First Order and this time I want to look at a couple of the good guys instead: Republic and Rebels.


If you read my last blog you'll know that I'm coming at these changes from the context that I don't think much will change overall at the top end of the competitive metagame, and you'll also know that I thought both these factions were languishing at the bottom of the faction totem pole.


Have these points changes breathed new life into the Rebels and the Republic?  Is there hope in the galaxy again?


GALACTIC REPUBLIC

I don't understand what has happened to the Galactic Republic in this points change.  Already struggling to achieve anything in the game they've had all the stuff that was almost good receive a price increase, while all the things that were nowhere near good enough got a little bit of a discount but not enough to change the fact that they still aren't good enough.


Ric was ineffective at his old cost but went up as much as Whisper?  Ok

The Jedi were already reeling from the December points increase and the few good ones went up anyway?  Ok

But on the other hand, all those overcosted named Torrents with rubbish pilot abilities got cheaper.  I mean you still have no reason to play them but now you'll spend slightly longer deciding not to use them.

It's not all terrible news... Obi Wan and Plo didn't go up by a lot of points and the other Jedi didn't move in cost at all.  The Delta 7B title actually got cheaper for Jedi Knights and Ahsoka Tano, though I'm still not at all convinced that 52pts for a Delta 7B Jedi Knight compares well to a basic T-65 or T-70 at 40/42, even with the Force point.  And anything beefy based in ARCs, Y-Wings and Torrents still works fine it's just not really the metagame for bringing those sorts of beefy 1 Agility ships to and I feel like Resistance in particular does that sort of thing better.


The one chink of light that I want to talk about is Y-Wing Anakin.  The internet would have had you believe that he was meme-level bad in his Y-Wing but I've been tinkering with him recently and he's actually ok.  When Dengar popped up as a great wingman for Boba a little lightbulb pinged into existence above my head that said "if Dengar is good... why isn't Anakin good?" and that was the start of my experimentation.  I think you have to keep him cheap and not get caught up in trying to leverage his I6 into being an ace because he's just there to fling his Proton Torpedoes before he dies, but he's good at scaring aces away and trading for something big.


You have to have this in mind when choosing his wingmen as you know they're going to need to carry the mid-late game for you when Anakin is gone, but I was already having some decent success with Anakin at his old points and the 5pts discount surely helps people put him onto the table and finding that out for themselves.  Think of him as 'Jedi Redline'.

Oh, a little shout out for the R4-P astromech which I really like at 2pts and I think you'll wind up taking it quite a lot over the generic R4 astromech.  Anakin would have it for his Y-Wing, for instance.  And I do like the Blue Squadron Torrent with Dedicated at 27pts.  I think that's going to prove to be better than Tucker in a lot of squads.


But yeah, this points change is really rough on a faction that was already on its knees and Republic players have to really hope that the LAAT, V-Wing and ETA-Actis are really good when they arrive later this year.  Yoda may have chastened Luke for always having his eyes on the horizon but if I was a Republic player I'd be looking to the future too because there's not a lot else left for them in the present.  


REBELS

Not long ago the Rebel fleet was taking 2nd place at the World Championships but in 2020 it's fallen a long way very quickly.  This has been partly due to the points increases that chipped away at just how much you could fit into a Rebel Beef squad but I also thing wider changes in the metagame have been really unkind to Rebels.  The extremely cheap TIE/fos, Scyks, Vultures, Academy Pilots, Techno Union Bombers that we're seeing now have been a MASSIVE problem for the Rebels.  It just takes way too much energy to destroy these little bothersome generic ships, and while you're trying to push through all their green dice your B-Wings and Y-Wings and T-65s etc are taking much more damage in return because the one things Rebels don't have is a lot of high Agility ships.


I was sure we'd see a price cut on the Phoenix Squadron A-Wings to give Rebels their efficient little fighter but instead we've seen the Baron of the Empire leapfrog the A-Wings down to 28pts.

We didn't see the change I expected but instead we've got a raft of very unexpected discounts, especially on large ships, that don't really help the Rebel Beef archetype at all but may open the door to bringing the 'Pancakes' style of two large turreted ships back to the fore.

This, unfortunately, is where my expertise and knowledge fails me.  I've never been a big turrets player so I'm going to be the last person to work out the combination of pilots/upgrades/playstyle that best unlocks the potential for these squads.  Whether it's going to be the YT-2400 that breaks through of the VCX-100, or both, I'm not sure.  Will you want Ezra's cheaper force point in the Gunner seat, or Bistan's double tap attacks?  Do you need to run them light or can you max everything out and just 'run & gun' your way to victory?


I'm not really the right person to predict the future on this, although when I look at what's currently seeing play I do think all the 3 Agility swarms are potentially a really problematic gatekeeper against the return of large ships.  If you can't keep some of those little guns from shooting at you every turn your large base will melt from under you very rapidly.  My gut says it will be the YT-2400 that has the best chance of sniping ships from range and staying alive, but then again the Ghost is a much smaller investment to put onto the table in the first place.

In this regard: clouded, my vision of the future is.  But regardless of whether something like this actually turns out to be great or not, I think in the short term you're going to see a lot more players trying large bases out (both Rebels and Scum saw some big large base discounts) so it's something you need to prepare for.


Away from the big ship discounts in Rebels there were a couple of other changes that I liked.  E-Wings are almost cheap enough now and as one of the rare 3 Agility ships in the faction I think the Rogue Squadron in particular could be worth a try.  I'd actually flown Miranda Doni before the points change and been pleasantly surprised by how good her ability was so I think she's better than most people realise.  You don't need to load Miranda up with 80pts of torpedoes and bombs any more, just give her a decent support crew like K2-S0 and maybe a set of bombs and just let her do her thing - with her ability she's hard to kill if the enemy focuses on her but can actually deal serious damage if they don't.  The little cut to Sabine Wren's TIE Fighter is nice too, and I note she's one of the few ships that still wants Composure (she can fail her preposition and get Focus, then k-turn/bump/barrel roll after moving).


Auzitucks are still rubbish, though, and to be honest I'm fine with that.  They're the most boring ship in the game  so keep them on the shelf!

Wednesday 29 July 2020

July 2020 Points Changes - Empire & First Order

JULY POINTS UPDATE 


Over the next few blogs I'm going to look at how I expect the July points changes will play out for the various factions.  What changes, what doesn't, what hot new movers we can expect to see and what old stalwarts may leave us.  Today I'm going to look at Empire and First Order but I think before I launch in it would be helpful to set a little overall context of how I'm viewing the points changes as whole.


Broadly speaking I think these points changes will make only small changes to what we see doing well in tournaments.  I think there's some big discounts on unpopular ships that will move them the bottom of the pile up towards the middle of the pack, but in the top half of the metagame I don't see many significant hits to move top ships down and I don't see many significant reductions to move average ships up into the top.


Before the points I would have laid out the factions in three tiers like so, and at the moment I can't see any particular reasons why they won't continue to sit in this order for the next six months.  With that said, let's take a look at our first two factions....



GALACTIC EMPIRE

Let's start off with the big question: how are Imperial Aces looking?


Honestly, I think they're looking really good.  There are a couple of points increases to absorb and Whisper in particular got a well-deserved points hike, but there's still plenty of aces with plenty of choices and plenty of bid for me to be confident that Imperial Aces are going nowhere (though Whisper possibly becomes much less common as you pretty much have to choose between him and Vader).
  • Darth Vader: 0 points increase, will just switch back to FCS from Passive Sensors
  • Grand Inquisitor: 0 points increase
  • Soontir Fel: 1 point increase
  • Duchess: 3 points increase
  • Whisper: 5 points increase 

Those are your main aces pool to draw from although there are a few small drops in secondary ace picks like Major Vynder, Rexler Brath or Redline.  I can't see them pushing their way into mainline aces choices, though, and tbh I think you'll see 90% of aces running Vader/Soontir/Inquisitor which was already a popular and successful squad (the two I6 was becoming the go-to to beat Boba & Dengar) and only goes up by 1pt in this pass.


How are the rest of the Empire looking?  Well all the other successful Imperial squads are intact - nothing in either the Decimator or Reaper Sloane Swarm variants got a points increase, and although Inquisitors go up to 36pts their Passive Sensors came down to 2pts and it all nets off so the Jendon/Inquisitor squads are basically unchanged too.




So if there's something that you liked in Empire you've been given the thumbs up by FFG to carry on using it.  But what are the new options made available to us by points drops?

Baron of the Empire is really strong at 28 points and it leapfrogs the Phoenix Squadron A-Wing past the break point where you can bring 7 of them in a squad.  Perhaps the closest thing we've seen to date would be FOcho, but you're trading one body out of the swarm to give all your ships a linked Focus-Reposition action.  That's not a bad deal at all and I think it's going to be a top squad.


Named TIE Defenders came down a bit too, but I think it's probably not enough and I think Vessery and Ryad both needed to drop below 80pts like Rexler did.  They're getting closer to where they should be but I find it hard to spend that many points on 3 red dice - you're just not getting the damage output you really need to make any headway into the top squads.

SUMMARY

Overall I think the Empire can be really happy with this points update.  They were in an incredibly strong position beforehand and to get away with the whole points pass by only really taking a meaningful hit on Whisper is incredible (I can't believe Grand Inquisitor was allowed to stay at 52).  Imperial Aces, Admiral Sloane and Colonel Jendon all remain really powerful and proven routes to victory and they're going nowhere for another six months.  They're all strong and well-rounded squad that should be well positioned for dealing with any new metagame upstarts trying to seize control.

If anything, the disappointment is more that things haven't been shaken up a bit more and there's so little reason to try anything new because all the old ways still work fine.


FIRST ORDER

The First Order have been close to breaking through for a while now.  The way I think about the faction is that they've probably more A-Tier pilots than anybody else but it's arguable that they don't really have a single pilot who is 'S-Tier' in the way that Scum has Boba, the Empire has its aces or the Separatists have their droid swarms.  Kylo comes closest to that and is knocking on the door of S-Tier but I'd put him just slightly below the really best pilots, in much the same way Luke is just that little cut below for the Rebels.


Because of this the First Order can have a bewildering array of squad archetypes that seem to just pop up seemingly at random to produce a good tournament result here or there - one week it will be Triple Silencers, the next week it will be FOcho, the next week it will Kylo & Vonreg, then a week later a bunch of TIE/sfs.  It's a faction with so many viable underdog squads who are good enough to upset the odds against better opponents now and then, but also not good enough to keep doing it consistently.

Does that change in this round of points changes?  The short answer is that I don't think it does, although the First Order certainly does get a bit of help here and there.

The main points changes land in the TIE/ba archetype, which all come down a bit:
  • Major Vonreg: -2 points
  • Holo: -1 point
  • Ember: -4 points
  • First Order Provocateur: -4 points

All four of these pilots were pretty good but just a bit too expensive and all these points drops are welcome, though I'm especially excited about the First Order Provocateur (we'll get to him in a minute).  With Imperial Aces being pruned back slightly in this points change I think the balance shifts to be a little more even between Imperial and First Order aces.  Vonreg is a natural foil for Kylo Ren, hunting the Initiative 6 targets who will hunt Kylo, and then it's just a matter of finding the right ship or ships to round out the squad and I'll be trying both Quickdraw and an Upsilon Shuttle in that role.


The First Order Provocateur (or FOP to his friends) is a ship that I think has been flying under the radar and a whopping -4pts price cut could be just what was required to push these guys right to the top of the pecking order.  Regular readers will remember that the FOP came out of my generic efficiency analysis surprisingly strongly, especially when you take the counterintuitive decision to Strain them and get a Target Lock for maximum damage.  It turns out that Strain doesn't hurt you as much as you'd think and the FOP is a real machine gun of a ship!  A few of us have already been exploring squads like '3x FOP & Quickdraw' or '3x FOP & Outmaneuver Avenger' but with this massive price cut I think there's an obvious first stop for the FOP...


The other ship in First Order to get a really significant price cut was the Seinar-Jaemus Engineer (SJE) in the I1 TIE Silencer, which had a really decent -3pts taken off, dropping them below the break point where you can play four of them.  Make no bones about it, people will try and play four SJEs.  It won't be good but people will try.  Even at 48pts I think the SJE represents a really poor amount of damage output and while they'll be really whizzy and annoying to grind down I don't think they're actually going to achieve very much in their time on the table.  If you want to play four Silencers you should probably still be playing four StarVipers instead!

Picking up some sideways price cuts are the TIE/sf, either through cheaper Special Forces Gunner or cheaper Passive Sensors and missiles.  I'm just not a fan of the TIE/sf in the current metagame because it doesn't have 3 Agility, and these welcome discounts don't really change that for me.  I think the TIE/sf swarms will continue to hang around roughly where they are now in the metagame.


I also really like Captain Phasma in her TIE/sf, but I feel like that's another story for another time!

SUMMARY

The First Order were looking for something genuinely S-Tier to put them up with the big boys and I don't think this change has given them that.  But even if they're still not quite at the top I think the gap is definitely closing and the First Order are still underdogs but I think they're going to overturn those odds a bit more often than they used to.    


And just as importantly it's a good and fun time to be a First Order player.  All the ships are good and from a creative squadbuilding point of view it's actually nice to not have a couple of overpowered pieces that everything has to hinge off.  With the Xi shuttle just around the corner I can definitely see myself enjoying the next six months in this faction!

Sunday 26 July 2020

Don't forget to like, favourite and subscribe!

THANKYOU!

So somewhere during lockdown and the rewatch-athon blogs I passed an incredible milestone without even realising it was coming.


I've had over ONE MILLION views from all you wonderful readers!  That's ridiculous!!!

It's not something I'd ever expected or set out to achieve, I just clicked a page on my stat tracking last week and found I was at 1,014,000 already and I wanted to thank everyone who has ducked into my blog for a sneaky read or two over the last four years*.  I've never chased any of this and I write for myself almost as a form of meditation, but I am truly staggered to have hit a milestone like this and I appreciate all the attention you've given me.

For those interested: my most popular hit-generating blogs have by far been the Buying Guides, but aside from those the biggest blogs was actually pretty much tied between how to loadout ARC-170s back in first edition, and my attempts to peer behind the curtain into the inner workings of FFG earlier this year.


OTHER NEWS

Because there's actually not been a lot to write a proper full length blog about during lockdown - no tournaments, metagame shifts or new products to write about - I've joined the digital revolution and you can now also find me on Instagram as sotl_xwing.  


Instagram is a great platform for sharing little nuggets of ideas, squad lists, repaints and the like that don't really warrant a full blog - at the moment you'll mostly find me singing the praises of Captain Phasma as the best named TIE/sf pilot.


And the other thing that changed during lockdown was that as the world ended around me the lone wolf lifestyle finally got a bit too lonely and I joined a team: the Sith Takers based out of Element Games in Stockport.  You may well already be familiar with the Sith Takers due to their fantastic Snap Shots podcast or their Twitch channel.  You may even have played in some of the Sith Takers cups, leagues or knock outs arranged by Ben Hibbert during lockdown.  With some actual X-Wing news hopefully in the horizon keep your eyes and ears peeled for more content coming out of the Sith Takers soon, and you may even find your friendly neighbourhood Stay On The Leader popping in on the team's channels now and then.

Thanks once again for all those million views and I trust that I'll be back soon with actual X-Wing content to blog about (and you can find me in Instagram until then).  In the meantime stay safe, wear a mask, obey the rules, look after each other, and don't forget to fly casual as often as you can!


* Just to set the record straight because it has been brought up before: despite Google's best efforts to persuade me otherwise you won't find any adverts scattered around my blog and I've never monetised a single one of your clicks.  You won't find me on Patreon trying to raise funds either.  That's absolutely not a knock on anybody who does have a Patreon, it's just not what I'm doing this for and I run a cheap operation anyway - I only need a keyboard and wifi!


Friday 24 July 2020

Star Wars Lockdown Rewatch-athon: The Sequels

It's October 2012.  Lance Armstrong is outed as a cheat and sponsors abandon him in droves.  Boosted by his unexpected cameo along Her Royal Highness at the London Olympics, Daniel Craig's new outing as 007 smashes box office records in the UK.  Malala Yousafzai is gunned down by the Taliban.  Justin Timberlake marries Jessica Biel.  Walt Disney acquires the rights to the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas for $4 billion.



Only one of these images is uplifting.

Three years later, it's October 2015 and the official trailer for Disney's Star Wars: The Force Awakens lands on the internet.....  


I am six years old again: I'm grinning from ear to ear and the hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end.  I book twenty tickets for midnight of the opening night.


THE FORCE AWAKENS

I will never not want to watch The Force Awakens.  It is, hands-down and with very little hesitation, not just my favourite Star Wars film but my favourite film, period.


If you're not already a fan of The Force Awakens I'm not going to try and win you round because this discussion has circled round and round the internet a million times already, don't worry.  If you've followed me through all of my Rewatch-athon reviews you'll already know that I've been siding with the films that entertained me over those that laid out the Star Wars universe and lore in great and satisfying depth or detail.  I loved the sense of humour in A New Hope over the way The Phantom Menace veered between slapstick pratfalls and deadpan seriousness. I was swept up by the excitement of Rogue One's battle scenes over the breathless but pointless action of Attack of the Clones.  And even in the great Empire Strikes Back it was the relationships between the lead characters that had me hooked rather than learning more about the nature of the Force.


Yes, I hear all those people who just call it a rehash of A New Hope and I agree a little bit, at least superficially (although I think it's actually a pretty different film when you dig under the surface).  I really wish that Starkiller Base hadn't been quite such an obvious Death Star clone, or that JJ Abrams hadn't so clearly put the Rathtars in just to tick the Indiana Jones/rolling ball thing off his bucket list.  But I can shrug all those annoyances off because that's not what I'm into Star Wars for.

Fun.  Excitement.  Characters.  The Force Awakens delivers all these things to me in spades.


Rey, Kylo and Finn would easily all fit within my top five Star Wars characters (at least the version of Finn that we meet in The Force Awakens).  "He's just a rubbish Darth Vader" the internet loved to say about Kylo, to which I thought 'yes, that's the point'.  He's not ready but he's been pressured into playing a part that doesn't fit him, to be a figurehead for the First Order even though he knows deep down that the boots are too big for him to fill.  He's conflicted and scared and weak and only knows how to cover it up by hiding behind a mask and lashing out with rage.  That's way more interesting  to me than Darth Vader was in A New Hope.


Finn is the stormtrooper who only wants to run and hide but whose character arc sees him finding something worth standing and fighting for - Rey - even against incredible odds.  Finn's just a grunt who only knows how to follow orders, but when he finds himself the only thing between Kylo Ren and Rey then he's going to grab that lightsaber and go down swinging even though he knows it's certain death.


And Rey... there's something about Rey I can't identify that just made her so compelling as a character.  There's a confidence and a poise to her that wasn't there for Luke the whiny farmboy in A New Hope and it really works for me.  Rey leads when Luke would follow, and although I know a lot of the internet hated her 'Mary Sue' traits of turning out to be good at everything I always saw that as being a mark of just how special this girl from Jakku was going to be.  She was always a somebody.  But also in that performance, and you can see from Daisy Ridley's audition tape that they were casting for it, there's so much pure emotion... Rey gets terrified, furious, wondrous, frustrated - she's a real person, a rounded character not the plot device that the 'Mary Sue' moniker makes out.


And the Millenium Falcon.  And Han and Chewie back together.  And BB-8 is great fun.  Oh, and "It's the Resistance".  I like the design on all the First Order stuff, I like Captain Phasma, I even like General Hux regardless of how little he's in it, we're given enough to see how he and Kylo and being played off against each other.  It's a funny movie, it's an exciting movie, and I love the characters both old and new.

Fun.  Excitement.  Characters.


The Empire Strikes Back is definitely the better film.  But this one is my favourite.

Force Rating: 9/10


THE LAST JEDI

Unfortunately an unexpected side effect of being possibly the world's #1 fan of The Force Awakens is that I detested The Last Jedi all the more as it took all the things that I loved about the first film and threw them away.  All the characters took immediate turns for the worse - Finn pratfalled his way into this film squirting gunk only to be shunted off into a sidequest to repeat his character arc from The Force Awakens, Rey's emotional contortions are left behind as she dons the trademark deadpan Jedi straight face from Attack of the Clones and Kylo spends half the film channeling Jacob from Twilight.  Don't even get me started on this version of Luke Skywalker that we're given, I think Mark Hamill and I are on the same team there.

Coming into this rewatch I was fully ready to hand out a -2/10 Force Rating to The Last Jedi.

In the cinema I pretty much noped out of The Last Jedi the second this happened.
Then, as sat there watching The Last Jedi and mentally composng this blog about how much I love The Force Awakens, I realised I'd been really unfair to the film every other time I'd watched it.  I was going to say something along the lines of 'don't judge it for the film you wanted it to be, judge it for the film that it is'... and I had certainly not been doing that for The Last Jedi.

So this time I watched it with new eyes.


Yes, my boy Finn gets shafted with his character arc but at least in this film Poe actually gets to have a character - he gets personality flaws and learns lessons and everything.  Yes, all of the potential of Rey's origin apparently gets blown off as she's a 'nobody', and the arc of her training at the hands of Luke doesn't go the way I may have wanted but it is a pretty satisfying arc, even if it's not the arc I wanted.  Yes, Kylo flip-flops his way annoyingly through the whole film trying to make you guess which side he'll land on but ultimately his line of letting the past die is a great one.  It's not an ethos I want to hear because I'm a Star Wars fan and I don't want the past to die, I want it to be recycled and respun endlessly to entertain me... but he's probably got a point.


And so the Holdo Maneuver was stupid, but so was Starkiller Base and I overlooked that.  And the Porgs are a bit daft and hokey but so were the Rathtars and I overlooked that.  Phasma comes and goes in two seconds but I overlooked "I'm in charge now Phasma, I'm in charge!".  And I know people seem to hate the crank call at the start but I like funny things and I thought it was funny.


I still can't say that I like The Last Jedi because so many things do grate with me, and I still feel like I got my chain yanked a few too many times in the name of subverting my expectations.  But at least on this rewatch I could see what it was trying to do even if I didn't agree with it, and I don't feel quite so personally aggrieved by the fact it didn't all play out the way I wanted it to.

Force Rating: 6/10




RISE OF SKYWALKER

From my rewatch review of Solo....
"I often think that modern Star Wars fans can be separated into two distinct types: there's those who want love the Star Wars universe and want to see how that develops and how all the pieces and characters and events fit together, and then there's those who have the simpler motivation of simply wanting to be swept up and entertained by a space adventure for a couple of hours.  I think Solo probably serves the second group pretty well but massively lets down the first group."
That right there is my capsule review of Rise Of Skywalker.  


If you wanted to know how the world of Star Wars had unfolded, how all the pieces fell into place and made sense of the whole.  If you valued world-building or well constructed plotting.  If you wanted a coherent final chapter to the story told in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi... then my god Rise of Skywalker is a total shitshow.


Nothing makes one iota of sense.  A secret world of the Sith we've never heard about before.  There's only two ways to find it, which we'd never heard about before.  The Emperor is back from certain death, which we'd never heard about before.  They can build hundreds of Star Destroyers with superlasers now, which we've never heard about before.  Kylo and Rey are a 'diad' in the Force, which we've never heard about before.  You can 'lightspeed skip' from one random CGI environment to another and be followed by TIE Fighters in each jump, which we've never heard about before.  Rey is the daughter of Palpatine's son, who we'd never heard about before.  Jedi can heal things and bring people back to life, which (arguably) we've never heard about before.  There's a handy Sith dagger owned by an agent of the Emperor, who we'd never heard about before, that will point to exactly where the Emperor hid his Sith Holocron on the shattered remains of the Death Star so long as your YT-1300 freighter happens to crash in exactly the right spot on the coastline, which we'd never heard about before.

Buuuuuuuuullllllllllllllllllllllllllllllshit.


But if you like fun.  And action.  And characters....

I actually like Rise of Skywalker quite a lot.  I have to turn off a pretty big part of my brain that is screaming at me how much of this is wrong.  And on this rewatch-athon occasion that part of my brain was also physically manifest next to me on the sofa by my wife, who kept asking me why things were happening that had nothing to do with any of the films we'd just watched.


But it IS funny.  The one bit where Threepio gives the crew his Tourist's Guide to Pasaana and then wonders why they're all looking at him is funnier than pretty much the whole of The Last Jedi.  The speedy wit of The Force Awakens was something I really missed in the second film and it's back with a vengeance in Rise of Skywalker.


And it IS exciting.  Almost too much so, in fact, the film starts off at breakneck speed and never really slows down for its mammoth runtime.  But it does also mean that the almost three hours seem to whizz past, from chase to fight to chase to fight... I certainly shovelled my way through a fair amount of popcorn when I was in my cinema seat.


And it IS full of characters.  The gang is all together for this film, pretty much for the first time in the whole series, and it's joyous to have them all bouncing off each other again.  Rey gets to be angry and sad and scared and have emotions again, allowing her to be the heart of the movie that she was in Force Awakens.  Threepio steals scenes left right and centre whenever he's thrown a line, there's a satisfying end to Kylo/Ben's story arc even if the kiss is unnecessary, the Finn and Poe team is back together.  I loved these guys in The Force Awakens and I thought a major mistake of The Last Jedi was splitting everyone up just as I was enjoying them... I get them back in Rise of Skywalker and I'm happy. 


And maybe Rey is a Skywalker after all.  A line that felt really forced on every other watch made a bit more sense this time.  She never had a mother or father in her life and Luke and Leia have filled that gap for her.  That's a story that's been told and accepted many times before in other films and TV shows and on this rewatch that little piece really fell into place for me.  

Rey can be a Skywalker if she wants to be, that's fine by me.


Oh, Rise of Skywalker is so much bullshit.  But I enjoyed the ride.

Force Rating: 7/10




WRAPPING UP

This rewatch-athon has taught me something: I love Star Wars even more than I realised.  Something about watching them back to back, and with my wife's casual eyes next to me, has helped me to see some of the flaws I'd been hung up about in a different light.


Probably the only downright BAD Star Wars film is Attack of the Clones and aside from the peerless The Empire Strikes Back the others all have a real mix of flaws and strengths.  Watching and enjoying these films is really just about whether you're prepared to go into them with an open mind and to try and enjoy them for what they are rather than get stuck on what they're not, and I think that's especially true when you're a hardcore Star Wars fan like so many of us X-Wing players are.

We could all have written a better ending to the series than Rise of Skywalker... and yet they would all have been different from each other.  Our vision of what Star Wars is, what we enjoy about it, what we want from it, is probably too uniquely personal because we're all so invested in it.

Enjoy the films that are there for what they are - I think they're pretty darn good!



Before I sign off, I'm going to indulge a few final rankings and ratings:

OFFICIAL SOTL REWATCH-ATHON FORCE RATINGS
  • The Phantom Menace - 4/10
  • Attack of the Clones - 2/10
  • Revenge of the Sith - 5/10
  • Solo - 6/10
  • Rogue One - 9/10
  • A New Hope - 8/10
  • The Empire Strikes Back - 10/10
  • Return of the Jedi - 7/10
  • The Force Awakens - 9/10
  • The Last Jedi - 6/10
  • Rise of Skywalker - 7/10

MY PERSONAL PODIUM (it's my party and I'll cry if I want to)
  1. The Force Awakens
  2. The Empire Strikes Back
  3. Rogue One

FAVOURITE CHARACTERS
  1. Director Krennic
  2. Kylo Ren
  3. Rey
  4. Han Solo
  5. Luke Skywalker 
Honourable Mention: Finn in The Force Awakens