Ep. 017 – New Year’s Goals and Rise of Skywalker Review

Unknown Speaker 0:00
Health,

Suburban Folk 0:00
travel finance, parenting and entertainment. This is the Suburban Folk podcast. I’m looking for

Unknown Speaker 0:07
some real talk. Some real, folks.

Suburban Folk 0:10
Welcome to the Suburban Folk podcast. I’m your host, Greg. Today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the new year for the podcast as well as personally. And as promised from our last episode, Brandon, Eric and myself got a chance to see the new Star Wars movie rise of Skywalker. We all took a little bit of time to present our review. And I’m going to play those reviews at the end of the episode. But I wanted to start with this podcast. I started at the very end of August. So we’ve been going for about four months now. And like any podcast, we’re starting to find our voice our niche. And what I’ve encouraged listeners, especially folks that have been with us since the beginning to take from the podcast is each guests that we have is very impressive in the knowledge that they bringing to the table for the topic that we’re discussing, as well as just their drive to continue to get better, and continue to be just interesting people. I will say for myself from the triathlon episode to the finance episode that we’ve done, not only are the topics at hand very interesting and informative for me, but when we start to talk about other interests, for example, JC in challenging himself to read a number of books encouraged me to get back into getting as many books as I possibly can, so that I am continually learning and have more interesting subjects to talk about. And as we have these interviews, I can present other perspectives as we’re going through the topic at hand. Obviously, for something like a triathlon, somebody that’s completed an Iron Man, there is on its face a very impressive feat that’s able to be under Taken. But even from that conversation, I had some offline discussions about picking up a marathon again, as I’ve talked about in a few episodes, and trying to have a personal record there, which I’m currently pursuing. Interestingly enough, my first marathon was 10 years ago. So it is really made me think about where I was 10 years ago to where I am now. And again, how my goals have changed and how I continue to challenge myself. So I think that is the theme of this podcast is how can you challenge yourself in the different items that I’ve put together saying people living in suburbia in general have to deal with whether it’s your personal finances because like it or not, you need to be able to deal with those staying in shape. Now, that’s not necessarily something you have to do. But with all the information coming out on dieting, healthy dieting exercise, sizes making sure that you stay with some sort of an exercise regimen but also don’t get burnt out on a particular regimen. And also just understanding that there are people out there living similar lives to yourself that are again continuing to challenge themselves to get better. That’s how these topics come together. And I think our cohesive one thing that’s top of mine from a recent review of the podcast that was done, the gentleman said that he had a note for our financial podcast that it was quote over his head. And I know especially for something like personal finances, it is easy to have your eyes gloss over and you don’t want to pay attention to those details, but it is something that we all have to deal with. And it’s baby steps. Hopefully with our episodes. We are presenting these things for folks that are completely new to the topics so they can at least whet their appetite. tight and then go get books on the topic to dig in further. or wherever else they need to get resources, maybe ask a friend that knows more information about it. Or we would really love to hear from folks about what other questions we didn’t answer I would be happy to do follow up episode. Most of the guests that we’ve had so far have been very open to either coming back on for another episode to answer more questions, or even just sending their information or sending emails over to them so that they can give information back and then I can give those answers on air. Also, reminder that the website Suburban folk.com I have a section that gives the contact information for most of our guests so you can go there and get to those guests directly. Or again, from that page, my email is there. Reminder, it’s Greg at Suburban Folk calm, and we can get you to any of the experts that we’ve had on the show so far. So they can give you advice on whatever you find your personal situation to be New Year’s resolutions for the podcast. I’ve said a couple times in some episodes that certain social media sites are new to me. I’m in the millennial class, but I am definitely an old soul millennial who never really got onto much of social media, but it’s definitely something to be used as a compliment to the podcast Show. I’m primarily on Twitter. So again, if folks haven’t found Suburban Folk on social media, that’s probably the most active place. As far as updates and show notifications. We are on Facebook and also Instagram. I’ve continually made fun of myself with Instagram just because you know, you have to put a picture or a video out in order to have a post. So I try to keep those as interesting as I can, but it’s not quite frankly as easy as just Putting in the update for a new show for people to go and listen to. And like I mentioned, we do have a companion website that has all of the places that you can go to listen to the podcast, some additional information in the show notes. And we are also working on transcriptions of the shows. So if you are in the middle of an episode, and there’s a piece of information that you want to pick out, you actually can go to the page and there will be a transcription at the very bottom of that episode, so that you can look to see if there’s more information that you need for that particular show. And it also helps just for us to be searchable on websites. So that is something that I’m happy that we’re working towards adding I might add, it’s not added to every single show yet, but we’re working on getting that completed. As far as other goals for the show are concerned. Of course. We want to continue to have guests That, like past guests are inspiring for the topic that they are subject matter experts for, as well as their work ethic and just their overall perspective of the world so that I can continue to be inspired, and hopefully folks that are listening can be inspired to continue to improve in their day to day life. As far as listenership is concerned, we’re currently averaging about 50 downloads per episode. So of course, we would like to increase that as much as we can. I am going to link to our site, a PayPal donation page, where folks can go and donate to the show. every dollar that does get donated, I will be using either for advertising on other podcasts or advertising on social media just to continue to get the word out about the show and hopefully increase the listenership. So if you are interested in donating Go to Suburban folk.com. If you look on the right hand side of the page, you’ll see a Donate button. And you should be able to donate there using any major credit card. I think most folks are pretty familiar with PayPal. We also use affiliate links, which I think is worth making sure people know what that is. So for example, if you see Amazon links for books, or even our first episode, all of the tool albums, if you click on those, and you do actually purchase the item that we are posting on our page, I get a little bit of a kickback there, which again, will help in advertising the show and getting it out to more folks. So if you’ve already done that, that is much appreciated. And we are looking for some other ways to again, make a little bit of revenue so that we can pay for some advertising and just grow the show a little bit more. Because the more we grow, the more guests we can get and the more feedback we can get from folks to continue to refine and make the show better. So that really is all the goals and hopefully that gives a sense of how the different episodes we have come together to be cohesive. For suburban life, folks, again, how can we improve in these activities that for most of us living out in suburbia, have to deal with on a daily basis, personal finance. Health considerations, of course, we throw in some entertainment, that’s just fun to do. But I’m trying to keep it with very high level things like Star Wars that everybody has at least some frame of reference for den parenting, whether you’re planning on having kids have young kids like myself, or even can learn from folks that have older kids. Other preview, I really want to do an episode around college savings. We hit it a little bit with our personal finances, but I really want to go into Deep with folks that are like me have been out of school for over a decade, and whether or not they still have student loans and are dealing with student loans to folks that have kids that are close to college age, what lessons learned Do they have from the student loan crisis that they’re going to us to consider what their kids should pick when they are getting ready to go to college? Or again, even for my age, our people saving for that? And then even what were the strategies did folks actually make it out of the student debt, financial issues without much issue and how did they do that? What were their considerations? I think that’ll be a very interesting topic because I’m not so sure that the broad brush picture that you read about of everybody’s got massive loans and there was no way to avoid them is necessarily the case for all people. And it hopefully will help with some extra considerations, again, for folks that are either considering for their children, maybe are in debt at this point and gotta figure out how to prioritize.

Or somewhere in between that their kids are real close to picking a school, and what considerations did they have. Another topic that I haven’t gotten a chance to have as many episodes on is travel. Way back, my wife, Angie, and I did a couple episodes on Walt Disney World, which was a seminal vacation for us because it turns out she’s a huge Disney fan, which I don’t think I necessarily knew, until she started planning for the vacation. But that’s the only travel episode that we have done. We want to do a lot more episodes on travel. So be looking for that at the beginning of this year. And also on a personal note, I’m happy to say that now that our kids are have a where they can at least tolerate some flights and have a little bit better attention span that traveling isn’t quite such an undertaking. We’ve got a pretty good vacation schedule ourselves this year that I’m sure I’ll report on in some manner once we get to those. But in getting ready for more travel in the future, I’m really interested in getting folks that are already well traveled on the show for us to consider where our next vacation might be, as well as for you all, maybe there’ll be some places that you haven’t considered before. That you will be considering and that’ll be definitely within the US as well as abroad. For example, I have an interview next week with a gentleman who wrote a book around all the different places that have historical significance with Coca Cola. But a lot of that, of course, is in the deep south, which is an area of the country I have not really been to all that much. So I’m excited to see what I can take away from From his experiences and his descriptions, I’ll be it all around Coca Cola, which is is a very interesting lens to come at it from. But that should give me at least a starting point of when I make the trip down what, what sites I should be going to see. So again, a number of episodes to come on that. And then finally, around DIY, it’s something that we put on our website. And I’ve not really gotten into episodes around when you have house issues, how are you solving them? What tools can you use? What resources can you use? I just finished up an interview with a guy that is very handy from the from how he talks about tackling his home projects and give some good information for those that may be new to home renovation or just fixing things that break What kind of tools to get, how much money to spend on what type of tools, what kind of projects maybe are more easily taxable than others, maybe when you do need to call in somebody, and in that particular episode, we’ve been talking about other projects that he has undertaken that are really really cool and undoubtedly above my expertise for DIY renovations or fixes around the house. So hopefully we have repeat episodes with him his name is john properIy. Because we only scratch the surface it sounds like of the the different projects that he has done and super interesting guy, so that will be coming as well. And another way that will really beef up all of our episodes. So I’ll end with if you You are a listener that this is the first episode that you’re listening to, I would definitely encourage you to go back and listen to other episodes. If you are just interested in a particular topic that we have on our website, they are sorted by those topics. So you don’t have to, you know, sort through all the episodes to find what you want to listen to. But again, consider what I’m saying for the cohesiveness of the topics that we discuss. They all center around, learning new things, finding ways to do things better, or pick up a new skill or activity. Because most of what we talk about would affect your day to day life. And presumably, if you see the title of the show Suburban Folk, you either grew up in suburbia or currently live in suburbia. So I would imagine these are items, whether you like it or not that you are dealing with so happy new year again. Thank you So much for folks that have been listening. Now to our review of rise of Skywalker, Brandon, Eric and I had a chance to watch the movie, and we all recorded our own separate reviews. From our last episode, Brandon seems to be more positive on the Disney version of Star Wars, Eric is significantly more skeptical. So we’ll start with Brandon’s critique, and then get into Eric’s critique. Interestingly enough, both of them pick out different details in what they liked and didn’t like, and then I’ll wrap it up with some high level thoughts as a guy that doesn’t go quite as deep into Star Wars as they both do. Brandon is first

Unknown Speaker 16:43
I watched Star Wars episode nine rise of Skywalker on the day it came out hit the 9am show and I really enjoyed it. Overall it is super fast paced. I don’t recommend going to the bathroom. any point during this movie just because it is so it’s very cutting cuts from scene to scene to scene and there’s they crammed a lot in there. Honestly, they probably could have cut this thing up into into two separate movies with the amount of locations and storylines that all all fit in together. So we’ll start off right from the top a couple things that I really noticed, they did introduce a scythe wayfinder, which was a map to find the planet that the Emperor Palpatine was on, which is pretty cool because it kind of throws back to the holocrons that were mentioned in throughout the legend, Star Wars Legends and Star Wars Expanded Universe and all that stuff. It was cool to see Billy Dee he did get a little creepy at the end. I don’t know he just sound a little creepy with when he was talking to the ex Stormtrooper there. And I’m so go to the very end. I’m just going through a whole bunch of notes. I have when she re was asked by a woman on tattooing what her name was. She says Ray and she says Ray Whoa, Ray Skywalker looks over at the force ghosts of Luke and Lana. It’s I mean, it’s a little predictable, but it does give some finality to it that she’s deciding her fate and, and all that. The big reveal in the movie was that Ray was in fact palpa teens, granddaughter. So it was pretty cool to learn that it does open itself up to some potential for additional movies or shows or books or comic books about how did Palpatine have a family who was his family and how did how did they hide re on Jakku so there was lots of force lightning not only from the Emperor, which he used to to decimate the resistance fleet, but also from array so it was pretty rad to see her bust out some force lightning That was that was very cool. They do tell you who Ray’s parents are but not so much about how they could be here. Paris. I think I said like I said, there’s a lot of unanswered questions. I think they could have taken a bit more time to dive into explain that the Sif our religion, not just to Darkseid users because there was a little confusion for me is where those actual people in the temple with Palpatine were they force ghosts of Sith of the past? I don’t know. I think this is the this is the first time there was a same sex kiss in the Star Wars universe of at least movies. It was at the end with two of the resistance fighters. I think a lot of people thought it was going to be Poe and Finn that were going to kiss there was definitely a bromance happening between them. Palpatine was a little awkward with how he was being ferried around by this giant robotic arm in his temper. kind of reminded me of the Borg Queen from one of the Star Trek next generation movies. I like that they introduce a new lightsaber color to the movie and the and re bust out a yellow lightsaber, which is not something that’s been seen in the movies before. It has been in the Clone Wars and the video games and potentially rebels. I know Soca tonic, who was Anna kins paddle one actually changed to yellow to white lightsabers after she left the Jedi Order. And I’m trying to remember if Clone Wars they showed a color other than blue, green and purple Of course purple for Mace Windu.

Unknown Speaker 20:39
So I’m trying to remember if they if they actually used her yellow lightsaber in that but i don’t i don’t believe they did. The other piece was I wish they had spent some more time with the Knights of Ren Kylo Ren winds up fighting them but you don’t. Again, you don’t learn a lot about them. You don’t get take too deep a dive into who they are. What They are how they came to be really just scratching the surface on them. And I’m sure there’s going to be more about them if they’re not already on comic books or the, you know, movie encyclopedias and stuff like that the Falcon gets its old radar dish back, I’m sure if anybody noticed that. They also didn’t explain how Palpatine got from the exploded Death Star to this planet, was it a spirit was his actual body. That’s kind of just sort of left up to things Kylo Ren seems to teleport out of nowhere at locations like they’ll show his ship that he landed but then he just appears places and then he suddenly gets off the planet where the Death Star crashed. And then all of a sudden he’s in a different TIE fighter and on the planet, the Emperor is that and it was going to be honest, I wish Ray had gone to the dark side. That would have been the twist that nobody was expecting. Nobody was would have been looking for. Everybody thought that they were they were going to take the easy way out and Make Ray a you know a good guy a light side force user and they did I would have loved to have seen her go to the dark side I would have loved to see her you know take down Kylo Ren and some epic battle of dark side versus dark side maybe have him flip to the light side. But you know in the end everything has a happy ending. Except Kylo Ren dies laya dies Kylo Ren I’m guessing gets redeemed as a Jedi rather than than a Sith you know the resistance wins and ray will probably go on to create some new lineage of of Jedi offshoot and maybe they’ll all be called sky walkers instead of Jedi. But I’ve seen the movie twice. So the first time I saw it on opening day second time I went was a week later actually took my my son who’s going to be five and a couple a couple days. And he did really well. He had a great time with it. He’s watched pretty much all the other Star Wars movies. And he dressed up in his Darth Vader costume which he had for Halloween. So he had a blast. It was really cool. And I’m glad I saw it twice. Because one thing that really got me the second time, and it didn’t hit me as hard The first time was the death of laya. I don’t know what it was. But the second time I saw the movie was like, oh man, besides like the droids and Chewbacca, she’s, you know, she’s the last human or person, if you will, from the original trilogy, who’s now gone and she really sort of kept the narrative cohesive from Episode Four all the way to nine. And it was sort of symbolic of the ending of the the Skywalker saga, the nine movies that were came out. So overall, I really, I really did enjoy the rise of Skywalker. I did text Greg. And the first thing I think I said was, your brother’s going to hate it. I am going to be interested to hear what what Eric’s review is going to be. I really do want to hear that because I know one of the things he he parked on about was the Millennium Falcon, getting into star killer base by jumping out of lightspeed super fast. And I’ll sort of sciency things about gravity wells, and the beginning of rise of Skywalker. They’re basically what they’re calling light, speed skipping, which is, I’m guessing, no navigation, plotting at all and just jumping to lightspeed and jumping out of it to try and lose Thai fighters that are chasing him, but I definitely recommend everybody go see the rise of Skywalker. If you’re a Star Wars fan, you need to see it just because it is the end of the Skywalker saga, and I like it. I would even go see it again. And I’m waiting for it to come out on streaming. So hope you liked it, and I can’t wait everybody else’s reviews. Thanks.

Suburban Folk 25:02
So Brandon gives the rise of Skywalker a thumbs up and recommends to go see the movie. We’ll switch over now to Eric. And again, like I mentioned, not nearly as positive of a review, let’s see what he has to say.

Unknown Speaker 25:16
So for my review of rise of Skywalker, I’ll try not to sound like a curmudgeon and highlight some of the positive things I thought the movie brought. Specifically, I really liked the Luke Leia training sequence that was assumed based on her kind of gliding back into the starship and last Jedi but it was nice to see it overtly shown that she did go through some force training. I thought the ray Darkseid vision was good I thought the look of it was cool, but also it kind of syncs up with this you know, past idea and Star Wars that these dark side visions coincide with where some kind of dark side add up to has has died. So that being on the Death Star i thought was wonderful. And well done. I thought the Kylo Ren Ray fight on Endor was was interesting and well done and exciting. I have no idea why Finn was there as usual. He’s just sort of getting in the way. But otherwise I thought it was good. I thought the tribute to Carrie Fisher was good. You know, they had a couple scenes with the death of laya where it was clearly, you know, doing a tip of the hat to her. I thought the set design was good. Specifically the Palpatine where the big statues are in his Coliseum thing that’s taken directly from a comic book and I think they were smart to kind of pull some elements from past things that worked. I thought there was a couple good, you know, tip of the cap to fans, the Wedge Antilles cameo. I know some of my fellow nerds don’t like it, but the metal being given to chewy. I kind of liked that just as a answer to kind of the debate that Star Wars fans have had it for a while, as we did in the podcast. Why didn’t we get a medal? I like that Kylo Ren apparently finally made a decision on which direction he was going. I mean, I feel like if you gave him another movie, he probably changed his mind again, but at least you know, with his death, it seems like he finally kind of picked a direction. And that’s about it. I mean, that’s really about the only things positive I had to say about it. The more or less they doubled down on Force Awakens, and given that I disliked Force Awakens as much as I did, you know, I was not going to be inclined to enjoy this movie and the first 10 minutes they introduce for skipping where Poe just kind of jumps in wherever he needs to be. That again sort of undermines what came before. As an example on the first movie, why is there any time sensitivity in the oven Ron just for skip to the Death Star hit the wind button like po does and you’re done. I just felt like in general, the plot was either non existent Are nonsensical,

Unknown Speaker 28:02
largely around the Emperor.

Unknown Speaker 28:05
And the prequels The Emperor is doing this sort of

Unknown Speaker 28:08
behind the scenes usurping because he’s looking to take over the Republic and the resources. And this movie for the life of me I can’t figure out why he’s working behind the scenes he has an entire fleet of ships, he apparently can create powerful force users like Snoke you know almost at will Snoke shown to be as powerful or more powerful than Ray or Kylo Ren and last Jedi. So what does he need Kylo Ren or re for? I mean, just make more of those and have your fleet go out and conquer the galaxy? I mean it it just seemed like everything we’d seen before was totally pointless. Why have the first order you know what a life of me I can’t figure out why he’s recruiting Kylo Ren. So so for me that kind of all fell apart quick and then the fact that you know, as is the time For this movie, but the Emperor Everyone’s so overpowered, he’s shooting lightning storms into the sky and not only taking down whole fleets, he’s selectively taken down just the resistance fleet. If you look closely, his his ships are unaffected by his fourth storm. So, for me in general, I think a lot of the ideas that they took, if they took the idea and it was good, they sort of put their own stamp on it, which was unnecessary the wayfinder that’s a total ripoff of the Holocron. The Holocron is a better idea. They should have just stuck with the Holocron rather than changing the name. I was looking forward to the Knights of Ren but in my opinion that was mostly botched. A group of people that were seduced by Kylo Ren to leave the Jedi Temple sounded really interesting. But then when you see it on screen, basically they were chained. They didn’t display any tangible force abilities. They really just seemed like they were changed just enough that they could make several action figures out of it and set them there as cannon fodder. I thought the force Bond was ridiculous, super lazy, basically a plot element where you can give your character whatever they need at any time, and really unnecessary. It doesn’t work in that last jet, I established that Snoke was the one setting that bond up but then that changed for no apparent reason. And I find myself the only real story reason to do it was to introduce the lightsaber and I feel like re telekinetically sending the lightsaber to Kylo Ren would have been

Unknown Speaker 30:41
more impactful. So

Unknown Speaker 30:43
you know, my review of this is what my review largely is of this entire trilogy is that it’s non existent and a non existent plot and nonsensical. They kind of undermined the original characters that I liked and replace them with, you know, kind of just flat lazy characters that I couldn’t care less about. So, you know, if there’s a silver lining, it’s that I have a new appreciation for the prequels. You know, there’s got a lot of criticism and, you know, definitely some of it was fair. I mean, there’s some cringe worthy moments in the prequels, but it held together. And that there, there was a tangible plot, and there was character development. And, you know, this trilogy has proved that that’s not necessarily a given. But someone’s looking for just kind of like a spectacle or some nostalgia. I mean, you get pieces of that. It looks interesting. They’ll throw you know, the here they come music and, you know, that’ll get you kind of into it. But otherwise, you know, I feel like it was largely a failure. Some of that, you know, Lando seemed a little flat, but I feel like he was brought in to fill in after Carrie Fisher’s death. So I understand that and And, you know, didn’t have a big, big problem there. I mean, some of his lines were pretty darn corny. And I feel like if Lucas had wrote those had written that people would be up in arms. But I do feel like Star Wars has sort of like a sports team effect where even bad teams on opening day people kind of get jazzed up and it’s only later in the season that they realize, Oh, this is this is bad. I think that’s happening with the new trilogy. And it’s almost happening immediately with with this movie hearing from you know, other my fellow nerds I I find that I’m being more generous than some of my fellow nerds, where they’re saying there’s there’s almost nothing that they like about this.

Unknown Speaker 32:41
So in summary for me,

Unknown Speaker 32:43
thanks, JJ. I guess I get to decide which of your two movies I think is the worst Star Wars movie, please don’t touch another one with 100 foot pole. And, you know, from here, you know, I think for me if there was a movie going forward, and I No, that’s not the intention. But if there’s an episode 10 down the line with Poe, Finn Ray, these characters, I’m not inclined to go see it. I mean, they were really bad. This kind, I thought this was a very suitable end of the trilogy, and that it was sort of very convoluted and put the stamp on the fact that there was not going to be a follow up to that put any pieces together. It was just kind of a convoluted mess, and that’s what it was going to stay. So I think in summary, I’ll use what a friend of mine said about the entire trilogy was that more or less, this just seemed like a real waste of time, and the whole trilogy seemed like a waste of time. So for longtime Star Wars fans to kind of look at that and say, even the prequels when people disliked it, I didn’t hear anyone say that. They felt like it didn’t add anything. So, for me, it’s a it’s a thumbs down, but I’m hoping That Disney, you know they’ve done Rogue One. I’m hearing positive things about the show. So they have it in them I hopefully we’ll see see more rogue ones in the future and let’s just let this whole train wreck die.

Suburban Folk 34:14
So you can’t say we didn’t offer two sides of the spectrum as far as reviews of the movie Brandon’s as thumbs up, and it’s something that he has already seen twice and recommends others to see Eric’s has. The entire Disney series was a waste of time and the best that it did was give him a newfound appreciation of the prequels. I think I come somewhere in between. As we discussed in our last episode, I don’t have as much Star Wars knowledge as either Brandon or Eric. So my critique is probably more in comparison to just Hollywood movies in general. I actually got very much a Harry Potter vibe. When we find out that ray is a Palpatine. We continue the theme of is she going to be good? Is she going to be bad we saw that a little bit in the prior movies, where I really felt that comparison is they end up in this cave actor or sinking in quicksand. And there’s this worm snake creature that looks very much like a basket Liske from the second Harry Potter movie, and it wraps around Ray and I am definitely waiting for her to start talking to this snake in tongues just like Harry Potter can do. Interestingly enough, that doesn’t happen. But not long after that is when the force lightning comes out of her fingers. And you have that same issue isn’t she consideration going on? And the other thing that is a lot like Harry Potter, Eric mentioned the Knights of Ren, they remind me of the mentors you know, always following around the characters. Super menacing. Never really do that much maybe in the Harry Potter books, which admittedly, I’ve not really read. They have more of significance, but Again, there’s definitely to me a comparison of those two character types also to Lord of the Rings, the raids, who as I understand it are fallen kings that are cursed. This is similar, you know, fallen Jedi, if you will, that have joined Kylo Ren, and are sort of his henchmen. And for the final battle scene, admittedly, I’m sure there’s plenty of blockbusters that have these big fight scenes, but it reminded me of Independence Day, if you recall, in that movie, the US once they figure out how to take down the aliens, they start signaling to all the other countries to come and there’s going to be this big battle with the aliens. They continue the theme from the last Jedi, that they’re retreating from the first order and nobody came to their aid. Well, they call out again and like the whole galaxy universe shows up and there’s this massive battle like that. And you know, there’s this theme of Unity going on. So those are some of the comparisons that I had that there weren’t that many original ideas here, if any. But overall is a movie, it does move very fast like Brandon had said. I think that it probably is the best of this trilogy, probably for the same reason that episode three was the best of that trilogy, that it had to hurry to tie up any loose ends. Now again, as you can hear, it’s debatable whether or not they do a good job of tying those up. But with how fast paced it is. It is fun to watch whether or not they’re satisfying completions of these things or not. And I think the only other thing that I would comment on that was not already mentioned by Brandon or Eric is just the fact that I was definitely rooting for Kylo Ren or Ben Solo, as he’s now redeemed to be the one that lives a because it was pretty predictable. That Ray was going to live and be his character has always seemed to have a little more depth than any of the other characters. Now, those characters didn’t really set the bar very high

for depth, so I’m not saying he’s like the greatest character there is, but just in rise of Skywalker and overall for the series, I think it would have been a more interesting dynamic. And the last comments as far as the nostalgia is concerned and the old characters, I thought they did a nice job with see threepio where he has a decision to make whether or not he has his memory wiped so that he can interpret the language to the rest of the characters so they can figure out where this safe planet is. So that’s kind of a touching scene where he says goodbye to his friends. Now of course, he ends up getting his memory back from our 2d to later, but that gave him a little bit of depth that I thought was nice. I felt like he played a bigger role. This movie than he had in any of the prior Disney installments. And as was mentioned, he ends up getting the medal at the very end of the movie, which we alluded to in our prior episode. Brandon was making fun of the fact that too, he didn’t get a medal at the end of Episode Four. And when ray is fighting Palpatine at the very end, she reaches out I guess to all jet I asking if they’re with her. I think they say it a little bit differently. But you hear all the different voices and I knew that they were definitely the original actors that are responding in her head saying I’m with you and so on. I had a hard time picking out the voices admittedly, even Samuel L. Jackson, who plays Mace Windu in the prequels, I couldn’t quite pick him out, but I knew that obviously Yoda, Luke Skywalker, I don’t think I could pick out a mannequin but I saw on the credits that it was all the original folks. So that was kind of cool to at least try to wrap everything together in some way. Eric also mentioned that wedge who is in every one of the originals, but not in any of the new Disney trilogy shows up at the very end. Obviously, there’s Lando, he was pretty prominent in the previews. And then you know how they handle laya. And her death, as was mentioned, I think is pretty good as well. So I will be seeing it again in the theaters. I don’t know if I will purchase the Star Wars movie, I have every other Star Wars movie. So I don’t know if I’ll get this one or not just to say that I have them all. But I will give it a watch whether it’s streaming at some point. Or if I actually do buy it then I think for people that aren’t as invested in the Star Wars galaxy, as some folks are, you’ll find these to be fun movies very fast paced, a lot going on and again has been presented. If you are very much into these movies, you’re probably going to find a lot of problems. So that’s it. Let us know what you thought of the movie, we would definitely be very interested in feedback. And until next time, take care. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to give us a rating on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get podcasts. If you’d like to be notified of future weekly shows, please hit the subscribe button. Thank you. Suburban Folk is part of the pod all the time podcasting network with 11 other great podcasts the creative intuitive and other digital citizen history of a haunting Ross x. Round and round the podcast real aka truth recup. podcast, random unnamed podcast a fresh look three peas up in a podcast and the I think we’re doing it podcast. Check them out on Twitter to see what they’re up to.

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