REVIEW: Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance Ride at Disneyland

Although my son isn’t off to college until the fall, as an early last hurrah, we recently spent a day at Disneyland in an attempt to beat the summer crowds before he graduates high school—we also had him bring along a friend along so he wouldn’t be stuck with Mom and Dad all day lol. 

In all honesty, this visit was as much for my wife and me—the family visited Disneyland in July 2021 (shortly after it re-opened following the Coronavirus closure), but we were unable to procure the required advance reservations for the new Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance ride that was new at the time. We always wanted to return to check out the ride, so this seemed like a good time, now that the demand has somewhat lessened (it’s now a regular line like the other rides).

In addition to being a newer attraction, Rise of the Resistance has become one of the park's most popular because it’s a state-of-the-art dark ride that features trackless vehicles, meaning the cars are programmed to glide and make turns on a plain finished floor, free from the constraints of any track, making for a very smooth ride. The ride is also unique because it is made up of several elements, including a walk-through, a motion simulator, the trackless ride, and a (small) free-fall drop, all in one attraction. This is all effectively pulled off using video, practical and animatronic elements and effects.

Highlights include entering the expansive hangar of a Star Destroyer, built to impressive scale as a real environment/set—then the trackless ride that includes running beneath full-scale AT-AT walkers in a real environment, going by the bridge of the Star Destroyer where you see an epic space battle in progress through the windows, being lifted up to top of an AT-AT walker, then experiencing a sudden drop as you are catapulted into space in an escape pod.

Along the way, the principal actors from the most recent Star Wars trilogy appear in character (Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson and, presumably, Adam Driver in mask and costume as Kylo Ren), some of them in both video and animatronic form. It’s important to note that the different technologies and elements of the attraction are already present in other rides. The Guardians of the Galaxy and Spider-Man: Webslingers ride at California Adventure similarly blend animatronics, video and the original film actors in a convincing way. And I actually experienced the trackless system for the first time earlier in the day at the new Mickey and Minnie Runaway Railway Ride that opened in January in Disneyland’s Toontown. (This was another amazing and delightful dark ride that mixes state-of-the-art ride technology with animation.) But Rise of the Resistance is the ambitious culmination of all these elements into a single extended attraction. Though the ride doesn’t feel as visceral or thrilling as one might want, the ambition, technology, immersion, scale, and magic of it all makes it quite amazing to witness.

Anyway, we’re glad we finally got a chance to experience it (and did a second time later that day as well!). We also of course rode other rides during our visit, including the Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run ride, which we’ve done before and still remains a personal favorite, offering a great motion simulator experience in one of Star Wars’ most iconic ships.

As for the crowds, it was still plenty busy, but we’ve seen way worse, so we’re glad we visited before the summer rush!

See the entire photo gallery, most of which are below.

Quentin Tarantino's Cinema Speculation

Speaking of Quentin Tarantino as I did in my last post, I enjoyed his recent book, Cinema Speculation. The book is essentially an ode to the films, filmmakers and people from his youth that shaped and informed his tastes, primarily focusing on the films of the 1970s. 

He imprinted on films early, with his parents taking him to films that were wildly inappropriate for his age, and which continued into his tweens and teens. After his parents’ divorce, Tarantino writes that his mother dated Black men exclusively for a few years, which further expanded his moviegoing tastes, since they took him to other parts of town like the South Bay and downtown L.A. to see movies at second-run houses, particularly Blaxploitation flicks. (He mentions that a former Black roommate of Tarantino’s mom also became a second mother to him, whose kids became de facto siblings, taking him to a Pussycat adult film theater when he was 14, noting that he was tall for his age.)

After setting up his childhood, subsequent chapters focus on some of the movies that he particularly admired, like Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Deliverance, The Getaway, and others…but the book soon broadens and morphs. One chapter focused on an assessment of various reviewers in the Los Angeles Times he grew up reading, like Sheila Benson, Charles Champlin and Kevin Thomas—this chapter particularly amused me since I read these critics as well as an L.A. transplant after I moved here in 1980 for college.

Throughout the book, you can clearly hear Tarantino’s voice, an enthusiastic film geek blessed with a motor mouth and strong opinions. His zealousness can’t be denied, however, and it’s infectious. He talks about thematic elements as well as craft, often reinforcing his observations and judgment through research and, better yet, the direct access he has gained as a fellow successful filmmaker to people like Martin Scorcese, Brian DePalma, John Milius, Paul Shrader and others, who he has no doubt peppered with questions about their films over the years.

Tarantino is 13 months younger than me and grew up in California as an only child of a single mother who worked hard to make ends meet; in contrast, I grew up a bit more sheltered and was far less exposed to the kind of films that Tarantino embraced in his youth. As a result, I don’t have the same feel or love of the films he covers, especially of the lower-bill films he saw. (Indeed, I have to admit that the book made me question my own film cred—I’ve always considered myself fairly knowledgeable about films and film history, but Tarantino mentions and discusses movies I’d never even heard of, much less seen. Early on, I semi-jokingly thought that Tarantino should have given spoiler alerts—but realized that if you hadn’t seen the films, that’s on the reader, not Tarantino.)

In the end, I didn’t feel necessarily compelled to see all the films Tarantino highlights since, as I said, I know most of those films aren’t in my wheelhouse. But his descriptions and breakdowns are hugely entertaining and readable, and he did inspire me to watch Bullitt, with Steve McQueen, for the first time, followed by Dirty Harry, which I hadn’t seen since the early ‘80s. (This in turn led me to watch the next two Dirty Harry films, Magnum Force and the Enforcer*. Personally, while I could appreciate Bullitt for being groundbreaking, I didn’t feel it had particularly aged well, especially compared to Dirty Harry, made only about three years later, which I found to be a much better (and slicker) production.

[* What amazed me about Magnum Force was seeing Tim Matheson, David Soul and Tom Urich playing three fellow motorcycle cops in the film, which I didn’t recall. And I was curious to watch the Enforcer since I remembered Tyne Daly being in the film.]

The last chapter (though it’s called an endnote) was a bit of a left turn and made for a touching ending—it’s an appreciative account of his relationship with an older Black man named Floyd Ray Wilson, who dated one of his mother’s roommates, and turned out to be a bit of a filmgoing mentor/companion/father figure (of sorts) to young Tarantino. Although the guy wasn’t quite father material, he nevertheless was a film aficionado, who treated Tarantino like an adult and exposed him to a wider world of film and music, with his own similarly uniquely strong eclectic and unpredictable opinions on actors and films (“Don Knotts is a mother fuckin’ comic genius!”)

It’s a great read that viscerally reflects Tarantino’s love and passion for films, and gives you an appreciation for the movies he writes about, even if they aren’t the reader’s particular fancy.

Visiting L.A. Landmarks

This past weekend, my wife and I had dinner at the popular El Coyote Cafe, located partly on the other side of town from me here in L.A. Already an L.A. landmark, it’s also the restaurant where Sharon Tate and her companions ate their last meal the night they were murdered at home. As you’ll see in one of the photos below, in remembrance, a portrait of Tate is stenciled on the restaurant's exterior wall in front as you enter the restaurant.

Down the street from the restaurant is the New Beverly Cinema, one of the last repertory revival houses in L.A. It’s now owned by Quentin Tarantino, who purchased it in 2008 and, since 2014, has served as the programmer, still running double features as it has throughout much of its history and, of course, almost always 35mm prints (not digital).

The El Coyote is featured in Tarantino’s film, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, and the New Beverly is given an indirect shout out—during the time of the film, 1969, the venue was called the Eros, and in the film, Tate and her friends notice a red carpet event going on at the “dirty movie” house down the street.

So after dinner, we walked the couple blocks to the New Beverly. Seeing the schedule taped to the front window brought back memories of collecting the schedules for the various revival houses around town when I was in college to plan what flicks to see. The night we visited, Valley Girl had begun about 30 minutes earlier (marking its 40th anniversary), followed by Modern Girls. (As you can see from the marquee at left, there was a midnight showing of Inglorious Basterds as well—Tarantino shows his films there as well.)

In fact, it reminded me that in 2009, thanks to a press pass provided by a friend, I attended a “red carpet” showing of the film that Tarantino and some of the stars—including Diane Kruger, B.J. Novak and Eli Roth—attended, which was a great way to see the film. This was December of that year, and I had already seen the film at its release earlier, but of course I couldn’t resist seeing the opportunity to see the film with its director in the house (he said a few words before the screening). I’ve included photos from that night as well (and here is the original post about that evening).

I've actually seen Tarantino before. Shortly after Reservoir Dogs was released, he had a signing at the Manhattan Beach video store where he once worked. My wife loved the film and wanted to attend. We have a poster of the film signed by Tarantino, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi and others in the movie.