Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker - Review
Even though this new trilogy took far less time to wrap up than the previous ones in the Star Wars film franchise, I feel exhausted thinking about what it’s taken to reach its conclusion. I would not consider myself a fan of Star Wars anymore and had very little invested in this trilogy. In fact, I was even planning on not watching The Rise of Skywalker until it came to a streaming service. Yet, I was compelled, once more, by the way everyone was vaguely discussing how much they liked or hated it. Some people loved it. Some die-hard fans hated it. People who liked the previous one, The Last Jedi, disliked it as well. With such polarizing opinions, I went to the theater—for the first time since I saw the last film—to see for myself.
Image: Disney / Lucasfilm
Pros
Some alien designs are interesting
Horror-inspired design and cinematography are cool
Po feels like a character for a change, even if he’s not really an interesting one
It’s, hopefully, that last one of its saga, allowing for any future episodes to distance themselves from it and do something actually different or interesting with the franchise
Cons
Plot holes, deus ex machina, contrived conveniences, sudden revelations, further redefining of how the Force can be used, cheesy lines that are repeated ad nauseam among a multitude of other things that indicate the script needed more time and some serious editing
Majority of lightsaber battles are shot a little too close, making them not very satisfying to watch in comparison to other Star Wars movies
Inability to let go of characters, hero and villain alike, holds the writing back
Lots of forced sentimentality and emotion when there is no reason for it
Plot & Thoughts
The opening crawl and the first couple of scenes of The Rise of Skywalker reveal that Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) is back from the dead. You know, that guy who was the ultimate villain from the other trilogies! Since someone had the bright idea of anti-climatically killing off the other all-powerful villain in the previous film, they decided to go back to the Star Wars well instead of coming up with a new villain or making creative use of Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). I struggle to remember all the events of The Last Jedi, but I distinctly recall that the only thing I was legitimately interested in seeing was a conclusion to Kylo Ren’s story. He was the only character who seemed interesting of the bunch because he showed internal conflict in his determination to be the ultimate villain. I did not care for The Last Jedi due to its various absurdities, clumsy attempts at political commentary, forced sentimentality, completely pointless plot-lines that went nowhere, and rewriting of the mechanics of the universe that had been relatively established by, at least, 7 full-length feature films, to name a few reasons. The only thing The Last Jedi did was give me curiosity about how everything was going to end. That, of course, was assuming that they had any intention of continuing what The Last Jedi had established. Unfortunately for The Rise of Skywalker, they chose not to, for the most part, and there’s nothing left to keep me curious. Also unfortunately for The Rise of Skywalker, a lot of the same criticisms I launched at The Last Jedi can be applied here as well, and there’s not a “red room” battle sequence to make up for it. Regardless, I’m one paragraph into the first review of the year and I’ve already digressed.
Image: Disney / Lucasfilm
Emperor Popidopolos is back, hiding out on this unknown planet in a hidden system of the galaxy. He also has this massive fleet of Star Destroyer ships (and a huge population of people on this hidden planet to run those massive ships) at his disposal. Kylo Ren finds him and is recruited by him to find Rey (Daisy Ridley), the scavenger. Ren agrees and accepts Emperor Palpable’s fleet as a new addition to his empire. Meanwhile, Rey is on some jungle planet with the rebels, training to become a Jedi with Leia (Carrie Fisher) as her teacher. Po (Oscar Isaacs), Finn (John Boyega), and Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) return from a reconnaissance mission with information from a mole in the New Order and share it with the rebels. It’s basically the same information that I just told you, without the details of where the zombie emperor is hiding. They have almost as much trouble accepting that Emperor Pomegranate is alive as I do, but after a quick discussion, it’s decided that there there’s some clue trail they can follow to find his location, and the adventure begins.
This brings the main cast of characters to a distant desert planet where Burning Man is happening. Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) is there for some reason because of course he is. Bad guys show up. They find a clue to follow to the next location. Important characters die, but then others don’t. Rey’s past is revealed in a not-so-subtle fashion. There are some action scenes to fill the space but are not that exciting to watch. A lot of liberties are taken with the mechanics of the universe to fit the script and justify the plot devices. Tough situations get resolved quickly and conveniently. There are moments in which you are expected to feel emotions over the ramifications of the characters’ actions, but then the film very quickly undoes a lot of the damage. Characters behave somewhat inconsistently and do complete 180s in record time. Half of the lines in the script that are spoken in the first hour of the movie are repeated by different characters in the final hour to make those lines seem more clever or meaningful than they are. If it wasn’t so busy desperately trying to salvage everything that The Last Jedi “screwed up,” it would be an even safer and less creative movie than The Force Awakens.
Image: Disney / Lucasfilm
It may sound like I hated this movie from the way I’m describing it, but the truth is, I didn’t care enough to hate it and I didn’t really expect anything better than what it was. The Last Jedi, for all of its nonsense that I didn’t like, at least was trying to do something different. I didn’t think it did those things well, but it was trying to take the franchise in a new direction. Each movie of this trilogy was going to have a different director, but after Rian Johnson’s film got such a polarizing response, JJ Abrams was brought back as the director for the final film of the trilogy. Rather than continue down the strange new path of Episode VIII, he and his team did their best to correct the course back to where they were before. This is epitomized by how Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), the female character from The Last Jedi who was with Finn for a majority of the movie, and who played such a central role in that whole thing, is almost entirely pushed out of this film. She has less than 10 minutes of screen time and almost as few lines as Carrie Fisher, who probably should have been written out of the film, considering her unfortunate passing between movies. They also make Kylo Ren wear his stupid helmet again, for some reason, after having smashed it to bits. It’s like saying: “Yeah, we can’t say the last movie didn’t happen, but we’re going to try our best to ignore as much of it as we can.”
When you look at how the three movies barely function together as a trilogy, I wonder: did they have an overall plan or story at all? The original trilogy obviously didn’t, because nobody thought the first movie would be as successful as it was. However, when they made a sequel, a through-line was established and it got to a fitting conclusion, more or less. The prequel trilogy knew where it was headed from the start and was somewhat restricted by the expectations of fans: it had to establish Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader, the fall of the Republic, and Emperor Popadope’s rise to power.
Image: Disney / Lucasfilm
This trilogy could have done whatever it wanted. It could have taken place so many more years after the other movies. It could have left everything behind and told its own story. Instead, it was decided that it was best to play the nostalgia card and keep it close to the original trilogy. When Rian Johnson clumsily tried to take the trilogy in a bizarre new direction, JJ Abrams returned to make sure it went back to that dried-out Star Wars well. So, to Abrams’ credit, it feels like a Star Wars movie, but one that was hastily cobbled together using some basic creative writing tricks to try to cover up the cracks and the masking tape. The end result is a film that functions, is coherent, and ties up loose ends, but does so in a way that could have been done by anyone else with a budget.
It felt similar to the way some animes like to wrap up long-running seasons and story arcs. Romances that were never there before suddenly bloom. Characters suddenly become all-powerful for no real reason and their powers are described with new terms and vague references to justify how stupidly overpowered they are. All the loose ends or extraneous characters are conveniently tied up with a nice bow on top. Still, I’ve seen my share of animes that more skillfully wrapped up even wilder stories.
Image: Disney / Lucasfilm
TL;DR (Conclusion)
The Rise of Skywalker is an attempt to conveniently wrap everything up after the series veered sharply off course in the previous film. The result is a safe, uninspired, extremely flawed movie with a very shaky script and a heavy reliance on suspension of disbelief. What I mean is, it’s a Star Wars movie. If you expect more, you’ll be disappointed. If you expected less, you might not hate it. Worse and better films have been made in the franchise. All I know is, I don’t need to go to the theater to see any more of these.