To misquote a poorly-written version of a great Jedi Master, "no one's love of Star Wars is ever really gone". However, does this mean that The Rise of Skywalker has re-ignited my love of the franchise that Rian Johnson snuffed out and has spent the better part of the last two years laughing at me from his lofty perch supported only by Reylo shippers and bullshit?
But I repeat myself. Let's get into the end of the "Skywalker Saga", which I could have sworn I reviewed quite some time ago, but nevermind me.
We pick up, in universe, one year after Rian Johnson's bad diarrhea buffet. The Resistance is still on the run from/fighting the First Order. However, as luck would have it, a new player has entered the game...and from the poster alone I'm sure you've figured out that it's the ancient and powerful Sith Lord Exar Kun!
Nah, just kidding. It's Palpatine. I'll get into my feelings on his inclusion in a bit, but for now, he's here so deal with it.
Palpatine is broadcasting a message across the galaxy, telling of his return and his intentions to cause naughty evil. The usual Sith stuff. He is met by Kylo Ren, who hunts him down to ensure his new place as the Supreme Leader of the First Order isn't challenged. Instead, Palpatine offers him power beyond measure...in the form of a fleet of Star Destroyers.
Meanwhile, Rey has been training with both CGI and unused footage from The Force Awakens Leia in order to hone her Force abilities for the fight ahead. I will say that they really do pretty well with integrating Leia into some shots where she's very clearly not there. While the animation was a bit wonky, it was never so much that it completely drew me out of things like Rogue One did, so kudos there.
Poe and Finn, meanwhile, have been running missions for the Resistance and have learned of Palpatine's return. Thus, the race is on to discover a Sith device called a Wayfinder and get to Palpatine's hidden fortress world of Byss...I mean, Exegol. While my general rule of thumb is that spoilers can pop up anywhere below the cut, I'm giving another warning here. If you haven't seen Rise of Skywalker and you don't want to be spoiled, then stop here until you do. If you have seen it or you don't care about spoilers, feel free to continue.
...
...done? Okay.
So, let me go ahead and start with a few pros here. First and foremost - all the digs against The Last Jedi, be they incredibly subtle or incredibly blatant. Much like my oft-repeated statement that I fully believe Rian Johnson witnessed the death of his parents via someone using a VHS copy of The Empire Strikes Back to bash their skulls in and that making The Last Jedi was his way of getting revenge, I fully believe that JJ Abrams hates The Last Jedi. Or, at the very least, it well aware that many, many Star Wars fans do. There are digs against everything from Admiral Purple Hair of Pointless and her bullshit with the hyperdrive to Luke tossing the lightsaber over his shoulder.
In short, it wasn't made a weasel-y roundheaded dickhead of a man who shouldn't have been let near the craft services table.
But just about everything from The Last Jedi is either barely mentioned or underplayed significantly. And boy is that good. Hats off to you, Abrams.
We also get some cameos here and there from those we've wanted to see for a while, named Lando and Wedge. Wedge was a very nice surprise even if he only had the one line of dialogue. Lando, on the other hand, is a case of too little too late. I love Billy Dee and I thought he should have been included long before this point. The bits of fanservice here and there are nice, even if they do get a little bit silly - particularly the ending, which I'll get to.
On another good point - Rey actually has to overcome some adversity in this film! I mean, it isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but it's something that has been lacking over the previous two films! Daisy Ridley also seems to be much more comfortable in the role as well, Rey having a bit more meat to her role than in previous depictions.
The same goes for Oscar Isaacs and John Boyega as Poe and Finn. They both come off as actually competent and capable individuals, heroes, in the fight against the evil of the First Order. Not as a hotshot douchebag and a comic relief minority character, respectively. It's almost as though someone were paying attention during The Force Awakens.
All snark aside, it does seem like the "trio" of the Sequel Trilogy are actually behaving like a trio. They bicker and banter and hang out for a large majority of the film, showing a great deal more chemistry than they had in previous films. More's the pity that this is the end.
Also, I thought the death of Leia was handled very tastefully all things considered, even if it contributes to another problem I have, but we'll get to that in a minute.
And now for a few cons. The pacing does fall under a bit of criticism for me. I get why things move as fast as they do - Abrams essentially had to cram two movies into one to make up for the mistakes of the last one - but it leaves things feeling more than a little rushed toward the end.
As I said before, the fanservice can get a little silly and (at one point) ridiculous to the point of eye rolling, but not so much that it completely took me out of things as it has for some...except for that one instance, but I'll get to that.
JJ Abrams has said that some Force powers introduced in the film might infuriate some Star Wars fans (perish the thought!), and he's not wrong. The egregious use of healing powers is a big one. Rey learns it...somehow...and I'm just thinking about all the people that might have been saved by it. Why didn't Luke use it to save Vader from his wounds on Endor? Why did Padme still die even though Obi-Wan was right there and could have given her life force a top off?
This opens way more plot holes and it's honestly just really annoying.
There's also the ability to apparently move objects through the Force to different locations, which is used to great artistic effect in a fight between Rey and Kylo, and then later in the finale, but again opens plot holes galore.
The film, on the whole, does feel like a Star Wars film should, just at a much faster rate and with a lot of exposition thrown at us very, very quickly. Personally, I would have just chucked out The Last Jedi entirely and just said that this was Episode 8, but that's me. For me, The Rise of Skywalker is a pretty okay film on the whole...up until the final act.
And that, like so many things, is where everything starts to fall apart.
The reveal of Rey being Palpatine's granddaughter is...really rather stupid, honestly. I highly doubt this was JJ Abrams' original intention and, if it was, then it was set up in an incredibly poor way. Palpatine's return, much like it does in the Expanded Universe (and no, I don't care what anyone says, it really does), takes away from the sacrifice of Anakin at Endor in Return of the Jedi. It basically makes all the work that Luke did to turn Anakin back to the light so that he could complete his destiny mean...nothing.
The worst part about this, too, is that we're given no indication that this is the final end. Palpatine can apparently just return from death willy-nilly and hang out in the Unknown Regions of space sipping whiskey shots through his feeding tubes like some kind of invalid jackass, so what's to keep him from doing so again?
Also, way to rip off Endgame with the final exchange between hero and villain, JJ. Class act!
And then, there's the matter of Kylo's "redemption" (if one can call it that). While the man who had once been Ben Solo was quite conflicted about having to murder his father, it seemed that he had gone whole hog on being "master teh evil" in The Last Jedi. Not so, says Abrams, instead swinging him back toward being conflicted...sort of.
Perhaps, if the pace hadn't been so rushed, it would have made more sense. Instead, we have him just suddenly deciding to not be evil anymore after Rey saves his life with her magical healing powers. This does lead to an admittedly beautiful (if confusing) scene where Ben confronts an image of Han for some closure and then chucks his incredibly stupid-looking lightsaber out to sea.
Yeah, that is at least one bit of stupidity we can't blame on Rian Johnson.
I will say he does get the first moment where I genuinely believe that he's the son of Han Solo when he gives a shameless shrug upon getting Luke's lightsaber from Rey via the Force (again, bizarre Force powers out of nowhere) before kicking ass with it. And it is nice to see the weapon wielded by a Skywalker one last time. However, what he ends up kicking the ass of...is the Knights of Ren, which are basically glorified mooks in the film.
All that speculation and all that interesting character design...and they're just common thugs with shinier armor. Again, this is something I think Abrams would have developed further if he weren't trying to cram two movies into one.
There's also the kiss between Rey and Ben at the end to consider...which was purely put in there to appease the Reylo shippers, although that apparently hasn't been working.
But, on the whole, Ben/Kylo suffers due to the pacing...and I'm okay with that. I'm apparently one of the minority who didn't want to see him redeemed at all, but rather defeated. Particularly with the Palpatine angle they took with Rey, it would have been an interesting inversion of the light/dark dichotomy we've seen thus far in the movies.
Rey could redeem that Palpatine name and make it her own, out from under the shadow of the Emperor.
As it stands, though, we don't get that...which brings me to the ending.
The final battle is pure fanservice with Lando bringing along Wedge and an entire fleet in the big old "on your left" Endgame style of things. Palpatine uses Force Lightning to wreck the fleet after draining the life force from Rey and Ben (and casting Ben into a pit for good measure) and then proceeds to die...in a manner not at all identical to how Mace Windu nearly killed him in Revenge of the Sith.
Really...that is how Palpatine dies? He survived the Force only knows how many assassination attempts, being thrown into the main reactor of the Death Star, and this is what kills him? This?
Ben does the Reylo kiss to give Rey the last of his life energy before fading into the Force...and it just feels unearned and cheap. Leia, sacrificing herself to bring Ben back to the light, was the only person who did any actual work. Ben did not have to lose or struggle or anything of the sort.Although, ironically, he only seems to show competence once he's back on the Light Side, so I'm wondering why he felt a pull into the darkness in the first place.
And then, the final scene with Rey on Tatooine, for some reason. She returns to the Lars homestead, which she knows of and knows where it is for some reason, and decides that she needs to bury Luke and Leia's lightsabers there, for some reason. When a local asks her for her name, she introduces herself as "Rey...Rey Skywalker", while the Force ghosts of Luke and Leia look on approvingly.
I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, Rey is a student of the last two Skywalkers and is taking the name symbolically. So, I get that, and it does make sense. However, while I'm not all for the "sins of the father" thing, it is very unsettling that a Palpatine gets to take the Skywalker name and gets the ending under the twin suns with "Binary Sunset" playing in the background.
Can I accept it? Yes. Do I like it? Not really. Super not really. One of my friends suggested, and I agree with her, that if they weren't going to go the Skywalker route (which I still hold that JJ's original plan was for her to be Luke's daughter), that she should introduce herself as Rey. Just Rey. That she is who she is, and she has no need or want to be anyone else.
But that would be a moment of character growth, and that'd be like cutting off your hands, wouldn't it, Lucasfilm?
Also, there are still lingering questions about Rey's parents. How did they get away from Palpatine? How the hell did Luke and Leia figure out who Rey was? All of these things that leave us with more questions than answers in the traditional Abrams fashion.
Like I said before, this does feel like a Star Wars film up until that final hurdle. Abrams was clearly trying to make something that would draw the fans back. From the current Rotten Tomatoes rating, that seems to be working in spite of what the critics are saying. Sayeth this critic, however, is that The Rise of Skywalker is...mixed. It's certainly not as bad as The Last Jedi and certainly isn't the worst Star Wars movie ever made as some are saying. It also isn't remotely close to the glory that is the Original Trilogy or even Revenge of the Sith.
It's Star Wars on the mend. It's Star Wars trying to get better. Hopefully, by the time we see Episode 10 or whatever Disney is going to pull out next (no, I don't believe Bob Iger for a second that they're going to slow down on it, but we'll see), it will be a far, far better product put into much, much better hands than Kathleen Kennedy, JJ Abrams, and Rian Johnson.
Say, I hear that Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni are doing this really cool Mandalorian thing. Maybe Disney should tap them for it.
Just a thought. Just a passing thought.
While there is more that I could dig into, I do believe this rant has gone on long enough. With any luck, it's a sign that things will be getting better for Star Wars in the near future.
Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker is now in theaters from Lucasfilm and Walt Disney Pictures.
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