Review: Rise of Skywalker
Well, that was certainly... a movie I saw.
Talking about the movie afterwards, my friend asked me if I'd rate it as better or worse than the Last Jedi... and I honestly can't say. The Last Jedi was a thematic mess with a nihilistic attitude towards Star Wars, but at least I ended the film feeling something. That something was kinda depressed and hollow, but it had an emotional impact. Rise of Skywalker, meanwhile, leaps from half-formed plot point to plot point with a manic energy, desperately trying to reach a conclusion that really isn't worth it. It feels like a summary of three movies, and refuses to linger on anything long enough for any of it to have any weight or meaning. It feels disposable on a level that even the much-maligned Solo avoided.
Spoilers follow:
I can't go into everything in this overstuffed turkey of a film, but there are a few points I want to touch on.
First, I almost have to respect the sheer audacity of bringing the Emperor back in the opening crawl and then steadfastly refusing to offer any explanation for his resurrection. The opening five minutes or so really sums up the movie as a whole - enough material for a whole story, thrown together without any chance for the individual moments to breath. In the space of literally two lines of dialogue, Kylo confirms that Palpatine lives, finds out his entire life has been a manipulation of the Emperor, and agrees to serve him while secretly beginning his own plans to overthrow him. That could all be a really interesting story, if this film was at all interested in developing it, rather than throwing it out there as quickly as possible so it can get to the next set piece. Hell, just the scene of the Emperor Reborn's transmission to the rest of the galaxy could have been a hell of a scene, if it wasn't relegated to the opening crawl.
(And then, bafflingly, Kylo is all but absent during most of the final confrontation with Palpatine, with almost no dialogue for the second half of the movie.)
The desperate efforts to walk back the Last Jedi start to almost feel like a running gag after a while. Someone suggests the 'Holdo manoeuvre' and is immediately told it won't work. Rey throws away a lightsaber and Luke chides her that a Jedi weapon should be treated with more respect. And, in the film's most hilarious decision, Rey's ancestry is retconned that while her parents were nobodies, her grandfather was Palpatine herself! In a desperate effort to tie everything together, we're left with the fantastic explanation that her parents sold her into slavery to protect her! One can almost picture Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams fighting over the scripts as they try and put forward their own contradictory visions...
(Oh, and if you want to drive yourself mad, try and work out the timeline of Rey being stranded on Jakku, Luke's attempts to find Exegol, and Ben Solo's turn to the dark side. Or try and work out if Luke knew the Emperor was back, and if so why he never told anyone, and if not, why he was trying to find a secret Sith world in the first place.)
But the worst aspect of the film is how Finn is treated. And this has been a problem for the whole new trilogy, but this was the last chance to give him the chance to be the hero he deserves to be. Finn should be one of the great new characters of the sequel trilogy, a symbol that even in the darkest of situations, we still have the choice to take a stand for what's right. The promotions for the Force Awakens all but painted him as the lead on the same level as Rey, but every film has diminished him since.
A lot of people, myself included, were hoping that we'd someday see Finn inspire a Stormtrooper rebellion; that his simple heroism and courage would bring the new Empire down from within. Rise of Skywalker takes that idea and executes it in the worst possible way. It has Finn meet other renegade Stormtroopers on Endor, and fights alongside them in the final battle. Did he inspire them to defect? Nope. Does he at least convince them to join the wider war? Nope. All this sequence does is diminish him as an individual, making him just one more face in a crowd. The films have never known what to do with the potential of Finn, and here the last of it is squandered.
And that sums up the film, and the sequel trilogy as a whole; unable to effectively make use of its own ideas, it goes running back to the comforting safeness of the original trilogy whenever possible. And so, at the end, we return to Tatooine, and nothing's changed. Somewhere out there, the First Order still reigns, and the plucky Resistance still tries to reclaim the galaxy in the name of freedoms that will never last.
“Oh, Biggs is right. I'm never going to get out of here!”
Talking about the movie afterwards, my friend asked me if I'd rate it as better or worse than the Last Jedi... and I honestly can't say. The Last Jedi was a thematic mess with a nihilistic attitude towards Star Wars, but at least I ended the film feeling something. That something was kinda depressed and hollow, but it had an emotional impact. Rise of Skywalker, meanwhile, leaps from half-formed plot point to plot point with a manic energy, desperately trying to reach a conclusion that really isn't worth it. It feels like a summary of three movies, and refuses to linger on anything long enough for any of it to have any weight or meaning. It feels disposable on a level that even the much-maligned Solo avoided.
Spoilers follow:
I can't go into everything in this overstuffed turkey of a film, but there are a few points I want to touch on.
First, I almost have to respect the sheer audacity of bringing the Emperor back in the opening crawl and then steadfastly refusing to offer any explanation for his resurrection. The opening five minutes or so really sums up the movie as a whole - enough material for a whole story, thrown together without any chance for the individual moments to breath. In the space of literally two lines of dialogue, Kylo confirms that Palpatine lives, finds out his entire life has been a manipulation of the Emperor, and agrees to serve him while secretly beginning his own plans to overthrow him. That could all be a really interesting story, if this film was at all interested in developing it, rather than throwing it out there as quickly as possible so it can get to the next set piece. Hell, just the scene of the Emperor Reborn's transmission to the rest of the galaxy could have been a hell of a scene, if it wasn't relegated to the opening crawl.
(And then, bafflingly, Kylo is all but absent during most of the final confrontation with Palpatine, with almost no dialogue for the second half of the movie.)
The desperate efforts to walk back the Last Jedi start to almost feel like a running gag after a while. Someone suggests the 'Holdo manoeuvre' and is immediately told it won't work. Rey throws away a lightsaber and Luke chides her that a Jedi weapon should be treated with more respect. And, in the film's most hilarious decision, Rey's ancestry is retconned that while her parents were nobodies, her grandfather was Palpatine herself! In a desperate effort to tie everything together, we're left with the fantastic explanation that her parents sold her into slavery to protect her! One can almost picture Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams fighting over the scripts as they try and put forward their own contradictory visions...
(Oh, and if you want to drive yourself mad, try and work out the timeline of Rey being stranded on Jakku, Luke's attempts to find Exegol, and Ben Solo's turn to the dark side. Or try and work out if Luke knew the Emperor was back, and if so why he never told anyone, and if not, why he was trying to find a secret Sith world in the first place.)
But the worst aspect of the film is how Finn is treated. And this has been a problem for the whole new trilogy, but this was the last chance to give him the chance to be the hero he deserves to be. Finn should be one of the great new characters of the sequel trilogy, a symbol that even in the darkest of situations, we still have the choice to take a stand for what's right. The promotions for the Force Awakens all but painted him as the lead on the same level as Rey, but every film has diminished him since.
A lot of people, myself included, were hoping that we'd someday see Finn inspire a Stormtrooper rebellion; that his simple heroism and courage would bring the new Empire down from within. Rise of Skywalker takes that idea and executes it in the worst possible way. It has Finn meet other renegade Stormtroopers on Endor, and fights alongside them in the final battle. Did he inspire them to defect? Nope. Does he at least convince them to join the wider war? Nope. All this sequence does is diminish him as an individual, making him just one more face in a crowd. The films have never known what to do with the potential of Finn, and here the last of it is squandered.
And that sums up the film, and the sequel trilogy as a whole; unable to effectively make use of its own ideas, it goes running back to the comforting safeness of the original trilogy whenever possible. And so, at the end, we return to Tatooine, and nothing's changed. Somewhere out there, the First Order still reigns, and the plucky Resistance still tries to reclaim the galaxy in the name of freedoms that will never last.
“Oh, Biggs is right. I'm never going to get out of here!”