Rise of Skywalker: The Rant Awakens

I’m not sure how much preamble this review really needs. Anyone reading this is likely already a Star Wars fan who has seen most or all of the dozen or so movies that have made it to screen thus far. I’ve had somewhat mixed feelings about these new post-Lucas movies. I felt The Force Awakens was a cheap rehash of the original trilogy, with too many callbacks, trading too heavily on the emotional resonance that Lucas created instead of forging a new path forward. This isn’t particularly surprising, as JJ Abrams is Hollywood’s remix master. But he’s pretty terrible at coming up with original ideas. I understand why studios want him to keep making movies, as he’s the Gen X/Millennial whisperer, regurgitating our childhoods to us for renewed consumption, and visually he makes very good-looking movies. But he’s a terrible script writer.  Handing off the series after TFA was a good move. The Last Jedi, with Rian Johnson now at the helm, was visually, tonally, and structurally a very different movie. It made some mistakes, like splitting up the main trio, and weird, useless digressions (why, exactly did they end up needing to go to that casino?), but it did two things well. 1. It was visually stunning. The bold use of color and several particularly avant-garde sequences were truly breathtaking and memorable. 2. It finally broke with the past. If Force Awakens was simply a warm-up we could forgive for leaning too heavily on the past, then Last Jedi was the director’s way of saying “all bets are off.” We were in store for something completely new, unfettered by the past, and the hand off was complete. This was a bold move that I think Johnson never got enough credit for. 

SPOILER TIME!

But that credit was apparently short lived. Whatever progress Johnson made is nearly completely undone by Abrams in his return to the final episode. Kathleen Kennedy made a huge mistake in allowing such a disjointed sequence of storytelling between the three movies. It’s painfully obvious that there was no overarching plan for the three movies. Indeed, as Johnson sought more than anything to cut the umbilical cord that tied this recent batch of films to the source material, in Rise of Skywalker Abrams sets to busily reattaching it. Before I go into all the things wrong with it, there are several good things to address. The acting is pretty good, despite some fairly hokey dialogue throughout. Adam Driver is especially good. Ridley, I think, has also settled into the role of Rey much more comfortably by the end of this movie. Tonally, I think this movie gets it right. It’s a good mix of light-hearted space adventure and serious space adventure. 

But the rest? It’s a disjointed mess. There’s far too much chasing of Macguffins, too much giant planet-destroying space weapons, too many unexplained new people being thrust into the movie that serve no purpose, too many unexplained new powers thrown in without any real explanation. George Lucas, bless his heart, kept the Force fairly simple early on. You could do a lot of telekinesis, run or jump really fast or high, deflect the odd blaster bolt, mind trick someone, and a few other minor feats. But now, you can seemingly astral project your physical body into other spaces, grab items, and physically transport them across space and time? And you can magically heal people from mortal wounds? And this creates some sort of Harry Potter-esque life bond? And we’re supposed to know what that is and what that means when Palpatine uses it the way he does in the film? Oh and hyperspace skipping? What the hell is that? It doesn’t even follow the rules Abrams created in the TFA when he broke them there. Look, I know it’s all space gobbledygook on some level, but even space fantasy has to have its own rules and follow them. But this just didn’t make any sense. There’s no internal coherency to this. They even retconned what seemed like a good, if punishing, ability gained from the previous movie, where Admiral Holdo kamikaze’d her cruiser into a much more powerful dreadnought and destroyed it. Now all of a sudden that’s no longer an option, retconned away with a handwave. And of course, they have to say that, because with a relatively inexpensive fleet of freighters they could have wiped out the entire First Order fleet at any time. Which just goes to show how little thought anyone actually puts into these plots. It’s kind of annoying, because the assumption seems to be they can make it up as they go along, with no rules, or any need for things to make much sense, because the audience doesn’t require any of that. 

The overarching plot, in many ways, is a mix of Empire and Return of the Jedi. Confront the Emperor’s super weapon with a goal of destroying them before they can destroy other planets? Check. Showdown in the Emperor’s throne room? Double check! (both a classic and new version). Find out you’re actually the descendent of an evil man reviled throughout the galaxy? Check! Defeat the empire by turning a Sith back to the ways of the Jedi? Check! Defeat the evil super weapons by attacking a ground-based emplacement? Che—oh no wait, they pulled a twist! This time they moved the ground thingamadoo to the sky! Omg, see, it’s the same but it’s different! So into the sky they go to destroy it there. 

I’m just exhausted by lack of originality. There’s a favorite quote of many fans from the Game of Thrones series said to Jon Snow. “Kill the boy, and let the man be born.” I wish Abrams would have taken this to heart in the Force Awakens. Imagine how much better these last two movies would have been if they’d gotten all this out of their system right up front, and allowed these characters to have their own adventure, their own journey, their own character development, without the weight of the original trilogy weighing down on them. 

For all that, I found it fairly fun and entertaining. It was a frenetic mess of a movie from a storytelling perspective, and I was frequently pulled out of it by things that made absolutely no sense. But the light humor, impressive visuals, and fast pacing never let me dwell on any one thing too long (which I suppose ended up being a blessing and a curse). Honestly, what this felt like was watching a Star Wars movie made by Michael Bay. The tone, composition, structure, senselessness, and cool action explosions made it feel that way, but in a bad way. Why? Because Michael Bay movies are kind of fun, in a sugar rush sort of way, where you don’t particularly think of them as great movies you want to watch over and over. You watch them once, consume, and move on, because while it’s fun, there’s nothing of substance there to really pull you back in and ground you in the movie. And that, maybe, is the part that bugs me the most about what happened here. It just felt like any other old sci-fi movie that happens to have a couple names and weapons we remember (because again, Abrams is pretty good at playing on memories), with some fan service thrown in and served up to the masses. But there was nothing special here for me, not like there was in the originals. For all the hate we like to throw at Lucas for some of the mistakes he’s made, if nothing else, episodes VII-IX have proven just how good episodes IV-VI really were. All the money the House of Mouse and the biggest names in sci-fi directing together can’t do much better than a hollow remake and reference to what he created 40 years ago.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out an interesting juxtaposition Disney has given us as well. The unveiling of the final act of the Skywalkers, Solos, and Palpatines is set against the penultimate episode of The Mandalorian (which dropped the day before Skywalker released). I bring this up not just because the healing ability shown in Rise is telegraphed by only a day from Mandalorian, but because the contrast between the two is striking. Mandalorian is a testament to minimalist, character-driven storytelling. What’s actually happening in most episodes doesn’t really matter much (which is good, because really, not much happens each episode). All that matters is we see a tiny bit more of the bond forming between the Mando and Baby Yoda, and once in a while we get tiny glimpses into Mando’s past, with suggestions on why he might be behaving the way he is. But the pace is glacial. The touch is light. The dialogue is sparse. Yet the show has already set the internet aflame in a way few could probably have imagined at Lucasfilm before it launched. I point this out, because it’s the exact opposite of Rise of Skywalker. Rise is frenetic and fast paced. All that seems to matter is the plot. Plot point to plot point to plot point takes you from spot A to spot B to spot C, go go go. It’s fast—the dialogue is heavy and preachy so you never get too lost in a sequence of events that doesn’t always make much sense. The characters are always telling you what they’re doing and how you should react to it. The characterization of the main trio isn’t entirely lost, but it definitely takes a back seat. It makes you wonder, if they’re able to keep us glued to our couches for more Mandalorian, with its low-key snail-paced silence, what could they have done with Rise if they’d toned it down say, 80%?

Star Wars is still fun and entertaining, but let’s stop pretending it’s anything more than a shadow of what we all fell in love with at the start. There are clearly better places to go with the franchise. The Mandalorian and Rogue One, which are the best two things to come out of the Disney era of Star Wars live action screen time, prove that original stories set in a familiar universe are their best tickets to success in the future. Fans are starving for more Star Wars, for new Star Wars. My hope is that Disney parts ways with Kathleen Kennedy and finds a visionary who can do with Star Wars what Kevin Feige did with Marvel. A title with the rich history of Star Wars deserves no less, and neither do the fans.