SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT PROCEED FURTHER OR READ ANY OF THIS REVIEW UNTIL AFTER YOU'VE SEEN THE RISE OF SKYWALKER!
FINAL WARNING - SPOILERS AT THE GATE!
We live in an age of knee-jerk reactions – and nowhere is that more evident than in the science fiction community. Since social media became the firehose of opinion dissemination, responses to films (akin to political opinions) have tended to be intensely reactive and polarizing. You either really love something or you really hate it – and if you don’t agree with me... you must be crazy!!! In addition, with highly anticipated tentpole films, the expectations are often so intense – coupled with the collective audience assumptions of what they presume a movie will be like – that it’s become rarer and rarer for a movie to actually meet that stew of avid expectancy and preconceived notions. It makes for a strange – and often extreme – time to be a fan.
So with the arrival of Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker last month, all those variables had reached critical mass. Understand that I’m a lifelong Star Wars fan who’s wildly predisposed to love just about anything involving the franchise. I’m not a “Disney-hater,” and I’ve enthusiastically loved the first two chapters of this new trilogy. It’s our modern pop culture mythos, whose appeal spans generations. Like the Marvel Universe, you’ll see twelve-year-old kids and grandparents enjoying the films together – and that’s pretty awesome. Fans really freaked out over the previous installment, The Last Jedi, with many having extremely negative, Prometheus-level reactions. I actually loved it, and thought the filmmaking was inventive and very satisfying. So, yes – I’m extremely fond of Star Wars, and was heavily invested in how director J.J. Abrams and company would wrap things up in this concluding chapter.
I first saw the picture opening weekend, and had a bit of a strange reaction, I think due in large part to the less than ideal venue we had to settle for, when our preferred local cinema was closed due to vandalism. I try to avoid chain theaters that bombard you with ads – and after 20-plus minutes of Coke commercials and mediocre trailers, I wasn’t in the best mood when the movie started. So I wanted to think about it a bit before weighing-in, and I wanted to go back and see it a second time, having allowed some time for that expectation frenzy to die down, and to assess the film with a little bit more objectivity. What a concept!
The Rise of Skywalker has had an interesting reception. It’s had about the lowest aggregate critic’s score of any of the films in the franchise (about equal to The Phantom Menace), yet has a pleasingly high audience score, and has done terrific box office, holding the top spot ever since it opened. There’s been repeat business, and audiences are clearly enjoying themselves.
Having now seen the film twice, I think I’m in a much better place to see where the film succeeds, and also where things get a bit fuzzy. Again, be advised spoilers abound from this point forward.
The big plot development in Rise of Skywalker is that somehow…Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) has returned. It’s revealed in the opening crawl. Hand-in-glove with this development is the Emperor’s connection to protagonist Rey (Daisy Ridley). Rey’s parentage has been a central mystery of the previous two installments, and here it’s revealed that she’s Emperor Palpatine’s…granddaughter. This is all big news, and it’s fun and operatic to see it play out. But in terms of feeling connected to the first two chapters of this trilogy, it really feels a bit like both of these plot twists come out of nowhere.
Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan was brought in to work on the first screenplay for this trilogy, The Force Awakens. As far as I know, Kasdan has been mum, but I’m willing to bet all this Palpatine emergence & familial revelation was not part of the initial game plan when writing that first script. I would love to hear what he thinks of how this final chapter played out.
We see Palpatine right away, where Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) seeks him out on the mysterious Sith planet of Exogol. Helpful reminder: in case you forgot, Palpatine was dispatched at the end of Jedi when Darth Vader threw him down into an explosive power shaft in the second Death Star. The key word in all this is that “somehow” Palpatine has returned. The audience isn’t really in on how this happened, which might be convenient, but feels like a big cheat (I hope Wonder Woman 1984 does a better job of explaining how Steve Trevor comes back). He’s hooked up to enormous machines, and seems fleshy and milky-eyed – incomplete. He reveals to Ren that he’s been the puppet master behind Supreme Leader Snoke the whole time, and we see some big vats containing other presumably Beta versions of cloned Snoke bodies. So we kind of assume Palpatine came back through some vague combination of cloning and dark side Sith sorcery. It’s a big, far-flung space fantasy, and there are times they just expect you to go with it.
Likewise the whole granddaughter reveal (akin to “I am your father!”) is a little odd. “Granddaughter” implies family, and while we (again) pretty much assume Palpatine wasn’t out there dating and got married at some point – that he (probably?) sired children by more laboratory-induced means – still, we get flashbacks of Rey’s parents, and how did they come into being? Did they have a mom? They seem like a regular couple, not like a pair of Sith witches or warlocks. This all feels really hastily stitched together, with very little info given to the audience – which is a shame. Because the overall theme this plot helps serve for Rey (particularly in the final scene), is that your family and sense of self comes from who cared for you and guided you in life – not first and foremost from who biologically conceived you – which is a great message for any young people in the audience to hear who may have grown up with less than ideal parents in their past.
This is all basically the setup – though the reveal about Rey comes about halfway into the film. Screenwriters Chris Terrio (Argo, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Justice League) and J.J. Abrams reaffirm that Ren is still very much a bad guy, having had his helmet welded back together by some kind of Sith chimpanzee – seriously. There’s a new top dog Imperial, Allegiant General Pryde (Richard E. Grant), and Ren has regrouped with his cool-looking biker gang, the Knights of Ren.
The Resistance is getting help from a spy somewhere inside The First Order, and Terrio and Abrams cook up an extremely hopscotch artifact plot about finding a Sith Wayfinder, an object necessary to find the location of Exogol and the Emperor. But finding it ain’t easy, and involves the core good guys hopping to no less than three planets to track down. Along the way there are giant snakes, old flames, and epic adventures. There’s also a character death fake-out that reminds one of Marion Ravenwood’s “They must have switched baskets!” resurrection from Raiders of the Lost Ark. For me, this planet-hopping section of the film is the least successful, with dialogue that’s really overflowing with awkward exposition, and a feeling that a lot of editing has gone on to try and consolidate events – which creates a pretty haphazard flow. Finn (John Boyega) and Poe (Oscar Isaac) fare the worst with all this, and deserve better. An early scene at the rebel base with the two of them and Rey energetically over-talking one another as they try to exposition themselves out of the scene feels like the world’s most awkward and self-aware improv class ever. Things get better, but that early scene sets the tone, and it’s pretty painful – and make no mistake, I really like these actors – I’m rooting for them to succeed. But it feels like it reveals a certain awkwardness everyone is trying super hard to get past.
So, Paul, it doesn’t sound like you liked this movie very much? Not necessarily. Upon a second viewing, I found myself a lot more willing to “suspend my disbelief” and just go with it. It's a fun, high-energy adventure, and they keep throwing things at you, fast and furious. For me, what really saves the film and keeps the sails aloft is the work of both Ridley and Driver. Both actors do a tremendous job here – even when the script threatens to undermine and contradict their established characters. These two Jedi are much more powerful than those who we saw in the original trilogy, with new abilities. A key element of these films is the relationship between Rey and Ren, and the connection between them is far more tangible than we’ve previously seen – even when they’re in different physical locations, their bond seems to allow them to partially intervene in the other’s tangible space. They aren’t just antagonists, and both actors work with that. They’re also given a couple of riveting action sequences together, including a truly epic, Wagnerian lightsaber duel on the tempest-tossed wreckage of the second Death Star. This is probably the set piece where Abrams’ gift of conjuring up real cinema shines the brightest. It’s a breathtaking sequence.
Likewise, a desert scene of Rey single-handedly facing down a fast-approaching TIE Fighter is a definite show-stopper, and exquisitely cut.
There’s a real sense of fun to a large part of this concluding chapter, but there’s also a real sense that Abrams maybe wasn’t fully allowed to hone a distinct vision. It’s been reported he shot way more footage than has been included here, and that many scenes were cut to ensure a brisk running time, or out of concern about how they might play in the lucrative overseas market. Talk is already in the wind of a subsequent re-release akin to Avengers: Endgame, with additional scenes – and an eventual home video release of a potential 192-minute Abrams’ cut, with many scenes involving actors who’ve played Jedi in previous films, who were only briefly heard here. We’ll have to see how that all plays out, but it’s fascinating to consider, and may make the story flow a bit clearer. Now that the film’s box office stature is secure, Disney can afford to be liberal with sharing additional content.
Filmmaking is a business, and it definitely feels like The Rise of Skywalker was engineered to please at maximum yield, and avoid anything that had the potential to be divisive or repeat any reactions akin to The Last Jedi. They made plenty of use of previously unreleased Carrie Fisher footage, and there are flashbacks of a younger Luke and Leia during a post-Return of the Jedi era we’ve never really seen on film before. One can’t help but wonder how much more of that there might be!
The movie is full of nods to the original trilogy, to the point of even echoing/mimicking specific scenes. A medal is even presented to someone who many fans felt had been unfairly denied one. It’s fun to see Billy Dee Williams back as a very laid-back Lando Calrissian, and newcomers Naomie Ackie and Kerrie Russell make good impressions with their limited screen time – though they’re practically standing in the spotlight compared to poor Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), who fan toxicity has reduced to studying “the specs of old Star Destroyers.” Wow.
Yes, parts of Rise of Skywalker are overstuffed, undoubtedly driven by a combination of good intentions and brand-preserving paranoia. But huge sections of the film are also explosively entertaining and great fun. Abrams and Disney clearly wanted to give fans the biggest meal they'd ever been served - even if it is sometimes a little half-baked.
But here's the thing: if you love Star Wars, Rise of Skywalker isn't going to make you love it any less. It's a massive universe ripe for storytelling, as televised outings such as The Clone Wars, Rebels and The Mandalorian consistently prove. There's plenty of room for new voices and new characters within that mythic canvas, and the part of me that will forever love dreaming of a galaxy far, far away, had a pretty good time, once all the dust had settled. How the film holds up over time remains to be seen. I'm certainly eager to see more scenes and longer cuts. One thing's for sure, the younger generation is clearly enjoying this film, too - as every audience I've seen has at least two generations sharing the movie together, and relishing the thrill of heroes and villains, and of spaceships and lightsabers. It's a fantasy, and meant for fun - and I think we should all be able to discuss what was amazing, and what maybe could have been a little stronger - without lessening our appreciation of the experience as a whole. As for me, I'm always ready for more Star Wars. Always.
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