Lucasfilm / Disney
Ah, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, what is wrong with your name? It’s so weirdly specific yet completely generic in terms of how it can be interpreted. When The Force Awakens came out, I appreciated the nostalgia trip and fan service moments, even if I found some pieces (even bigger Death Star, etc) to be a bit simplistic. But I liked the new set of main characters: Daisy Ridley as potential force user Rey, conflicted former Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega), cocky charismatic Han Solo ripoff Poe (Oscar Isaac, who could have chemistry with a wall), emotional crybaby Sith wannabe Kylo Ren (Adam Driver right before he blew up), and even clichéd General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson).
As for The Last Jedi, I had a few issues here and there, but I overall really liked it, which seems almost a controversial opinion on the Internet these days. The main thing I didn’t buy was the romantic chemistry between Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) and Finn, which felt much more like older sister/younger brother vibes. In other words, more like Luke/Leia from Return of the Jedi and less like Luke/Leia from A New Hope. I don’t really want to get into defending anything else, but I certainly could and have offline.
So as for The Rise of Skywalker, we have the first Star Wars movie to directly use a name, following up a little while after the events of The Last Jedi. As we learn in the opening crawl, Kylo Ren is off trying to track down rumors of the supposedly long dead Emperor Palpatine (our old friend Ian McDiarmid) who was teased/spoiled in the trailers for the movie. So anything in those trailers is fair game for a review in my opinion.
Palps is really a very mixed bag here.
Meanwhile, plot threads are set up and most will pay off, and most paid off in predictable fashion, some in engaging, interesting ways, the rest in cheesy ‘oh you guys’ manner. The level of potential ironic chuckles or eye rolling entirely depends on how into the cheesy moments you might be — these moments that seemed simplistic and silly to me were clearly designed to engender applause breaks from the audience like Avengers: Endgame successfully managed.
Rey continues to train until things change when the plot arrives, while Finn and Poe get into hijinks. Eventually everybody’s off on a fun mission that’s point A to point B to point C in the ‘ah, a clue for the next segment of the film’ style. Our old friend C-3PO gets involved in the mission for reasons explained in the movie, and he’s still the same old annoying, funny character.
There is a storyline for General Hux, but it is poorly done, and Rose Tico has essentially no storyline at all. There are three new characters of any note, and one is interesting. There’s yet another evil general, played by Richard E Grant, but the only thing we get is one interesting line teased and then nothing pays off for him. There’s also the potentially interesting character Jannah (Naomi Ackie) that also doesn’t go anywhere, and also has some problematic aspects to her relationships with other characters that I am a little surprised the filmmakers missed.
Lucasfilm / Disney
Then there’s helmeted Zorii Bliss (Keri Russell), who brings a dark, sexy energy to her character who barely has anything to do. But at least she was interesting, unlike those other two new characters. Billy Dee Williams returns (as seen in the trailer) as Lando Calrissian, and the thing is … well he’s really only done voice roles and tiny acting pieces for the last decade, and it feels like the movie didn’t really know how to write him correctly.
There are two styles of conversation here, and one works, while the other struggles. The casual, character-based ones, including humor, tends to work pretty well. The expository, explanatory stuff is mostly emotionless and dry, and often feels simplistically written. When I look at the scripts written by the screenwriters, it sort of makes sense.
One aspect of the movie that definitely still worked for me was the arc and relationship between Rey and Kylo, which thankfully was a big part of the movie. It ended in a way that was predictable but still satisfying, although the actual ending of the movie was monumentally cheesy and, I think, a mistake that could’ve been easily fixed with a minor line change.
The film relies heavily on the expressive, emotional faces of Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley to get over to us the complicated nature of what’s happening, and to be honest, that nearly always works better than a lot of the clunky dialogue foisted upon them. Another thing I appreciate were the additions to the lore of the Force, adding a few new tricks that made sense and added some cool new ideas to the universe.
Carrie Fisher’s passing during filming is, for the most part, artfully handled since they keep using her character for a while using tricks like body doubles, shadows, and some iffy CGI. Honestly, that CGI was surprising in that it seemed in a few instances worse than Rogue One.
Overall, the feeling for a lot of the movie was ‘How can we flatten this out?’ in a common denominator way. Fan service was constant, to some very nerdy areas that I obviously noticed because I’m that sort of nerd, even if I don’t complain like one. An egregious amount of plot points seemed designed to reverse a lot of the choices from The Last Jedi, but I suppose that Disney was terrified of another negative slew of YouTube thinkpieces.
What can I really say after all that? It was never boring, often really silly, but man, it could’ve used a few tweaks and been so much better. The themes were easy to understand and simple — maybe in the end that’s what people need.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has a run time of 2 hours 21 minutes, and is rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and action.
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