Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
Failed for the last time…
The final chapter in the Star Wars “Skywalker Saga” is full of dazzling moments, but lack of story cohesion and nonsensical retcons makes it the weakest entry in the new trilogy, and a poor finale for the eight previous “episodes.”
Starring Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac and Ian McDiarmid
Released by Walt Disney Studios, Lucasfilm
Written by J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio (with some story elements by Colin Trevorrow)
Directed by J.J. Abrams
As with any cinematic tentpole event – and as stated when reviewing the first entry in the sequel Star Wars trilogy four years ago – expectation can be a cruel thing. Most of the time, those expectations come from ourselves, when we build up a forthcoming movie so much in our minds that it almost has no choice but to be a great thing, otherwise we’ll be far too disappointed to actively acknowledge the truth just to save ourselves from disappointment.
In terms of expectation building up Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, however, the already stratospheric expectations of the fanbase have been carelessly and exponentially bolstered by the marketing teams at Walt Disney Studios and Lucasfilm. After it was announced that Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams would be returning to helm the sequel trilogy’s finale, it didn’t take long for that same team to give the “episodic” entries in the film series their own, collective name – the “Skywalker Saga” – and to say that the forthcoming Episode IX would aim to serve as a satisfying finale to not just its own trilogy, but the two that preceded it.
How can any film possibly meet not just the expectations of fans, but also serve as a satisfying end to the entire Skywalker Saga up to this point? Well...it turns out, it can’t. At least, The Rise of Skywalker can’t.
One year after the events of The Last Jedi, the fledgling Resistance is still combating the monolithic First Order, when the conflict is upended by a ghostly voice from the past: none other than Sheev Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) – the apparently long-dead Emperor of the evil Galactic Empire, and the Machiavellian figure who single handedly destroyed both the Old Republic and the Jedi Order – has been broadcasting a “threat of revenge” across the galaxy, aimed at any remaining free worlds.
In response to this, General Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher) of the Resistance has dispatched two of her most trusted fighters – Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and Finn (John Boyega) – to track down any clues related to this mysterious, possible resurrection. Meanwhile, the hierarchy of the First Order has responded very differently, as Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) has traveled throughout the galaxy to track down the phantom Emperor in order to try and crush any remaining threat to his total control of the First Order and, potentially, the galaxy.
Coming upon the undead visage of the Emperor on a long-lost world of the fabled Sith, Ren meets Palpatine who then reveals the secrets of the origins of Ren’s former master, while also revealing that the former scavenger and new Jedi he his hunting, Rey (Daisy Ridley), is not who she seems to be.
While Daisy Ridley continues to do an admirable job in embodying new series protagonist Rey, the screenplay for The Rise of Skywalker doesn’t go particularly far in terms of justifying her long journey toward Jedi greatness. Still, Rey is easily given the most satisfying conclusion here.
The Rise of Skywalker appears to be molding its story to have the same kind of emotional payoffs as its distant cousin, the widely-acclaimed Avengers: Endgame released earlier this year by Marvel Studios. It features some unexpected faces, some undoubtedly dazzling effects and single scenes, and the apparently-unthinkable happening before the eyes of Star Wars fans on the big screen.
The core problem is that many of the events are strung together very loosely, and the film is so unconcerned with justifying why you’re seeing what it shows you that it can almost feel insulting to your intelligence. If you’re wondering how – or why – the longstanding antagonist of the Skywalker Saga’s first six episodes is back and operating in the “modern” era of the franchise, the film offers no answers. You’ll likely just have to buy a future comic book, novel or a video game if you want to learn the details about that.
The same is true for what the Emperor brings to the table, effectively an Empire underneath the “Empire-lite” that Abrams introduced in The Force Awakens. How? Screenwriter Chris Terrio (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) and Abrams likely don’t know and at worst don’t care, again punting any rationale and logic for that to the storytellers of the expanded Star Wars universe to fuel the sales of future, potentially better narrative content.
Where the last film made serious efforts to not only tell a new kind of Star Wars story and to eschew the rigidity of absolute reverence for the original trilogy that Abrams seemingly worshipped in The Force Awakens, The Rise of Skywalker goes out of its way to bring things back down into the trappings of predictable safety, favoring substance-less aesthetics over many of the creative, story-driven choices that the last film saw some characters make.
Case-in-point: Kylo Ren. Easily the most fascinating and unique character introduced into the new trilogy, The Last Jedi justified the character’s turmoil by showing us a man who wanted to be free of the trappings he felt he was being forced to live in by his master, and even his family that he had already walked away from. In a powerful, visual scene of self-expression, Ren destroys the mask he wore in The Force Awakens, actively shedding any ongoing desire to be “the next Darth Vader.” Instead, if I can be allowed to paraphrase Chris Jericho, he now wished to become the first Kylo Ren.
Arguably the most disappointing resolution in the film is for the most fascinating character in the sequel trilogy, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). Not only does the film make the mistake of hiding Driver’s performance behind a mask – again – without good reason, but his final resolution fails to feel truly earned.
In The Rise of Skywalker, however, Ren's story is ultimately resolved in a way that feels rushed at best, and unearned at worst. The creative team effectively pushes the most interesting story thread of this trilogy away in order to make room for its nonsensical retcons involving the Emperor, doing a grave disservice to the character of Kylo Ren and the largely excellent performances we've observed from Adam Driver.
Much of this dismissive attitude can be gleaned from two nonsensical things related to Ren's character in this film that needed reasoning: one, why he carefully saved every piece of the mask he shattered in the last film, and two, why he decided to painstakingly reconstruct and wear it once again. Is it because Disney sees far more marketing potential in a mask that they own over the face of an actor that they don’t? Is it just because Abrams thinks the mask looks cooler? Is it both?
Either way, The Rise of Skywalker is full of moments like this, where it asks the audience to discount logic in favor of something slick; almost the embodiment of someone telling the audience to “look at the pretty lights” while offering nothing outside of...well, pretty lights. It hopes to distract you from its lack of substance, while asking you not to think critically about much of anything that you’re seeing.
From a story perspective, it’s very easy to be reminded about the shortcomings of logic found in Terrio’s screenplay for his effort involving Batman and Superman, which similarly eschewed moments of logical progression to fit the characters and events into a particular box. The same is true in more than one instance when looking at The Rise of Skywalker.
This is also the first Star Wars film that makes the spectacle of its unique brand of action feel frustrating to get through. Many of the action scenes in the first and second acts grind the film to a halt, adding nothing to the overall experience outside of what feels like ticking a box to make sure there’s a chase here, or a battle there. This is also the first time where the ample and overwhelming Stormtrooper deaths feel far more slapstick-y and comedic as opposed to creating any sense of danger for the characters, which is odd considering their track records in prior films.
Still, the film is not without its memorable moments in the longstanding legacy of the Skywalker Saga. The final scene in particular is a nice bow on the last three films, but the impact of that final scene is also severely undercut by a choice the movie rams down our throats involving Rey and her history. Be that as it may, it is absolutely terrific to see Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) again, and many of the design aspects of the film’s varied environments – outside of yet another new desert planet that is neither Tatooine nor Jakku – are often world-class.
John Williams returns to expand on the brilliance he’s established in the previous films, and his score does not disappoint. Without Williams’ work here, one shudders to think about the way the intended emotional moments of each scene might play if his expertise didn’t help to guide how each moment in the film ultimately plays out. Williams himself even gets a cameo here, a very well-deserved honor for a man who has musically defined generations of cinema.
The Rise of Skywalker is a victim of its own intent. In many ways it proves that Lucasfilm and company had no real plan when it comes to the story they aimed to tell over these three new films, and a strange compulsion it has to walk back several aspects of the last film makes it also feel a bit gutless in terms of having any desire to try and tell new, more forward-thinking stories in this universe, at least at this scale (thankfully, The Mandalorian exists).
Finn (John Boyega), Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and the legendary Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) have their moments in the story and make for an interesting team, but the action scenes they lead tend to grind the story to a halt in a way that feels oddly frustrating for a Star Wars movie.
The end result has made the sequel trilogy far less distinct than the two that came before. The original trilogy was, of course, the series of films that created this expansive world and set many of the rules that the universe at-large operates within, telling the story of a galactic civil war and the struggle of a farmboy to become the new hope that the galaxy sorely needed.
The prequel trilogy – while dipping into its own brand of winks and nudges at the audience at times – nonetheless aimed to be, and largely succeeded at being, a distinct story about the rise of Anakin Skywalker, the fall of the Jedi, and the amoral brilliance of the Emperor in maneuvering and consolidating the Republic into the Empire. A cautionary tale about how liberty dies with thunderous applause.
At the end of the day, what exactly is the sequel trilogy trying to say? No real through-line exists largely because of the way that the powers-that-be chose to try and stick the landing, with an end result that feels far more like a corporate product making safe investments to please shareholders as opposed to telling a truly satisfying story that can serve as a substantive finale to the entire Skywalker Saga.
On a personal note, this is – truly – the first Star Wars film that I don’t really like all that much. Even though I largely dismissed The Force Awakens as similarly safe upon its release, it at least aimed to try and recreate a sense of heart that the prequels – films I do actively adore – had admittedly lost because of the increased scale and scope of their stories compared with the original films.
I also think there is a lot to love about Solo: A Star Wars Story, and Rogue One remains one of the absolute best films in the franchise released since Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012. The Last Jedi is my personal high point of the current iteration of Star Wars. I have 10 films out of 11 in the live-action film series that I really, truly like and love. It hurts me to feel the way I do about a Star Wars film, but there’s simply no rationalizing many of the dunder-headed choices that this film makes in comparison with what has come before.
Stating an intent to serve as a grand finale by releasing such a misfire of a story is a genuinely bad call, making a “course correction” that takes this trilogy from a potentially interesting road ahead, to now careening straight off a cliff and ending in a wreck. The journey may have taken us on an interesting ride for a while, but in hindsight, maybe this car should’ve just been left in the garage.
But hey...expectation can be a cruel thing. Where have I heard that before?