OnScreen Review: "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"
Ken Jones, Chief Film Critic
Two years ago, in a fanbase very, very close by…
STAR WARS!!!
*Cue John Williams music*
Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
It’s been two years since a schism in the Star Wars universe left audiences divided over The Last Jedi by Rian Johnson and the firing of Colin Trevorrow from the director’s chair for this movie. Some fans loved its stunning visual style and were excited by the bold steps it took in charting a path forward for the franchise.
But others were very vocal about this looking to the future when all they wanted was to cling to their familiar original trilogy and have these same old stories recycled and told back to them in repackaged ways with a shiny new gloss on them.
And so, with the fate of the galaxy in the balance, Supreme Leader Kathleen Kennedy summons director J.J. Abrams for one final entry in the Star Wars saga, with a promised conclusion to the story of Skywalker…
We need to be constantly reminded as a society that Twitter is not real life; in particular, with politics, that the opinions expressed on Twitter do not necessarily reflect overall public sentiment. It’s easy to forget this and think that the outsized voices echoed online carry more weight than they should. I imagine there is some similarity to overseeing a movie studio. It can’t be easy to cast a vision and stick to it and not be swayed by public opinion, even a very vocal minority. I don’t know what percentage of Star Wars fans were truly disappointed with or outright hated The Last Jedi, but the executives at Disney and J.J. Abrams took them all to heart in crafting Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
I listen to podcasts at 1.5x speed to listen to them faster and to listen to more of them. It felt like this movie was being told at 1.5x speed at times, especially early on, because there is a whole lot of story packed into a movie that clocks in at 135 minutes. If there is one criticism I may have of The Last Jedi, it’s that it did not carry enough of the narrative weight of the trilogy as a whole and The Rise of Skywalker suffers for it. There is a lot of planet-hopping, with our core trio of Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), and Poe (Oscar Isaac) spending most of the film together searching for a device that will lead them to a destination where they can take a stand against an old enemy. And Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is also hot on their heels and trying to turn Rey to the Dark Side.
This movie serves not just as the conclusion of this new trilogy, but it has been billed as the completion of the Skywalker saga in the Star Wars universe, so it is a culmination of 42 years of storytelling spanning nine main movies and a few spinoffs. Each new movie speaks to the previous entries in the series. Each trilogy also speaks to the previous trilogies, the prequels to the original trilogy and this sequel trilogy to both. The biggest criticism of The Force Awakens was that it relied too heavily on nostalgia for the original trilogy. While there were thematic and visual callbacks to the original trilogy in The Last Jedi, it was not as blatant in its revelry in nostalgia. I understood the purpose of The Force Awakens was essentially to tell a good story with new characters, but also mend some fences and rebuild some goodwill with the fans. The Last Jedi was the movie to carve out the space for this new trilogy in the Star Wars universe, and The Rise of Skywalker would epically land the plane, er… X-wing.
All of that is to say that there was a lot on the plate for this movie already, and the backlash against The Last Jedi apparently added the need to heap on more and more fan service in this movie. Many of the story choices that were made in The Last Jedi are undone or undermined in this movie. What is most disheartening is how this movie does the same to Return of the Jedi and the overall story of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. Remember how he was supposed to bring balance to the Force? That’s an afterthought in light of this new trilogy and its conclusion. But, hey, at least some fans will finally get the answers they want regarding Snoke and Rey’s parents.
There are moments that mimic previous moments in the older movies, but also a few that call back to moments from the last two movies that work well. However, the third act felt like watching a visual representation of an eight-year-old playing in his sandbox with all his Star Wars toys. Some aspects of the journey our heroes go on felt more like something akin to a Harry Potter adventure or a Pirates of the Caribbean movie than Star Wars, which also had three main characters working together on an adventure. For all of his talk about how The Last Jedi freed him up to be more bold in his storytelling this time around, it is frustrating to see how many times Abrams plays it safe and lays up instead of going for the big shot in this movie.
While I consider this movie to be messy, there is still a lot to like and quite a bit that I enjoyed, despite my frustration. Of the “new” cast, Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron gives a standout performance, getting plenty of opportunity to shine as we also get some backstory for him. Keri Russell gives a great little supporting performance as someone from Poe’s somewhat checkered past. The way the movie manages to work in Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) is well done and indeed a fitting sendoff for Carrie Fisher. Mark Hamill, criminally underused in both of Abrams’ movies, gets a very nice scene with Rey that calls back to some of the themes of The Last Jedi and a fitting and appropriate callback to The Empire Strikes Back. This film also finally takes C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) off the sidelines and makes him more prominently involved and integral to the story. The movie dips into the history of the Sith in some new ways that some may find interesting but may leave other wishing that they had even more or none of it at all. And the return of Lando Calrissian is a welcome sight. And there is a lot of humor throughout that works.
This last film always needed to conclude with resolution for Rey and Kylo Ren, the two characters at the center of this new story. How their stories concluded would make all the difference. I didn’t find the reveal of Rey’s parents compelling, though it is a clever workaround to what she was told by Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi. I think her story ultimately concludes in the right way, but the journey to get there is a bumpy one. The character arc I really ended up appreciating is that of Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. Adam Driver has done a nice job with this conflicted character and how his story plays out in this third and final film is fitting, emotional, rings true, and is handled far better than Rey’s.
It’s a nearly impossible task to wrap up 42 years of storytelling in a satisfactory manner. We’ve been a bit spoiled by the ending of Avengers: Endgame perhaps. J.J. Abrams and company do their best here, but they are too beholden to fan service and trying to satisfy everyone that the final result is a movie that is a jack of all trades, master of none. There are still aspects to enjoy in this movie, but it packs too much into this last chapter and serves too many masters. The Rise of Skywalker is an uneven end to this trilogy of trilogies, playing it safe too often and falling back too often on the past. Having said that, I look forward to future Star Wars stories that don’t directly involve the Skywalkers.
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars