Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker
Star Wars isn’t just a movie series anymore. It is a brand. A cultural institution. As a result, Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker isn’t just a two and a half hour cinematic experience but the capstone of forty years of movies, TV shows, toys, and video games. That is a lot to manage. Rise of Skywalker does not thrive under the pressure. Instead of a triumphant conclusion to decades of storytelling, what we got is a hot mess.
As the final film of the nine movies that make up the so-called Skywalker saga, this movie can’t really be analyzed just as a stand alone film, but must be understood for its role as the end of Rey’s story, its position as the ultimate film of the trilogy of trilogies that are the core Star Wars storyline, and as a piece of a larger Star Wars world that includes the stand alone films like Rogue One and TV shows like The Mandalorian. This a lot to unpack. In other words, hold onto your butts, this is going to be a long one.
Perhaps the best way to begin to understand why Rise of Skywalker is such a mess is to start from the micro, the movie as a self-contained two and a half hour experience, and work up to the macro, the movie as a part of a massive cultural juggernaut. Unfortunately, even as just a movie, without all the baggage of the rest of Star Wars, Rise of Skywalker is still disappointing.
There are a handful of things that the movie does well, maybe even exceptionally well. The visuals of the movie are stunning. It might be one of the best looking Star Wars yet. The mixture of practical and digital effects provides something that is both less clunky than the original trilogy (though those movies hold up remarkably well) and less sterile and video game-y than the prequel trilogy. Modern camera technology also helps create stunning images, making every location they travel to come alive with vibrant colors and every effect pop off the screen.
J.J. Abrams also shows a real talent for in-camera editing, with many shots utilizing camera movement to create multiple new compositions in single takes without needing a cut. This is very similar to the trademark oners of Steven Spielberg and in Rise of Skywalker it adds a kineticism that is palpable. This visual flair is most noticeable in the numerous action scenes, making them dynamic and engrossing. If you are capable of ignoring the fact that the action is in service of a generally stupid plot they can be a lot of fun on a basic, visceral level.
The performances of Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver are both quite good. Adam Driver in particular, I think, has been absolutely gripping in all of the modern Star Wars trilogy and this film is no exception. John Willliams delivers another killer score, though I have recently come to learn that his expert use of leitmotifs to evoke character and emotion through the film’s music was frequently butchered during the editing process. And for positive qualities, that’s about it.
The movie really falls apart when you begin examining the story. For starters, the movie is completely overstuffed. It has so many specific narrative beats it is trying to get through to build to its ending, without the proper time to do so, that it ends up bloated beyond belief. Initially, this isn’t that apparent as you are swept up in the great rollercoaster of it all, but as the movie progresses you begin to realize that a lot of exposition is being fed to you in a relatively short period of time and it results in some egregious plot contrivances.
The story is structured like a video game with a chain of fetch quests that lead to the lair of the ultimate big bad guy. Funnily enough, for most of the movie it matches, beat for beat, the story of Bioware’s first-rate video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. There is a secret planet where a Sith power has access to a mystical ability to construct a peerless military power. Our main group of ragtag heroes must travel from planet to planet putting together the pieces of a map that will guide them safely to this secret base to confront this Sith power and put an end to its plans. Only Knights of the Old Republic is much better at bringing these ideas to life. In Knights, the power to construct an army is the Star Forge and the mechanics of it are well explained in the context of the story, including what it can do and the risks associated with using it. In Rise of Skywalker, the Emperor’s ability to manifest his fleet of star destroyers is never explained. In Knights, the gameplay provides the player, as the protagonist, with strict agency over the finding and securing of each piece of the star map. In Rise of Skywalker, Rey and company fall into a sand pit and just happen to stumble on the ship of the missing explorer they’ve been looking for.
Even if you don’t mind this video game like story format, some of these quest moments also just make no sense. On one planet, Rey is able to use a dagger with some special notches on it to reveal the location of an object she needs. The logic here doesn’t track. How is it that the notches on the knife match the exact ridges of the destroyed Death Star? If the knife was made long ago, as is implied, how could the maker account for the wind and water erosion that would surely occur since the relic Death Star in question is sitting in the ocean? This kind of thing is more forgivable for me in pulp nonsense, like National Treasure, but traditionally Star Wars has operated on a much higher level. Yes, the series takes inspiration from the schlocky sci-fi serials of Lucas’ youth, but also from the movies of John Ford and Akira Kurosawa.
While the quest storyline continues to use Kylo Ren as the main antagonist, the movie has set up the Emperor as a new threat which needs to be addressed. This is very shakily handled. He is introduced in the opening crawl. Rather than have rumors of his return spread through the galaxy, the text explains that his return is announced via a mysterious broadcast. So much about this makes you scratch your head. Why did the Emperor choose to announce his return, instead of using his believed death as a means for a surprise attack? Why did the Emperor choose now to announce his return? When the movie finally gets around to answering some of these questions, the Emperor’s motivations appear to be plagued with internal inconsistencies, unclear motivations, and contradictory goals. Most of this comes from the finale, but almost nothing Palpatine does, from his hair-brained schemes for dealing with Rey to his plans for his death armada, make any sense if you take half a minute to think about them outside the spectacle of the movie’s climax. This ultimately leads to an unfulfilling conclusion. Sure, as the credits roll you may be basking in the afterglow of the experience, but by the time you are leaving the theater, or getting up off your couch, you start to realize just how muddled the whole ending is.
There is plenty more I could complain about, like the stupendously cliche and predictable fleet battle in the finale, C3POs high stakes sacrifice that actually has no stakes, Chewbacca’s pointless kidnapping, and what feels like a hundred other things, but at some point I’m more nit picking than reviewing. You get the picture. The movie is a dog turd in a Tiffany box: pretty packaging but an undesirable product.
Of course, Rise of Skywalker’s problems don’t end there. It isn’t just a stand alone space adventure movie, it is also the end of the sequel trilogy and the resolution of the story of heroes Rey, Finn, and Poe as well as villain Kylo Ren. Here, again, the movie finds a way to disappoint.
Counter-intuitively, the overstuffed plot actually leads to weaker characterization for most of the core cast, leading to lackluster resolutions for several characters. Too much to do, not enough time to thoughtfully complete the three film arcs of these characters. Poe gets a moment where a stop on their quest reveals some aspects of his past, but beyond that there isn’t much that builds character through action. It also does nothing to move Poe’s story forward, only providing a glimpse at his past. Finn, on the other hand, is just forgotten. For example, Finn repeatedly tries to tell Rey something but always gets cut off before he is able to say anything. This creates an expectation in the audience that when he finally does get to speak, it will be important. Is he going to tell her he loves her? Or that he thinks he can use the Force? Or something he remembers from his time as a stormtrooper that might help in the fight against Emperor Palpatine? Not only does this not resolve in an interesting way, it doesn’t resolve at all. Finn never gets to say what he wanted to say and the audience is left wondering why something like this was clearly set up only to never be paid off. Cut for time, I guess.
Rise of Skywalker is a mess in part because the sequel trilogy is messy. The Force Awakens is a reasonable first offering that provides many ideas that future movies can run with to build out more of the world, the characters, and the story. Who are Rey’s parents? Who is Snoke and where did he come from? What turned Kylo Ren to the dark side? The biggest failing of the movie is that it is a soft retread of A New Hope. An unlikely hero on a desert planet, a droid carrying valuable intel, a planet sized military installation with a massive laser weapon, and so on.
The Last Jedi is, in many respects, an even better movie than The Force Awakens. It is more original, more inventive, takes Rey and Kylo’s characters in interesting directions and has some profound things to say about the nature of the Force and, by extension, the idea of heroes. Personally, I think that the entire code breaker subplot is fairly weak, but overall the movie is very enjoyable. What it isn’t is a good Star Wars movie. Or, more specifically, it isn’t doing its job as the second film of a trilogy. To borrow an observation from someone much cleverer than I, it’s bad improv. It doesn’t “Yes, and…” to build on the concepts of what came immediately before it. It ignores or rejects what the first film put forward in order to tell its own largely self-contained story. It also does not engage in escalation or provide exposition that will be relevant to the third movie, which is common of middle films in a trilogy. In Empire Strikes Back we learn more about the Force. We learn of the Skywalker familial relationships. We meet the Emperor. We don’t get much, or any, of that kind of build up in The Last Jedi.
It feels like the Disney era of Star Wars, or at least the Skywalker saga portion of it, is one incredibly expensive exquisite corpse: multiple artists trying to make one thing together but without looking at each other’s work in the process. But an exquisite corpse’s raison d’etre is found in its notable lack of cohesion, whereas a movie series like this needs to be cohesive. The precedent in Star Wars is that each movie in each trilogy is part of a larger picture telling a larger story.
This disjointed creation process combined with the immense pressure to end this massive cultural touchstone in a satisfactory way creates an environment where Rise of Skywalker feels compelled to both establish and pay off three movies worth of storytelling in just one movie. That is probably where the bloat comes from. There isn’t time to make Finn into a character again, give Rose something to do, resolve Kylo’s fate, give Rey a satisfying conclusion, introduce and then defeat a new bad guy (since Snoke was unceremoniously killed in the previous movie) all within a reasonable run time. Does this excuse Rise of Skywalker? Probably not. Where The Last Jedi simply ignores the narrative hooks of The Force Awakens, Rise of Skywalker soundly rejects the input of its predecessor. Rather than try to work around the realities of where Rian Johnson left the story, J.J. Abrams seems to say “Forget the second movie. The third movie will try to pick up where the ideas of the first movie left off and will only make reference to the contents of the second when absolutely necessary.” This puts at least part of the blame for the bloated story on Rise of Skywalker’s creative team alone.
This neatly leads into the final level of granularity for discussing Rise of Skywalker: as a piece of the Star Wars franchise. The larger Star Wars has grown in the pantheon of pop culture, the further it strays from its original tone. This film made me realize this isn’t just a problem with the fans but with the creative forces behind these movies as well.
In its original form, Star Wars is a science fiction story with some light fantasy elements. The Force is powerful and mysterious, but is also only lightly used. Sword fighting is rare and inspired by duels in movies like Seven Samurai and Hidden Fortress: simple, grounded, but full of emotional weight. Fundamentally, it is not a series about samurai space wizards.
By the time the prequel trilogy came out, Lucas seems to have succumbed to the idea of pandering to the version of Star Wars fans remembered rather than the tone of the actual movies. Force powers get more involved and lightsaber battles went from short, grounded martial bouts into long acrobatic feats full of flips, spins, and flashy blade flourishes. As Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon cut through hordes of useless battle droids, one wonders what is the point of all these fights that carry no risk, no stakes, no emotional weight or consequences. Then, this copy of a copy was copied again to make the sequel trilogy.
Lightsabers are further deified. Force powers don’t even require training to acquire, as evidenced by Rey’s use of the Jedi mind trick in The Force Awakens. The Force becomes increasingly a tool for papering over any problems with the writing. Kylo and Rey need to communicate for their dynamic to work, but they are light-years apart by the constraints of the plot. No problem, they can just talk to each other through the Force. Rise of Skywalker takes these issues with the sequel trilogy and pushes them to their absurdist conclusion. Not only can they talk across the universe, now objects can pass through space/time as well. Rey and Kylo have a lightsaber fight with each other despite being on different planets. The Emperor can conjure up Force lightning capable of crippling thousands of ships simultaneously. It no longer takes a living person to affect the universe with the Force, now Luke’s ghost can raise a ship out of the sea with his posthumous powers. And what the hell is a Force dyad? Star Wars has become a full-blown fantasy that happens to be set in space.
Something that most fantasy and science fiction writers in literature instinctively understand, that franchise filmmakers need to learn, is that when you add details to a story they don’t just inform that story but add new truths to the world the writer is building. This is something I think none of the sequel trilogy writers and directors seem to understand. If a lightspeed jump by a ship can cut another ship in half, why have robotically piloted kamikaze ships never appeared in previous movies? If Jedi ghosts can still use the Force, why doesn’t Obi Wan or Yoda help Luke when he was at his lowest points? If the Emperor can shut down a fleet’s worth of ships alone, why didn’t he destroy the attack on the second Death Star by himself? If the Emperor is back, does that not undercut the entire narrative arc of the original trilogy even more than Luke growing up to be a bad teacher, a common complaint with The Last Jedi?
Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker is not without promise. It has nice visuals and good acting. Its quest-like structure isn’t troublesome on paper, it is just poor in its execution. It is also, to an extent, hamstrung by what came before it. Whether by trying to fix perceived problems of where the previous two films left things, or just the result of bad writing, the film’s structure wobbles rather than sticks the landing. It plays fast and loose with the Force and moves the tone away from light fantasy into space wizardry with limitless powers. It is stuffed with action but empty of character. It trades on nostalgia while doing nothing worthy of its near guaranteed box office returns. A copy of a copy of a copy of something great but without any of the meaning or the substance that made the original what it is. For the average viewer, a not-unfamiliar tent-pole summer blockbuster high in action and low in quality a la the Fast and the Furious movies or DC’s cinematic universe. For the Star Wars fan, a complete failure to understand what makes Lucas’ creation so popular. If you are dying for quality gunslinger samurai fantasy science fiction give The Mandalorian a try. The movie side of Star Wars seems to have lost the plot.
Would Recommend: If you absolutely have to know how the Skywalker saga comes to an end.
Would Not Recommend: If you are a diehard Star Wars fan who expects this film to restore Star Wars’ greatness after it was tarnished by the prequel trilogy, or The Last Jedi, or the copious cheap and pulpy tie in novels and comics, or EA’s ill-conceived turn at licensed video games, or the Christmas special, or those stupid teddy bear ewoks that ruined Return of the Jedi… depending on where you personally think things went off the rails.