Directed by: JJ Abrams
Written by: JJ Abrams & Chris Terrio
Distributed by Disney
Yeah, I guess I’m doing movie reviews now, too. Spoilers ahead.
We live in an era where everything in the zeitgeist simply has to be either an unmatched masterpiece or a colossal failure, an insult to the genre. If you’re in the video game sphere, Death Stranding was a recent piece of media that had to be either the second coming of Jesus or an insult to the entire medium. Turns out, it was okay. Pretty good, even. Not great.
Media is simply not allowed to be okay anymore. People don’t want it. Reviews of a movie saying “it was okay” simply don’t draw in the clicks. It’s either “IS STAR WARS RUINED?? WORST MOVIE YET!” or “The Rise of Skywalker is the best in the series, and here’s why you’re wrong about it.” Well lucky for you, I don’t need clicks, because this blog makes me approximately 0 US dollars a year. So I am not afraid to tell you this perhaps controversial opinion — Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is okay.
I know you don’t want to hear that. The culmination of 40 years of story, one of the biggest and most influential franchises of all time, is just okay? Yeah, it’s pretty good at some parts and pretty bad at some parts. The overall product is okay. Unfortunately, we’re at a point where I truly believe people would rather it be horrible if it isn’t a masterpiece than just sit somewhere in the middle.
To split this up I’ll divide it by character arc, then talk about TROS as a whole entity. This will naturally end up being a review of the whole trilogy in some ways.
Let’s start small and build it up. Poe’s journey is perhaps the most satisfying of the main characters, and ends where it rightfully should — a successful, newly appointed general in charge of The Resistance. This is what he has been training to be since he abandoned Zorii and the rest of his crew as a “spice” trader. He already went through his transformative phase in The Last Jedi and appropriately uses the lessons he learned about leadership in that movie to inform his decisions in this one.
Poe respects the ideals of General Leia while still pushing his “we can do anything” spirit to its limit, and finally to its natural conclusion of relying on hope for reinforcements to show at the final battle. His hope, his free spirit, and his determination is enough to lead a rebellion to victory. Poe is a well thought out character who takes a miniature hero’s journey and comes out the other end as who he was meant to be. I will toss a salute out to Oscar Isaac, JJ Abrams, and Rian Johnson on this one. His little interaction with Zorii at the end was quite funny, and leaves some room for his future there without bogging down the ending of a nine-movie epic with petty things like romantic relationships that started developing an hour ago.
Finn’s story was a little less satisfying. To be frank, he hasn’t really been a “main” character since The Force Awakens and has been relegated to doing the movie equivalent of side quests. Finn starts out the trilogy by helping reawaken the last Jedi and assist her as a partner in reaching her goals. In TLJ, Finn is largely defined by his time in the much too long casino scene with Rose Tico. Finn spends the final installment chasing a girl around the galaxy that he doesn’t seem to have had more than a 10 second conversation with in the last five years, ostensibly to tell her he loves her, and then does not do that. The thing his character was doing the whole movie, and almost the whole trilogy, receives no ending or acknowledgement of any kind. I’m all for not defining characters by their romantic relationships, but if you’re going to do that, end your story one way or another. Finn ends in the group hug with good feels. Hooray, I guess? Is he actually any different than when the trilogy started? It seems that he’s always been a good man and continues to be a good man throughout TROS. I guess he’s consistent, if not a little boring because of it.
I think we need to address Janna, the scavver that helps the gang reach the ruins of the Death Star and then joins the Resistance. She is given one moment of character development with Finn recounting how she used to be a Stormtrooper, which is neat and all. She then helps Finn pilot a plane, joins him in the last battle on the star destroyer, and rides by his side to the very end. Here’s a hot question: why not have Rose do all that? We already know who she is, she’s already a potential love interest for Finn, she’s already shown herself to be so loyal she literally tried to die for him. There is already two movies worth of movie crammed into this one. We could have trimmed a solid 5 minutes and distributed that time to help the bigger scenes breathe a little. We could have given Rose way more to do. And that brings me to my next point.
Rose was a pretty good addition to the cast in TLJ. She brought something new and wasn’t a rehash of an old character. After the (I have to believe racially or misogyny charged) hatred Kelly Marie Tran received after the movie her character was relegated to a background prop. The actress had to delete her entire social media presence because of the constant harassment she was suffering. Why? I honestly don’t know. But now here we are. Rose heroically saved Finn’s life in TLJ and in exchange gets five lines in TROS. Shame on you, Disney. Let her speak. I can’t believe they felt the need to create Rose 2: Electric Boogaloo to do all the things she should have been doing.
Before getting to the big hitters, I’d like to talk quickly about how our previously departed characters are doing in this movie. I do not believe that creating a CGI Carrie Fisher was the right thing to do. I think it is more disrespectful to her than just having her die off screen between films. I understand Disney faced a difficult choice, but they made the wrong call. Leia dies as a true Jedi Master, distracting her son so that Rey can get the upper hand on him in a fight. Chewie’s agonizing yell, his tears, his pawing at the ground at the news of his last and closest friend passing away — that’s real shit. Whatever you felt about this movie, that was a real and visceral and correct reaction to the loss of General Leia Organa. Perhaps a mirror to our own real-world reactions hearing about Ms. Fisher’s death? Certainly for me, it came close. Rest in peace, Princess Leia. You deserved a better send off.
Harrison Ford’s short cameo as Han Solo was done very well, in my opinion. He appears not as a force ghost, but as a memory in his son’s vision. His conscience. His past. Condensed into one man, a man Kylo had conditioned himself to hate. I didn’t expect to see Han here and was glad he got a few minutes on screen. It wouldn’t feel right to end the saga without him.
Conversely, I don’t feel good about Luke’s force ghost appearance. This is the first time we’ve ever seen a force ghost have the ability to interact with the physical world, like catching light sabers and raising X-Wings. It felt a bit too on the nose and I would have preferred a shorter and more subtle scene, perhaps a simple face in the fire that causes Rey to stop what she’s doing and think. It’s not a major downside of the movie but it did feel forced.
Rey went through an interesting and transformative experience in this trilogy, which is sometimes all you can ask for. Unfortunately, the entire last leg of her journey was completely nonsensical. Learning she was Palpatine’s granddaughter was one thing, but her whole “turning to the dark side” thing was one of those “show, don’t tell” things. Not once did I see Rey do anything remotely similar to a what a Sith would do. I saw her have visions and be constantly told she needed to find a balance between the light and dark, both in this film and the last. I saw Kylo try to talk her over to the dark side and then try to save her from it. We were repeatedly told “Rey is turning to the dark side.” Why?
Anakin’s hate, anger, and fear drove him to the dark side in his quest for powers that would allow him to cheat death, just as his master claimed to have done (and I supposed did end up doing). This was all for the sake of Padme. He fought for power for a noble cause and ended up gaining it only to lose the thing he was fighting for. It’s the tragic hero’s archetype to a tee. There’s a reason we still use archetypes in our media — it’s because they’ve worked for 8,000 years.
Rey does not experience the tragic hero’s story. Her arc begins as “I need to find out who I am” and continues to “I need to become the last Jedi master” and then to “I need to find and kill Palpatine.” Where in here should she have been tempted by the power of the dark side? This thread was wrapped up in a semi-coherent way by the end of the movie, of course. Her hatred drove her to Palpatine. He dangled the carrot in front of her, kill me and assume my powers and save your friends. Her hatred had pushed her to kill him and in quite a literal sense forced her to join the dark side. It felt awkward, like Abrams was scrambling for an excuse for her to be tempted by darkness the whole movie and only barely grasped it at the end. Sloppy.
I’d be remiss to not mention the weird parallels that they series drew with Avatar: The Last Airbender here. The idea of “All the Jedi ever live inside me and I can call on them for guidance” strikes me very much like an Avatar thing. Not that it’s a downside, just don’t believe we’ve heard it before.
Rey finished out her journey as Harry Potter did, in a back-and-forth magic battle, killing Palpatine with his own rebounding ̶c̶u̶r̶s̶e̶ force lightning. I’m pretty sure his nose even flies off during the death sequence and we get a little glimpse of Voldemort there. All the people she loves and learned from appear to her and encourage her as ghosts, giving her the emotional edge she needs to win. Then Rey dies and is brought back from the dead by the power of love. Like a certain wizard I know.
I did not like the kiss at first. And perhaps I’ll come at it from a different angle than what others have said. Kylo and Rey have formed a bond so strong, so immutable that it transcends space and time. It knows no physical boundaries, and it knows neither life nor death. Reducing this bond to a romantic relationship cheapens it. It is an insult to the strength of their connection. True love can exist without romance, or even without the brother-sister dynamic. True love exists between friends all the time, and movies don’t want to talk about it. Maybe its not sexy enough? I don’t know. I could have done without it but considering that he knows he’s dying, I’d go for it too. Rey ends her story as the last Jedi master.
Some people are dunking on the last scene, but I didn’t hate it. Burying Luke and Leia’s sabers at Luke’s home felt thematically correct. Taking it all back to where it started. A random woman asks her for her name, and she looks directly into the camera and says “Rey Star Wars.” DIRECTED BY JJ ABRAMS
I kid, but it was a bit too on the nose. In the extended universe, the word “Skywalker” eventually becomes a name for a new class of force users, somewhere between the Sith and the Jedi. In the canon of the movies I am led to believe that Rey will train these Skywalkers in the ways of the force and bring balance to the universe. However, this is just stuff I know from the internet. It’s not in the movie. Rey calling herself “Skywalker” is symbolic and all, but without explaining the concept of “Skywalker” it falls a bit flat for the last scene in a 40-year epic spanning nine huge movies. I get it, Rey knows who she is now. The theme of “your real family is the one you choose” always hits hard with me, so props for that.
And I’ve saved the best for last. Kylo Ren, played by the unparalleled Adam Driver, is the thread that ties this trilogy together. I have said it before, and I’ll say it again until the day I die. Kylo Ren is a better villain than Darth Vader ever was. Darth Vader is intimidating, powerful, and resourceful. But Kylo Ren is unpredictable, chaotic, and clearly more powerful than he knows how to control. What’s scarier? Kylo goes through a greater transformation than anyone on this journey. From a scared little boy who masters the force much earlier than he is ready for to a homicidal maniac hoping that just for a moment the world can feel the pain he feels inside him all the time. It’s dramatic, but that’s showbiz baby.
Kylo Ren, aka Ben Swolo, is defined by his moment of weakness when he killed his father in TFA. He is haunted by it. He is consumed by it. His fear to join Rey in TLJ outweighs his desire to be by her side, but only for a moment. He, like many of us, feels that he has done something so severe that he does not deserve redemption. He does not deserve to fight for the light. And just like in real life, we are very rarely good judges of what we “deserve.”
I’ll state again that I didn’t really read Kylo and Rey’s bond as romantic most of the time. The fact that it led to that in the end isn’t in itself surprising, but I’d kind of been hoping they’d stay away from that. At least there were no love confessions in this movie. God, I can’t even imagine.
I am a big ole sucker for the trope where love is so powerful it can literally transcend space and time. Inject that shit directly into my veins. It’s a big reason Your Name (Kimi no na Wa) is one of my favorite movies of all time (maybe a review of that is incoming?). Both TLJ and TROS did an excellent job establishing the link Kylo and Rey developed, and those scenes were shot brilliantly. I loved every second of it. If The Last Jedi was literally a 3 hour movie about nothing but Rey, Luke, and Kylo’s story it would be the best movie in the series by a long shot. Perhaps I’m biased here, but the depth and time spent developing their relationship redeemed a lot of smaller missteps that were taken with their characters. Seeing them fight back to back, right to the end in both of these movies was delicious.
Palpatine, in a sort of self-hilarious moment, drops Kylo down a big hole in the ground of his fortress (?) in an homage of what Darth Vader did to him. It was not the most efficient way to kill him, sure, but it was symbolic. We’ll let it slide. Adam Driver emerges, sweaty and toned, from the depths of hell as Ben Solo once again, giving his life to save Rey’s in his last act. In this act, he redeems himself, but is perhaps not forgiven for what he’s done. I think Rey will remember him as a hero, but the rest of the galaxy will likely find Kylo Ren in the history books as one of the most tyrannical, evil men in recorded history. After killing Han, that was probably the best possible way for him to go. I felt closure as he faded away, copying the Jedi masters before him. Kylo Ren made this sequel trilogy worth watching at its weakest moments. Adam Driver stole every scene he was in during both TLJ and TROS. We will likely never have a better Star Wars villain.
That was a lot, eh? But there’s more! Just few points about the movie as a whole. To no one’s surprise, this movie spared no expense. The visual effects were unmatched. The puppets were better than they’ve ever been. The cinematography of the air combat scenes was incredible, and the camerawork done during Rey and Kylo’s battle in the ocean was nothing short of breathtaking. The aforementioned battle on that barge was my favorite fight scene of the entire Star Wars saga, maybe barring Rey and Kylo’s team-up in TLJ. John Williams delivered a great score, as always, but no standouts among the pieces. The handling of colors, lighting, and art design was astounding. The temples of Exogol are unlike anything we’ve seen in Star Wars. I wouldn’t be surprised to find the designers were heavily influenced by Dark Souls.
Now to the meat of the problem — the pacing. I have thought about this, and I feel comfortable saying that TROS has the worst pacing I have ever seen in an actual theatrical film. It’s quite clear what happened here. JJ Abrams make TFA and then bowed up, even after being asked to do the whole trilogy. Rian Johnson was given no roadmap and made the movie he wanted to make. JJ Abrams, like a petulant child, became angry and said “I’ll just make both of my movies then!” TROS is quite obviously a condensed version of what Abrams planned to be episodes 8 and 9. Not a single moment is allowed to land. We are struck with dozens of jump cuts from one set piece to the next, one reveal to another. It is jarring, it’s uncomfortable, and it makes damn sure that you don’t have time to care about a single fucking thing that happens in this movie. By the time you realize something important has happened, something else important is happening. There are segments where we watch Rey and friends for 20+ minutes, then jump cut to Kylo for 30 seconds, and then back to Rey for another 4 minutes before ending up with Kylo again. That is not how you make a movie. Or a good movie, at least.
If you’ve taken a screenwriting class, you’re likely familiar with the 3-disasters model. It’s a tried and true model of outlining your story, and you can apply it to ~80% of all books, TV shows, movies, games, whatever. Any narrative. In most stories, you can divide the events into 3 “disasters.” A disaster is anything impactful, emotional, climactic, or story-changing. The first disaster is generally caused by the antagonist. The second disaster is caused by the protagonist attempting to rectify the first disaster. The third disaster is the Climax, where the protagonist defies the antagonist. You can apply this structure to most pop media — give it a try! All this is to get to my real point: The Rise of Skywalker has over two dozen disasters in it. All of them are meant to be impactful. I’d wager that other than Kylo and Rey’s last scene, none of them are.
I enjoyed C3PO’s bit part, and got a little misty eyed when he looked at his friends the last time, but having R2 restore his memory cheapened his sacrifice to me. Babu Frick provided some needed comic relief to the scene, but I feel like that whole story line would have hit much better if it was one over the course of two movies.
Similarly for Chewbacca, I felt his supposed death like a shockwave. “Rey kills Chewie.” It didn’t sound real. I was about to vomit in my mouth. This was surprising. This was insane. But it was what I had come for, this feeling. But then 2 and a half minutes later we find out he’s alive. Cheapened. I love Chewie to death and he did great in this movie, but that whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. His moments with Leia were some of the best in the film.
Maybe Lando didn’t need to be in the movie at all, honestly. He magically summoned an army and explained that Luke had been secretly hunting Sith, which was cool. Then he sat down with a young black woman he had never met and said “Let’s find out who your parents are.” I know that was a backdoor pilot for maybe the dumbest spin off ever, but did anyone else get creeped out?
To address the emperor quickly — I don’t have a problem believing he’s alive. He speaks about cheating death in Revenge of the Sith and has been historically hard to kill. The idea that he was controlling Snoke, that he was pulling the strings all along, would be believable if they had ever alluded to it even once in the previous movies. If in TLJ, Poe and Finn intercepted the emperor’s message and didn’t know what it was, but were too caught up in other things and forgot about it. I don’t know. Anything to hint at it. It felt cheap. It had no time to land. Palpatine’s plan to pass along his power to his granddaughter and rule the galaxy through her after his death was pretty in character, I’d say.
Final Verdict: 5.5/10 — Why Didn’t they Call This One “The Phantom Menace?”
The Rise of Skywalker does little to satisfy me in terms of finishing a whole trilogy, let alone a 40 year epic saga that defined a generation. As its own standalone product, it has many merits and many shortcomings. Kylo Ren and Rey’s relationship saved this series for me, and stellar performances from Adam Driver, Mark Hamill, and Oscar Isaac help the characters quite a lot. Abrams unfortunately does not have time to show us much of anything, and so tells us quite a lot instead, cheapening the information we learn. He crams two movies into one, leaving no time to let impactful moments land. The audience does not earn anything they are given in this movie. We do not build for it. We hear about it and then we have it. Perhaps with a stutter, for better or worse the Star Wars saga has come to a close. I wish it had been better. But even though I love it to death, when has Star Wars ever been that good to begin with?
