December 21st, 2019
THIS IS FULL OF SPOILERS. It takes a lot to land a huge, overarching storyline, particularly one that’s been going on for over a decade. Avengers Infinity War and Endgame somehow managed to pull it off and deliver an enjoyable finale, which was especially impressive when you consider that it had to also contend with a roster of over twenty characters. Unfortunately, Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker fails to meet the same standard, ignoring logic, rules of storytelling, and things that have been established before in favor of pushing out a story that they hope won’t upset as many people as Last Jedi did.
So yeah, I didn’t love this movie. What follows is my traditional three part review “list” but rather than “Loved, Neutral, and Hated” like I normally do I’m instead going to do “Good Things, Problems, and Nitpicks”. Because I had a LOT of problems with this movie, but I realize that half of them are just personal grievances and not undeniable problems with the design or logic of the film, thus the “Nitpicks” category, which will be more of a free form list than actual arguments. Let’s go.
Good Things
Visuals: There were some undeniably cool shots in Rise of Skywalker. Every shot of the Sith Fleet was especially awe inspiring, with great use of lightning to make them seem even more haunting than a fleet like that normally would. Palpatine zapping the whole Resistance fleet was pretty cool too.
Yellow lightsabers: We’ll get back to my nitpicks about the lightsabers in this movie later but since Attack of the Clones I’ve been upset that only blue and green lightsabers were considered to be “correct” in canon, even more so as the lore continued to be made up about how blade color is due to your Force powers and not just what gem you pick up. They added in black and silver in the cartoons, but it’s nice to see in the finale that yellow blades are in the canon again.
Rey and Force Lightning: Rey using the Force to rip a ship out of the sky was a cool enough visual on its own (very Force Unleashed) but the strain of her doing it leading to a Force Lightning blast was very cool as well. Wish they had done more about it. This is also a good time for me to brag that I was right about Rey’s origin two weeks after seeing Force Awakens, where I suggested that she could be Palpatine’s daughter.
Rey “fighting” the Sith Guards: Rey’s fight against Palpatine’s guards was a little strange but had some very cool shots of her redirecting blasters with her hands and other things you don’t normally see Jedi do. They could have done a lot more with her being a Jedi with a connection to a dark heritage, but I enjoyed what they did do with it, even though much of it was understated.
Leia’s lightsaber design: In one of the original trilogy’s visual guides there was a line about how Jedi routinely design their lightsabers to look similar to their masters. This is why Luke’s lightsaber looked like Obi-Wan’s and why later Obi-Wan’s early lightsabers looked like Qui-Gon’s. Leia’s lightsaber being a similar design to Luke’s was a very cool nod to this tradition, though it did lead to some initial confusion where I think people believed that it was Luke’s green saber.
Adam Driver’s acting: Adam Driver did a great job making small adjustments to how he held himself and acted after making the change from Kylo Ren to Ben Solo. I was not a fan of how he started making humorous observations immediately after being a stick in the mud for years (jumping on the chain, that weird reaction he had when he dodged an attack), but just the tiny changes to his facial expressions alone were a great piece of acting.
Problems
PACING: This will be the only problem I introduce in all caps, but it’s done this way to emphasize that Rise of Skywalker’s biggest damn problem is the pacing. It permeates the movie, exacerbating small problems because the film can’t take ten damn minutes to breathe and explain itself, and once the dust clears I think this will be one of the issues that everyone can agree on. Simply put: there is no downtime in this film at all, with every scene simply existing to rush us to the next one. Any “quiet moments” are either transitions between planets or brief cuts to Kylo Ren stomping around, with character interactions that would take two to three minutes in any other movie being reduced to a rushed, bare bones short form lest the audience dare take a moment to actually think about what’s going on. Reminder that Rey’s whole interaction with Finn about her possibly turning to the Dark Side was “I want to kill him” “That doesn’t sound like you…” “I don’t think anyone knows what I sound like.”
There are two scenes that might have fit the bill of “slow character scenes,” but even then they’re brought down by existing to push the plot forward rather than actually build characterization. Poe talking to Zorri only happens so that we’re introduced to the chip that sneaks them onto the star destroyer, and Rey’s conversation with Luke is cut short because we have to run off and grab Leia’s lightsaber. Never mind that all of the Leia scenes, which could have been a great source for such slow character building, are stilted and awkward because they shot them all using an extra and B-roll, so she never actually mentions anything exactly relevant to what’s going on. Admittedly that’s not their fault that Carrie Fisher died, but they shouldn’t have had her in the movie at all considering how poorly her storyline played out. Since we’re on that subject…
Why did Leia die?: Leia is the same age as Luke, has the same level of Force powers, and they establish in this movie that she completed her Jedi training. So why the fuck did she die by just reaching out to Ben in the Force and saying his name? Luke died after projecting his consciousness across several galaxies and physically manifesting in front of hundreds of people for well over ten minutes, and Leia just dies after making a collect call? Someone suggested to me that she died because she was “sick,” but if that was the case they should have SAID THAT. They should have SHOWED THAT. But they couldn’t because Carrie Fisher was already dead, so instead they just want us to accept any reason just to push her out of the movie. It didn’t help that she died at the same instant that Rey stabbed Kylo Ren, so the editing almost made it seem like she protected Ben somehow and Rey killed her instead of him. But hey maybe she wasn’t actually dead because…
What didn’t bodies disappear?: Until this moment in the Star Wars universe, if a character was going to disappear when they died it happened right away. Obi-Wan gets hit by a lightsaber, he disappears. Yoda dies in his bed, he disappears. Luke uses the last of his strength to watch a sunset, he disappears. But Leia stays still on her bed for at least six goddamn hours and then finally disappears. Why? There’s NO reason for this and any excuse holds no water at all. “Oh she was hanging onto this world until Ben died.” Bullshit she was, she could literally watch him through the Force. And then why does Ben disappear? Better question, why does Rey NOT disappear? This may just be a problem with the fact that why some characters disappear when they die and others don’t has never been explained. There was a bit of an implication at the end of Revenge of the Sith that Qui-Gon taught Obi-Wan and Yoda how to do it, and that’s why all the rest of the dead Jedi weren’t stomping around as ghosts or disappearing. So naturally Luke would learn how to do it from them, and sure maybe he taught Leia about it. But why the fuck would Ben be able to do it and not Rey? Oh right, because Ben needed to save Rey and then disappear before Rey just saved him and we had an endless loop of two people healing each other forever. Maybe Ben’s just that good since…
Healing from death: Hey, remember when Anakin Skywalker betrayed everyone he knew for a chance to learn the power to bring back the dead? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Remember how Ben just spontaneously used the Force to bring back Rey with no training, experience, and most likely by using the Light Side of the Force rather than the Dark Side which was the only recorded way of doing that? Pepperidge Farm doesn’t remember that because they haven’t seen the movie. If they had they’d probably want to know more about…
Bullshit with Ben: Okay, let’s start with an easy one: how did he survive the fall into the bottomless pit? Did he use the Force to stop from falling? If he could do that then why didn’t he do that and float down into the temple instead of jumping to the big chain for the sake of comic relief? Did he grab the side of the pit? If he did that shouldn’t his whole chest be torn up as he slid down it for grip?
Next: How the FUCK did he get to the Sith homeworld at the end of the movie? He arrived in an original generation TIE Fighter that DON’T HAVE HYPERDRIVES. THIS WAS ESTABLISHED IN THE FIRST FUCKING MOVIE. First Order TIEs have hyperdrives, sure, but that means that he had to take one of the water boats back to the First Order transport the horse people had, dig through their supplies and hope to god they have a functioning hyperdrive, take it back across the water, and install it in the TIE which shouldn’t have the power or room for it. They could have just had him take Vader’s old TIE! It must have been on the Death Star at the time!
Another: Once he got the TIE that shouldn’t have a hyperdrive able to fly into hyperspace, how did he get to the Sith planet? “He’d been there before so he must remember the way” doesn’t hold water because he wouldn’t have kept the crystal with the map on his ship if he could just get there by memory, he would have put it with his other trophies in his room. Oh god, his room…
Ben and Rey’s Force bond: Okay, so we say in Last Jedi that the strain of projecting yourself to another person(s) across the galaxy would kill a Force user, which is why Snoke was helping Rey and Ben see each other. But now Snoke is dead, so there’s no reason that Rey and Ben should still have their in-person Force chats…but that becomes a driving force for the whole fucking plot several times over. So what, is Palpatine helping them? That doesn’t make sense because Ben repeatedly says he’s going to betray Palpatine during these talks, so he wouldn’t spill the beans on that if he knew the guy was listening in. Some say this and a lot of other problems in the film can be explained away by “this was the Emperor’s plan,” but this part in particular makes no sense because if Palpatine was still the conduit so the two of them could talk then he wouldn’t have let Rey send Ben her lightsaber at the end of the movie. Which is its own problem but that was something introduced in Last Jedi so we can’t blame Rise of Skywalker for this, as much as I’d like to.
But fine. Let’s say that Ben and Rey have maintained this connection for the last year without Palpatine’s help. One question: Why hasn’t Ben been calling her up every single day over the last year AND why hasn’t he stolen her lightsaber yet? He’s been obsessing about her and getting his paws on that lightsaber since the day he heard about her, so why isn’t he Force calling her and stealing the lightsaber while she’s asleep or just not paying attention? She was clearly surprised he could steal her necklace, seems like the lightsaber would be fair game. But hey, none of this makes sense and clearly wasn’t thought about when the movie was being made.
The Knights of Ren: I have nothing to say about the Knights of Ren except that they were a total fucking joke and I don’t know why Disney is so scared of having efficient/interesting side villains. Phasma was a joke, the Knights of Ren were jokes, Snoke was a joke(ish).
Why did Palpatine keep shooting lightning?: This is the third trilogy in a row that Palpatine roasts himself with his own lightning during the final movie. In the prequels he did it to manipulate Anakin, in the original trilogy he was taken by surprise. In Rise of Skywalker he just had to keep shooting himself so the movie could end. Why not just do the life drain attack again? We haven’t seen ANYONE beat Palpatine in a lightsaber fight since Mace Windu, but when we have the twin beacons of Force power standing before him with lightsabers…we throw one in a pit and play Force Lightning tennis with the other. But hell maybe Palpatine wanted to die, right? After all…
Why didn’t Palpatine take over Rey when he died?: Remember that Palpatine’s whole plan, allegedly, was that Rey would kill him and then he would possess her (through blood relations, I guess) and become the Empress of the Universe. So Rey “refuses” to kill him and instead just stands there with Ben after killing Palpatine’s guards…until inevitably she kills him anyway. So where was the possession?
Ignoring canon from the comics: When Disney took over Star Wars they made the decision to undo all of the EU (which was never canon to begin with) and established that from now on all Star Wars media would be canon. This means every comic book, video game campaign, etc would be considered canon and a piece of the whole…but after Rise of Skywalker I’m starting to doubt that. Zorri says that Poe was a spice runner before he joined the Resistance, but in the comics he worked as a member of the New Republic security forces before being convinced to join the Resistance. The movie ends with Chewie getting that damn medal that people won’t shut the fuck up about from New Hope, but in the comics he HAD gotten the medal and he gave it away.
Nitpicks
Why would the First Order use bikes with wheels instead of regular speeders? Because that’s the only way our main characters could kill them in the specific way they did.
Why bury Leia’s lightsaber on Tatooine? Was it a Shimi thing? Why not do it next to her actual grave? That would have been touching.
Why couldn’t Leia’s lightsaber be green? Or why couldn’t the second lightsaber just be Luke’s? It would have had greater impact when Rey said she was “all Jedi” rather than just representing the Jedi Guardians with the blue.
Why can’t a modern Star Wars movie other than Rogue One have actual fleet on fleet combat? The Resistance has a massive fleet, the Final Order has a massive fleet, but instead of an incredible space war we instead have “blow up one antenna then shoot fish in barrel”. What a waste.
Why were the Final Order star destroyers designed like Empire star destroyers when it was the Sith building them? And where the fuck did Palpatine get the billions of people required to man all of these star destroyers?
Why remake Ben’s helmet when he’s only going to wear it for ten minutes? To lure back people who hated Last Jedi, that’s why. If Ben loved his helmet as much as he was supposed to he would have worn it all the time, and if he had grown out of it like he had in Last Jedi he wouldn’t have remade it at all.
Why remake Anakin’s lightsaber exactly the same? To lure back people who hated Last Jedi. HEY GUYS IT’S THAT LIGHTSABER YOU LIKE.
Why didn’t Ben just immediately destroy the Falcon when they found it? Last Jedi Kylo Ren would have Force smashed the Falcon like a tin can. Rise of Skywalker Kylo Ren hooks it up with tow cables and just leaves it sitting there under minimal guard. Also no scene with Ben and Chewie after he’s captured, which is a huge waste of potential, even if any emotional impact would have been lost by not being able to understand Chewie’s side.
Threepio losing his memory was pointless if it wasn’t permanent. No joke here, just a fact.
Ben retconning himself by saying that he wasn’t lying when he told Rey who her parents are was real dumb. He said they sold her for drinking money, but they didn’t. Thus a lie, despite him saying he’s not lying. But hey, we’re retconning Last Jedi here, there’s no time for logic or reasoning.
If you hated “The Holdo Maneuver” because of all the logical problems it created within the Star Wars universe then you’d better be REALLY upset that any ship the size of a star destroyer can now support planet killing weapons. If Palpatine thought it up and built it then someone else can too, especially because you just know that there are going to be scavengers and criminals picking through the remains of the Final Order fleet for generations to come.
From the moment Kylo Ren grabbed that necklace from Rey’s neck I knew we were going for a ride, and by the time he arrived at the Sith planet in a classic TIE I was slowly growing incensed. I completely checked out mentally once Ben disappeared, and I’ve been riding that numb feeling in the 24 hours since (I’m writing this on December 20th). Rise of Skywalker is not the worst Star Wars movie of all time, but it’s definitely #4 or #5, and it’s a goddamn shame it’s not all it could have been. Too many inconsistencies and terrible pacing make for a subpar experience, and seeing so many people cheer it simply because they disliked Last Jedi is disappointing.
Now we just need to wait and see what comes next. Hopefully they won’t screw up the Old Republic too badly.
