UPDATE, December 21, 2023: I have made a few tweaks to the review, but rest assured, I still think THIS IS A VERY BAD MOVIE.
This was a bad movie and a bad Star Wars movie.
I was excited when it was announced that Lucas had sold the rights to Star Wars to Disney. Disney has been making extremely competent pop movies for a while now, so I was confident they would do a good job here–and better than Lucas had with the prequel trilogy.
(To give Lucas credit, for all the problems the prequels had, there is a defining vision that underlies all three movies, and each builds on the other. This leaves aside the quality of execution and a lot of curious design choices, but the vision was there.)
So in 2015 we get The Force Awakens. J.J. Abrams is the director and I actually felt at the time that he was a good choice–Star Wars is big, kid-friendly fluff and with a good script and cast, it’s the kind of thing Abrams can do well. The Force Awakens borrows copiously from the original Star Wars, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it’s a little eye-rolling (please please please no more Death Stars or Death Star substitutes), but the new characters are engaging and fun to watch, and it feels like Star Wars. Everything you want is there.
The Last Jedi is more like a modern Star Wars–less fluffy, more gritty, with more consequences. It deliberately plays against some of the established tropes, even as it copies beats from The Empire Strikes Back. By the end, I was wondering how the rebellion would come back in the third movie after being reduced to what seemed like a room full of people by the end. Ho ho, if I had only known. EDIT: In retrospect, I feel The Last Jedi tried a bit too hard to deconstruct Star Wars, which may have pushed Abrams and crew to basically create an almost standalone film to close the trilogy.
And then we have The Rise of Skywalker, or Star Wars as Written By a 15-Year-Old Star Wars Nerd.
There are things I liked. The effects were nice. The cast, although let down by a generally awful script, remain fun to watch. Ian McDiarmid still chews scenery with unbridled glee. Some of the lightsaber fights were entertaining (I especially liked the one on the wreck of the Death Star1Neat visual, but ugh, with Rey clearly fatigued).
But everything else ranged from okay to just bad. Oh, so bad.
The scenes with Leia felt awkward, because all of her dialog was generic (for obvious reasons). I would have preferred they recast her role for the final movie or just not featured her character at all (have her join with the force in an early scene or something).
Rey turns out to be the granddaughter of Palpatine instead of a scrappy scavenger who just happens to turn out awesome. Bleah.
And the lineage of Rey underlines my central complaint with the film (apart from its relentless pacing, which was more exhausting than thrilling): The Rise of Skywalker is stuffed full of plot devices that are made just for this film, that have not been built on or even mentioned in previous movies. The stakes feel non-existent because everything is just thrown at the viewer out of nowhere.
- The Emperor somehow survives or gets cloned, despite last seen falling down some giant shaft in a Death Star that exploded minutes later. But this is actually not the dumbest thing in the movie. Palpatine’s resurrection would have worked a lot better–along with the whole “I’m stuffed full of Sith, haha!” thing–if it had been set up from the first movie and played out over all three.
- Hyperspace skipping, or whatever it was called. Why? So dumb. The last jump should have had them slam into the wall of a canyon and die, ending the movie early and saving everyone a lot of time.
- If General Redhead had held up a sign, Wile E. Coyote-style, that said “I’m the spy!” it would not have been any more dumb than him blurting it out the way he did. It would have been better, really. Also, why did he believe Kylo Ren had to be stopped? Why did he say he didn’t care who won? Why was his character sacrificed for this dubious plot? And who was the grumpy old man who shot him? Like so many things in this movie, grumpy old man is just there with no explanation.
- Abrams, never a master of subtlety, decides to give every Star Destroyer the ability to literally destroy stars. Or planets. Why? As Poe says, “Sure, why not?” Because it’s so cool (if you are a 15-year-old Star Wars nerd).
- Speaking of, I literally rolled my eyes when the surprise fleet of ten million ships magically shows up at the final battle. Very good timing there. Good thing it was telegraphed heavily multiple times beforehand, so it wouldn’t seem at all like an actual surprise. I’ll pretend the boy sweeping at the end of The Last Jedi was on one of those ten million ships.
- Finn keeps saying he wants to say something, then he never says it. WHY?! It’s the last movie, have him say it! There is not going to be a Finn spinoff series, sorry.
- Rey kissing Kylo at the end was grossbuckets.
- Rey proclaiming herself Rey Skywalker at the end also made me roll my eyes.
- Space horses.
- The new droid should have had a price tag on it, since its only purpose was to enhance merchandising.
- Did I mention the pacing? The movie never slowed down and ended up feeling shapeless, just careening from one action scene to another, with tiny bits of character moments squeezed in-between.
- Rose is reduced to almost a cameo for no apparent (or good) reason.
On the plus side, they couldn’t think of a way to bring back Jabba the Hutt or have someone frozen in carbonite. If only J.J. Abrams had been frozen in carbonite.
Anyway, this was a disappointing end to what could have been a great trilogy. I’ll conclude by damning it with faint praise: for all its excesses, missed opportunities and general level of dumb-even by Star Wars standards–it was still better than Solo.
BUT NOT BY MUCH. In hindsight, I was mistaken. Solo is not a good movie, but it is still better than this sloppy, shoddy excuse of a film.
Also, here are 23 of the worst parts of the movie (some of which I highlight above), and I agree with all of them: The 23 Worst Parts of ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’
