Long-time readers will note that I reviewed both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi in quick order after watching them. Sadly, subsequent re-watches of those two films only served to diminish my opinion of them, as documented here and here. In fact, I quickly realized that their individual value would hinge, almost exclusively, on the quality of the concluding chapter of this sequel trilogy.
Indeed, The Rise of Skywalker had a lot riding on it for me. It would either justify the existence of the previous two films or reveal itself as the cinematic equivalent of the "Emperor With No Clothes", I.E. a cynical, hastily-cobbled-together, poorly-conceived and incompetently-executed attempt for Disney to make a return on net assets.
So, like all other Star Wars fans, I dutifully watched The Rise of Skywalker when it first premiered in theaters back in December of 2019. Unlike most other Star Wars fans, I saw it for free as a guest at a corporate screening. After watching the film, I realized that this was the perfect circumstance in which to take in this latest Star Wars-flavored Disney product. Both the experience, and the movie itself, were cheap and forgettable.
I was dealing with some pretty heavy stuff around that time, so the last thing I wanted to dwell on was how my once-beloved space opera, which sparked life-long creativity in me, ended up being complete schlock. Nevertheless, when the thing landed stillborn on home video in April of 2020, I had every intention to sit down, re-watch and review it...but I just couldn't get through it. Then, when it popped up on Disney+ not long after, I tried again...and once again I failed.
That's right, folks. Me, a die-hard fan since the tender age of 7, couldn't force (no pun intended) myself watch a new Star Wars movie. Was I broken?
Well, last week I finally managed to slog my way through the thing, in three separate sittings, mind you. The one positive take-away from this latest, and hopefully last, viewing is that my brain wasn't broken. Blame for my allergic reaction lies squarely on the shoulders of the "film-makers" and the Dickensian (Disnerian?) slop that they were asking me to choke down.
In fact, I'll be so bold as to say that The Rise of Skywalker doesn't even warrant a review. Because, based on the parameters my brain has constructed that define what a "motion picture" is, this thing doesn't qualify as a film. An amusement park ride, maybe, but not a film.
Sadly, I wasn't weaned on movies that define "character development" as a few lines of dialogue and "plots" that are little more than a bunch of arbitrary happenings. I've seen every single permutation of special effect, so spectacle is completely wasted on me. If the characters are little more than impressions, if there are no scenes, only set pieces, and if the director is constantly throwing shit at the screen, Jackson Pollock-style, in a blatant attempt to distract the audience from asking questions, it's gonna be thumbs down from me.
But, hey, that's me, not the average movie-goer. For most people who were bilked into seeing this crap, the visceral experience of watching the film will dazzle them...and then they'll never speak of it again. As if to let the writer and director off the hook, the masses will proclaim "Sure, it wasn't as a good as the older movies, but I didn't expect it to be. I just wanted it to be fun...and it was!"
And that's precisely why we keep getting so many mediocre, disposable films. Our collective aesthete is broken. Like the collective victims of a mass Jedi Mind Trick, the undiscriminating will settle for less and all we'll ever get is the cinematic equivalent of a Big Mac. Sure, it'll be tasty going down but, in the end, it's unfulfilling, unmemorable and bad for both body and soul.
So, after this, my final watch of these shitty Disney sequels, I present to you my evidence as to why The Rise of Skywalker isn't really a film, and why it should be treated as such.
These points fall into two categories: the niggling and the ruinous. And while I'll be the first to admit that nit-picks don't break any movie, here they add up to a pile of reasons why J.J Abrams and writer Chris Terrio (who penned Batman v. Superman, for Chrissake) shouldn't have been allowed within a country mile of this venerable property. It goes to show that these two clowns approached the material as if they were tackling any other dime-a-dozen, brain-dead, tent-pole summer popcorn flick...and not the immortal modern myth that Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi established so well.
Beyond these superficial complaints you'll find some truly unforgivable choices which proves that The Rise of Skywalker is completely devoid of creative DNA. It turns the proceedings into little more than a rebuttal against internet rancor and the relatively-bold choices made by Rian Johnson in The Last Jedi. These truly embarrassing, cringe-y decisions just show that that these three films were less the product of artistic inspiration and nothing more than cynical cash-grabs.
Alright, here we go...
- Why does the title crawl let's the cat out of the bag immediately? Seriously, if you're going to do something so monumentally stupid as to bring Palpatine back, why blow that secret right at the start of the film? Why not give him a fun reveal?
- Palpatine has a whole vat of pickled Snokes lying around. Why? If the goal was to lure Kylo to the Dark Side and co-ordinate the First Order, why not use a more charismatic figure? Or why not just do it as Palpatine? After all, Kylo seems to have a fetish for Vader, so it stands to reason that he'd be enamored with Vader's master. Wait, this is also the same guy who said "let the past die", so I don't fucking know...
- According to General Pryde, the fleet of underground Star Destroyers were "conjured", presumably by Palpatine. How? Did that include the crew? Why underground? Why in a place nearly impossible to navigate out of?
- Palpy orders Kylo to "kill the girl" but, as we see towards the end, this is completely anathema to his plan to take over her body. Did they just film a first draft script? Seriously, did anyone else read this before they started shooting?
- Perfect pilot Poe performs multiple hyperspace skips without making calculations, resulting in a bunch of sound and fury, signifying nothing. In the immortal words of a certain scruffy nerf-herder: "Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy. Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova, and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?" But since Abrams and Terrio desperately want their newer characters to eclipse the older, beloved characters, they're constantly being depicted as impossibly skilled and flawless. Read: boring as fuck.
- Why is Rey training? She's already perfect at everything. Simple answer: that scene is there to shut up the whiners who complain that Rey is a dull, one-dimensional character who never had to work for anything.
- "Somehow Palpatine returned." This could very well be the laziest and most unintentionally-funny lines of dialogue in film history. Pretty fucking sad when Star Wars slips into MST3K territory.
- As if in response to the abject stupidity of that last line, Merry suddenly speculates that Palpatine came back through the use of "dark science, cloning...secrets only the Sith knew." This one line perfectly encapsulates what's wrong with modern screenwriting: if you fear that the audience can see through your bullshit, just anticipate and rebut it with a few off-the-cuff lines of dialogue. That might work for some people, but to me it reeks of creative fatigue and annihilates the illusion that the film is trying to create.
- Why are left-over CGI assets from Planet of the Apes rebuilding Kylo's helmet?
- To clap back against Rian Johnson ignoring the Knights of Ren, Abrams shoe-horns them back in here just for spite. Which means that they end up being little more than potential action figure sculpts.
- The "mystery" of the "spy." More on this idiocy later, but did anyone out there seriously wrack their brains over who this was?
- When a trailer featuring stormtroopers driving tracked pursuit vehicles was released, fans lost their collective shit. "In a galaxy with hover technology, why the fuck would the First Order be using something so primitive?" they wondered. Well, I was willing to let that slide...until I actually witnessed this scene and saw how easily they were defeated. So, guess what, anal-retentive peeps, you were right: it is fucking stupid.
- There's a lot of shit dialogue here, but the whole "They fly now!" mock-banter made me cringe so hard I nearly imploded.
- The characters are all thrown from an exploding speeder at 85 miles per hour without a scratch. No risk of injury and death = audience disengagement.
- How the fuck are there tunnels underneath the sinking sand? Why wouldn't the sand fill up said tunnels? How do you get a job writing screenplays when you're this stupid?
- Finn to Rey: "I never told you...!" Add this infuriating line to Maz's claim that she'd tell the story of finding Luke's lightsaber at "another time." Seriously, how much did Terrio get paid for this clusterfuck?
- So, across the entire vast surface of this massive planet, the gang somehow manages to find Ochi's speeder, his dead body, the dagger and the wounded snake all in quick succession. To make the best of it, the snake even has the courtesy of busting a hole through the wall to let our heroes escape. Even if the breakneck pace of the film prevents you from dwelling on this parade of nonsense, there's still a subconscious part of your brain that's screaming at how moronic it all is. That's why people first watched this thing as if hypnotized by a laser light show...and then they promptly forgot it even existed.
- I like how Ochi's ship, which is literally sitting on a pedestal in the desert, hasn't been stripped for parts and it still flies like a dream. I can't believe that there are people out there who swallow this shit just because the word "Star" and "Wars" is in the title.
- Was it Kylo's intent to kill Rey with his low-altitude fly-by? 'Cuz it probably would have made more sense if he, y'know, just strafed her with blaster fire from a distance. Oh, wait, if that happened then Abrams wouldn't have a built-in teaser trailer.
- Kylo's ship has a maximum atmospheric speed of 1,850 kilometers per hour. Even if he was travelling a fraction of that speed, he still walked away from the crash completely unscathed. Look, even space fantasy needs a bit of real-world physical logic or your brain will begin to think its watching a Road Runner short and then completely 'toon out.
- When Rey inadvertently killed Chewbacca, I remember finally sitting up and taking notice in the theater. "OooOoo," I though to myself. "Nice curve ball! They're finally giving this turkey some weight. Man, Rey is going to be seriously conflicted by this and...no, wait...he's fine." Fuck, I hate this movie so much.
- A ship apparently tracked the heroes to Kijimi. How?
- Save the epic level of charisma that Oscar Issac brings to the role, Abrams and Terrio realized, all to late, that Poe is a black hole of character development. So, their solution to this is to give him an 11'th hour back-story as a spice runner, completing his "arc" as the poor man's Han Solo.
- Zorii literally goes from wanting to kill Poe and Rey in one scene to saying "I think you're okay!" and "Want to come with me?" in the next. Seriously, does anyone out there think this shit qualifies as a movie, let alone a series of narrative events?
- "Wait...C-3PO is gonna give up his memories to save the Resistance? Wow, that actually kinda gives him a cool arc, taking him from self-preservation to self-sacrifi...oh, no..wait...he's fine..."
- Abrams and Terrio can't figure out how to get our heroes aboard Ren's ship without getting killed, so their solution to this is a priceless magical space coin that lets them land on the ship with no questions asked. Better yet, Zorii freely gives it away to a man she wanted dead just moments ago.
- Remember when Luke and Han had to dress up like stormtroopers to sneak off the Falcon to avoid getting captured? Well, we don't have time for nuance or logic like that here, so Poe and Finn just blast their way through a closely-monitored docking bay and proceed to run amok throughout the entire ship. Seriously, Hollywood...I can crap out a ton of garbage scripts like this...call me!
- So, lemme get this straight, Rey's parents sold her to Unkar Plutt to "keep her safe"? Huh? In a flashback, they're shown telling Ochi that "she isn't on Jakku...she's gone" and he believed them? Wow, this guy must have had Sith for brains.
- The fact that Domhnall Gleeson manages to announce "I'm the spy!" with any level of of conviction is truly an Oscar-worthy moment. Oscar Issac and John Boyega also deserve special commendation for communicating epic levels of surprise over this major plot twist.
- Rey is Palpatine's grand-daughter, but this is barely explored in the film. The very concept of this dredges up the worst thoughts imaginable, since Palpy, with his half-melted, ball-sack-style monster face, knocked up some poor woman in the past. Sorry, but the connotations of this are downright repellent.
- Notwithstanding the fact that the Death Star WAS COMPLETELY FUCKING VAPORIZED AT THE END OF RETURN OF THE JEDI, using that blade to pin-point a precise location in the wreckage would only be clever to someone as dim as Abrams and Terrio. The fact that the debris is still intact after sitting in a storm-tossed ocean for twenty years is also ignored.
- Of all the heroic characters introduced in The Force Awakens, I think Finn was the most original and interesting. Which makes it all the more sad when you realize how criminally under-written he was in all three films. Basically his entire arc boils down to "Yeah, it was the Force...and, no, I won't be taking any questions at this time."
- True to form, Rey effortlessly pilots a boat through 500-meter waves and climbs through the Death Star wreckage like she's walking across a kitchen floor. Never in the history of fiction has there been a more boring, blank-slate, non-entity than Rey. She's basically a Xanax in Jedi robes.
- As previously mentioned, Finn is subjected to one indignity after another, not the least of which is screaming Rey's name in a sad plea for attention during her life-or-death fight against Kylo. If I was Rey I would have Force-pushed him right into the nearest bulkhead.
- It's very poorly communicated, so bear with me if I misinterpreted this. I assume that Leia used the same power that Luke used at the end of The Last Jedi, I.E. she Force-projected herself to distract her son and then died from the exertion? Do I have that right? If so, that's yet another ignominious end for an iconic character but, then again, this entire series is predicated on the youth-pandering message that "young is cool and powerful and old is lame and weak."
- Related to that last point, my heart breaks for poor Chewbacca, who sees all of his friends die in quick succession. If they were killed off in vaguely respectful or heroic ways, I'd understand, but I really can't shake the suspicion that the elder characters were the victims of hubris and ego. Abrams and Rian Johnson were so intent on making their own paltry characters iconic that they sacrificed the old guard without a second thought.
- Why does Han appear to Ben? I mean, don't get me wrong, it's actually one of the rare moments of genuine heart in the film, and both actors are fantastic, but it makes zero sense in terms of established Star Wars lore.
- Luke's X-Wing works fine after being submerged in salt water for six years.
- Poor Dominic Monaghan. Not only is he forced to say the previously-derided "secrets only the Sith knew" line, he's actually tasked with clapping back against what some fans thought was a galaxy-breaking scene in The Last Jedi. "We need to pull some Holdo maneuvers," he gamely entreats, "do some real damage" to which Finn replies: "Come on. That move is one in a million." Never in my life have I ever witnessed such a self-referential, ham-fisted, pointed negation in a screenplay before, and it makes my top lip sweat with embarrassment.
- Say what you want about the prequel trilogy, but at least they paid somebody to design new ships. I mean, they were pretty much all uniformly hideous and unmemorable, but new ships nonetheless. In this creatively-bankrupt piece of shit, the Resistance is still using twenty year old X, Y, B and A-wings.
- If Palpatine "conjured" up all of these Star Destroyers, why didn't he make on-board navigation beacons a standard option? Oh, right, that would be inconvenient to this brain-dead script.
- How does Finn know where the nav beacon moves to? Why, it's "THE FORCE"...I.E. the perfect boilerplate excuse whenever something inexplicable happens.
- For those keeping score at home, Palpatine clearly sent Kylo Ren to kill Rey, but later he tells her: "I never wanted you dead; I wanted you here. Kill me and my spirit will pass into you as all the Sith live in me." So, what would have happened to this Machiavellian scheme if Kylo had actually succeeded?
- It was pretty fucking stupid when Chirrut Îmwe shot down a TIE fighter with a bow in Rogue One and, hey, guess what? It's just as stupid when Janna does it here.
- Who the fuck are all those people in the stands in Palpatine's lair? Are they real? Imagined? Sith spirits? What the fuck is going on here?!?
- How did Kylo get to Exegol? Where did he get the TIE fighter from? How did he navigate there without the wayfinder? Why isn't J.J. Abrams cleaning toilets for a living?
- Y'know, if I was Kylo Ren and I wanted to create a deadly Sith hit squad named after myself, you know what I'd do? I'D GIVE THEM FUCKING LIGHTSABERS.
- First off: the concept of a dyad might have been impactful if it had been set up at all...but it wasn't. And why didn't the all-seeing, all-knowing Palpatine sense it at all?
- In The Force Awakens, mental infant J.J. Abrams had to trump the Death Star with Starkiller Base...which is soooo much bigger-er and better-er 'cuz it has a way-cooler laser beam which can split up into a lot of little laser beams and destroy a bunch more planets at the same time, so it's cooler. Here we're treated to the ludicrous sight of one-hojillion Star Destroyers facing off against Lando's laugh-out-loud, cut n' paste rescue fleet. This level of try-hard hard overcompensation is the biggest tell that your movie has been made by talent-less hacks who've failed to create anything of substance.
- Carrying over from the last point is Palpatine's lightning storm. Boy, it's a darned good sight that the Rebellion didn't have to face this juiced-up Emperor, or they would have been proper fucked, amirite?
- Why are "all the Sith" suddenly in Palpatine? Why are "all the Jedi" in Rey? And, again, I don't give a shit if it's explained in some novel that I gotta buy and read. If it ain't on-screen, it didn't happen.
- Why hasn't Palpatine learned by now that firing Sith lightning into a lightsaber is no bueno? The first time he did it he ended up with a half-melted monster face and this time he completely disintegrates himself. In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny: "What a maroon."
- Since he didn't hit her with lightning, I assume Rey died because Palpatine sapped her Force energy earlier. But, then again, he did the same exact thing to Kylo...who he also threw off a cliff. But he came back. Me no unnerstan.
- Look, I don't have a problem with Force Healing...I used to play the West End Games RPG, after all. I do take umbrage to Kylo BRINGING REY BACK FROM THE DEAD, however.
- In another example of spoon-feeding a needy niche of fans their desired spank material, Rey and Kylo kiss for some fucking unknown reason.
- Why does it take so long for Leia's body to become one with the Force? If you try and tell me that it has something to do with her "sensing the death of her son at the end of her Jedi journey" then, please, bring your face over here, 'cuz I wanna punch it. Frankly, it's ghoulish and disturbing that she's just left there lying underneath a tarp in the background for so long.
- Given all of these ridiculously-epic, over-the-top space battles, the entire galaxy must be completely choked with garbage. To hell with the Rey, this universe needs a Greta Thunberg.
- As if Abrams and Terrio haven't fellated the audience enough, they give Chewie a medal. A fucking MEDAL. Because, y'know, casual fans like Abrams and Terrio like the running joke that the wookiee got shafted at the end of Star Wars. But us true fans really know that this was either because (A) Leia was too short to physically put the medal around his neck (B) Wookiees don't care about medals or (C) Who gives a fuck?
- Why did Rey go to Tatooine...and then bury the lightsabers there? Luke hated the place and Leia had zero connection to it. Serious question to the creatives here: have you guys even seen a star war?
- Rey Skywalker. Sure, fuck it, why not?
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