Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

04 May Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

Posted at 18:00h in Reviews by poprika 0 Comments

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

[UPDATED REVIEW – 20 April 2022]

This movie sucks. It has almost no redeeming qualities. It represents the nadir of the entire Skywalker Saga and Star Wars franchise. For all I know, it caused the COVID-19 pandemic, because no theatrical release broke $100 million for decades of pandemic time after this movie came out. And the first words of the opening crawl are only fully understood IF YOU PLAYED FORTNITE OVER 2 YEARS AGO.

Honestly, I stand by my original review word for word. Re-watches of this movie are worse each time. Because I stand by the review, I’m going to take a different tack on this update. The movie is devoid of any internal logic in terms of simple feasibility, so I’m just going to track all my questions that come up while watching it. Like Twitter, but you don’t have to venture into Elon Musk’s new plaything:

Why is the treasure chest with the Sith wayfinder sitting out in the open?
Why is Palpatine’s cloning chamber lit like an Eastern European rave?
Why is Kylo Ren totally cool with the Sith Lord who admits to manipulating him his entire adult life, vice killing him and wrecking shop?
Like, how many people are manning this shadow fleet of star destroyers? Where did they come from? How were they built? Maintained? Where are the supplies to sustain this crew? How long have they been floating in formation? Didn’t anyone involved in the production of this “film” ask these questions?
Why doesn’t Kylo stop his conversation with Zombie Palpatine and turn on some steady lights?
Why do data cables in Star Wars have to be the size of 1970’s eight-track tapes?
How is it that spaceships hitting solid objects don’t structurally destroy them? Is Star Wars a universe of metals harder and lighter than anything we possess? Why wouldn’t everything be made of that?
Light-speed-skipping? Apparently, fuel is no longer a problem, post-TLJ?
Why didn’t they re-cast Leia? My personal opinion: shoulda. [Narrative contortions to fit available footage limited the potential of the final product]
Does Rey ever fail anything ever?
Why does Poe care more about a stupid (merchandising-focused) droid than the MF?
“Somehow Palpatine returned.” That’s all the explanation we get? [Note: That’s all the explanation we get.]
Meriadoc Brandybuck’s purpose is to throw out some science jargon to provide plausibility to Palpatine’s return? And that is meant to satisfy us?
Let the 2/3 runtime fetch-quests begin…right?
Who thought it was acceptable to sideline Rose? [Shoulda let her sacrifice herself in the last one and go out with some dignity…]
They really repaired the MF that fast? I mean, really?! Come on…
Why is Kylo remaking his helmet? Oh yeah…merchandising and to avoid licensing Adam Driver’s likeness at Disney parks…
Is that Caesar the ape repairing the helmet?
Is this dumbass really questioning Kylo in a board meeting?
WHY ANOTHER DESERT PLANET?!
Is it polite for the humans to walk right through the middle of native dancers’ performance?
Is asking a family name really a galactic tradition across species?
Sad Boi Ren is still making long-distance calls to Rey?
Am I the only one that wonders why Rey is so attached to Han Solo after, like, two days of frantic escapades?
At this point, why is Kylo calling it the dark side? Didn’t he want to leave all that behind? And why does the dark side lean into the pejorative nature of that descriptor? Like, get a different name…
Was Rey’s necklace analyzed in literally 15 seconds flat? Wouldn’t it take longer to get it to an analyst and for some space gizmo to scan it?
Why am I watching this?
How can a military empire that can scramble fighters in 5 minutes across the galaxy struggling to take over every planet? [Note: the inability to hit anything they fire at…]
Why do the good guys steal piece of shit vehicles all the time?
Are these desert sand-mobiles really designed with any understanding of physics? Methinks not…
“Never underestimate a droid…” is only half the saying, right? The rest is “…whenever they happen to accidentally help us.”
Why do I hate C3PO so much?
Is Finn’s only character development based entirely on trying to get Rey’s attention?
I think Poe is all of us. Is Poe all of us? I mean, he ignores C3PO, so…probably?
Are all characters required to narrate their every action, like when they find the dagger?
Poe is all of us, huh…
Was Force healing ever a thing prior to this movie? Cuz it seems hella handy…coulda helped a LOT of people prior to healing this…basilisk…
The Knights of Ren are completely, utterly useless, right? Like worthless? Devoid of any value whatsoever? Right?
Do batteries degrade in this universe?
Is Rey’s destruction of Ren’s TIE fighter the only cool part of this movie?
How TF did Ren survive that? What kind of airbags to TIE fighters have?
What was Ren’s plan flying at Rey? Like, what was the goal, for reals?
Why couldn’t Rey sense whether Chewie was on that ship?
Was killing Chewie is one of the most daring narrative decisions that was almost made?
“It wasn’t your fault.”? Uhh…Finn…buddy…whose fault was that, exactly?
Finn is literally alone with Rey now and doesn’t say anything?
We are all agreed that reversing Chewie’s death less than three minutes later was narratively and cinematically insulting to the audience, right? And emotionally manipulative?
Did BB-8 just find another merchandising stream? JK…yes, of course he did.
Droid abuse. That’s rich. Are we supposed to pretend like the heroes haven’t been doing that to C3PO for 9 movies? Maybe 11? Kinda selective with droid rights, I guess…
Is Oscar Isaac the only one that knew what kind of movie this was? Cuz he’s great…
Transactional trust is totally cool…when the story demands it?
Is that John Williams?! NICE.
Why can’t the heroes stop being nice to C3PO and kindly share with him their utter disdain in clean, unadulterated terms? (Nice vs Kind)
Is the quality of Star Wars movies inversely proportional to the amount of screen time C3PO has?
Is Zorii a ‘Deus ex machina’-producing machine? Yes, yes she is…
Did nobody come to the Battle of Crait because they were afraid, or because they knew how ridiculously incompetent the Resistance leadership is? Hmm…food for thought.
SHE CAN SENSE CHEWIE NOW, BUT NOT EARLIER?!
Why didn’t they shut down C3PO forever?
Zorii exists only to move the plot forward and nothing else…amirite? [Note: Also to remind the Disney-friendly audience that Poe is definitely into the ladies.]
Why would they not steal stormtrooper uniforms?
Does Finn feel any regret killing stormtroopers, knowing their origin?
Why is Rey the worst thief?
What rules govern distance Force comms? It seems inconsistent, at best…
Is Rey’s mom the cutie from Free Guy?
I like Hux as the spy, but isn’t it poorly revealed?
Isn’t telling Rey she is Palpatine’s granddaughter not only a stupid plot point, but a terrible idea in front of the dumbest fighting force in the galaxy?
Wasn’t Adam Driver’s best performance as Kylo Ren in SNL? The Undercover Boss skit?
Force dyad? Are we just making up words?
Is Rey a mouth-breather as a character trait, or is Daisy Ridley a mouth-breather in real life?
Are we to believe that someone crafted a knife with a physical outline of a massive, wrecked spacecraft that landed in the ocean of a planet? And nothing has shifted in the years since it was created? Because I don’t…
The MF can hover…we’ve seen it before…it does it later…why crash like that?
Am I being unreasonable in not believing that any vehicle can crash like the MF did and not be structurally unsound? [Note: it was worse in Solo…]
The MF hit the ground hard enough to be half-buried…how is it not structurally compromised?!
Finn’s only job is to chase Rey and yell her name, yeah? So, John Boyega was straight ROBBED out of a good character arc or development of any meaningful kind?
Again…power sources on derelict spaceships…how do they survive? How does anything here function?
Would it have been better to recast Leia and have her Force-project like Luke? I bet they tried with unused Carrie Fisher footage…
Why does Finn stick with Rey? Does he just like yelling her name?
I think we can all agree that a superhero landing is acceptable in this fight, yeah?
Why is Leia holding Han’s medal? Or her own?
Why did that same hit kill Qui-Gon but not Kylo?
Did she heal his face scars too? That’s actually cool…nice detail.
Han Solo shows up because Carrie Fisher was dead, right? This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever…like, none. At all.
Look at how handy it is that the abandoned droid knew its way to Exegol…super helpful, right?
Is it time to retcon TLJ Luke? I think it is…
How tf did Luke and Leia know Rey was a Palpatine?!
“You have everything you need.”? Really?!
Yet again, what materials science is involved in starships in this universe? Endless power supplies? Decades-long waterproofing?
How can dead Jedi suddenly interact with physical objects?
Why can’t anyone show a modicum of empathy for Chewie?
Retcon TLJ again…the Holdo Manuever was one in a million?
Rey is arriving at the European rave…is steady lighting against some Sith code or corporate policy?
Again, with resource inconsistency: how many hundreds of thousands of beings are manning the hundreds or thousands of ships in the Sith fleet? Where did they come from? How much food do they consume? What kind of sewage facilities support that many people in so little space? Have they been there for years?
Horse charge on a spaceship is super-dumb, are we all agreed?
Did Star Wars stole the design of this Sith temple from Destiny/Destiny 2?
The Sith crowd…how long have they been waiting in the stands? Did they all get cell phone alerts to assemble real fast?
If cloning is so easy, why didn’t they take a bio-sample from Rey at any time earlier when she was captured and clone her?
Is there a compelling reason Rey hasn’t split Palpatine in two already?
Am I right in pointing out that suicide missions by characters who have no depth are not emotionally affecting? Or is it just me?
Sith disciples can’t possibly have a good existence, right?
Were the Knights of Ren worthless the whole time, or only when the plot needed them to die quickly?
How effective are medical frigates against Star Death Destroyers?
So, it only takes 12-15 shots to take down a SDD?
WHY DIDN’T THE FORCE GHOSTS SHOW UP VISUALLY, AS GHOSTS?!?!?! LAME!!
Is Finn the most Force-sensitive civilian or the weakest Jedi? Hmm..
How did Ben survive that fall? Oh wait: The plot needed him to…
Didn’t the command ship crash into this temple 5 minutes ago?
I guess anyone can Force heal now…or something?
Ben and Leia simultaneously disappearing…how? Why?
Giving Chewie Leia’s medal…why? Is he a dead friend medal collector?
That Lando’s daughter, right?
Did that old lady see exactly where the two lightsabers were buried?
Is the best Star Wars meme the one where Rey sees different objects/people and takes those on as her last name?
My preference:
“I’m Rey.”
“Rey who?”
“Rey Godzilla.”

What a terrible movie…no wonder almost everyone involved has disowned it…and it kicked off a global pandemic.

This movie bears all the hallmarks of a studio in chaos and the endgame of a project that was started without a plan. It’s a shame. To me, it is worse than the prequels, which at least had a central theme and narrative structure that tied everything together. So much time, effort, money, blood, sweat, and tears went into making this movie, and it just did not work on any level. Tragedy manifest…

[ORIGINAL REVIEW – 27 December 2019]

George Lucas’ Star Wars was one of the first blockbuster franchises in film history, and over time, has remained wholly unique in terms of longevity and sheer scale of production and fan expectations. It has had ups and downs, like every franchise. It has faced the evolution of fan and critical scrutiny that directly reflect changes in society and technology (cinematic and real-world). What has not changed is that every Star Wars film release is an event, and Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker is no exception. Billed as the closing chapter of the 9-film Skywalker Saga, Disney and Lucasfilm have postured The Rise of Skywalker as the crowning achievement of a 42-year cinematic journey, promising an epic closeout to this era of the beloved franchise. Sadly, it isn’t really any of that other than the end of the Skywalker Saga. Hopefully.

The simplest review I can give is that on a superficial level, The Rise of Skywalker is a fun, action-filled space adventure with excellent special effects, some solid performances, and a definite closeout of the Skywalker Saga. BUT…if you apply any intellectual rigor to this movie, it is an incompetent shitshow that insults not only the entire Star Wars franchise, but in particular insults its immediate predecessor, The Last Jedi, in a particularly devastating series of character and philosophical/narrative choices.

There you have it. If you like the film, great! Enjoy it and relish it. From a certain point of view, I did enjoy it. That said, I’m curious to know your thoughts in two months, twelve months, and five years. But if you left frustrated or apathetic, read on, as I try to encapsulate why I think this film represents the laziest failure in the Star Wars franchise since Episode 2.

Brief-ish Review of Where We Are

It’s difficult to talk about Episode IX without doing two things (briefly, I hope): first, review my thoughts on the Skywalker Saga as a whole, and then the Disney Trilogy in particular. The Skywalker Saga will probably be studied for decades as a very unique test-bed for radically different film-making philosophies.

The Original Trilogy is classic, nearly perfect Star Wars. There are faults, especially is you consider Lucas’ continued alterations (STOP!!), but the OT not only remains the best of the three trilogies but stand as individually terrific science fantasy films. In addition, though Lucas wrote and directed Episode IV, and sketched out the overall story the OT, he brought in other writers and directors to handle Episodes V & VI, which are arguably the two best films of the entire Skywalker Saga (Empire is unequivocally the best, imho…).

The Prequel Trilogy is interesting because Lucas took over complete control of writing and directing all three films. As Supreme Leader of the PT, he takes all the credit and all the blame; honestly, there is more of the later. Episodes I and II are terrible films, with poor writing, directing, editing, and questionable story elements. I consider Episode II the worst of all the Skywalker Saga movies, with Episode I a close second-to-worst. Episode III is much better, but still plagued by poor acting, editing, and narrative elements. But it is undeniable that they are tonally consistent and the clear realized vision of one person with a plan: George Lucas.

As a side note, it is hilarious watching production diaries from the PT on the released DVDs, because you can see in the eyes of his entire production crew that they hated his ideas and knew they were pouring gasoline on a dumpster fire, but there was no way they could stand up to Lucas. So, they completely and utterly capitulated.

Which brings us to the Disney Trilogy. Or Post-Lucas Trilogy. I don’t know what they will eventually be referred to as, but I think Remake Trilogy might be the most appropriate. The RT was Disney’s immediate focus after acquiring Lucasfilm. They essentially thanked Lucas, gave him a $4b check, escorted him out the door, and dropped his plans for Episodes VII-IX in the shredder before the door was closed. This might have been for the best, because they sounded terrible, leaning into the worst elements of the Prequels short of Jar-Jar.

Instead, Disney brought in JJ Abrams, fresh off his newly successful Star Trek reboot at Paramount, where he frequently cited Star Wars as his true love and clearly checked out of Into Darkness before finishing it. Abrams wrote and directed The Force Awakens, the most financially successful Star Wars film in history and a crowd-pleaser, to be sure. Though it was VERY similar to A New Hope in story, structure, character, and… well, let’s face it: it was a remake of A New Hope. But it was big, fun, and a massive improvement over the Prequel Trilogy. Star Wars was back, baby!!

After The Force Awakens, Abrams decided that he did not want to write/direct Episode VII, so Rian Johnson was brought in due to his short but impressive resume, which included Looper and the best episodes of one of TV’s best shows: Breaking Bad. The Last Jedi was less successful than The Force Awakens and was unexpectedly (and massively) divisive to the entire Star Wars fanbase; more on that later…

In the aftermath, Disney fired an inexperienced director and re-hired Abrams for The Rise of Skywalker, and here we are, less than a week later after worldwide theatrical release. There are two perspectives on why this film is a failure: external and internal factors. By external, I mean issues that are totally unrelated to the content of the film itself. Instead, it considers aspects like the context and heritage of the previous films, corporate influence, etc. These are factors that had a massive effect on the film but are (mostly) not overtly evident in the film itself. By internal, I mean problems with the filmmaking directly, from writing to directing, etc. These are problems that this singular film must own, because they were within the control of Abrams and/or other cast/crew that were directly involved in making the film.

External Factors

I’ll start with external factors, because I think that more than any film in living history, The Rise of Skywalker suffered from way too much baggage to ever truly have a chance at being successful as a genuinely epic Star Wars film. Here are some of the external factors that affected this movie:

JJ Abrams is a talented technical filmmaker but has never made a motion picture with even a small measure of originality; he is the master cinema-remix artist. I hear someone complaining about Super 8, but it…wasn’t that great, and a one-trick (found-footage) pony. Fight me. From Mission: Impossible to Star Trek to Star Wars, he has only ever made films that are:

1. Existing IPs
2. Struggling to recover from previous failures
3. Overdue for a visual and tonal overhaul
4. Have lain dormant for longer than expected

This made The Force Awakens a perfect match for Abrams; he was absolutely the right guy for the job. He had proven himself capable of taking a beloved but struggling property, updating the visuals and pacing, and mimicking enough familiar stuff to create solid connective tissue between old and new to move forward. There is possibly no better filmmaker for refreshing a crumbling foundation and setting it aright for future success.

But Abrams also has a confirmed habit of being unable to close anything out in a satisfying way, be it Star Trek or Lost. Disney seemed aware of this, as they had already penciled in two other directors for Episodes 8 and 9, proclaiming their desire to have different and unique voices as directors for the new trilogy.

Unfortunately, his standard approach to making a film was completely subverted by…
Rian Johnson, who was hired to write and direct The Last Jedi and given more than enough rope to hang himself. Johnson is an excellent and original writer and director, whose style and approach to storytelling is unique. Do you see the first problem there? He is the opposite of Abrams on a fundamental level: Abrams is safe and familiar; Johnson is unique and original. And they are supposedly telling the same story across two films…

The Last Jedi made a lot of decisions that divided the fan base. Notably, he threw out some of the biggest seeded story elements that Abrams had built into TFA, including a new villain (Snoke), Rey’s mysterious heritage, the reason Luke disappeared, and how Han and Leia’s son Ben went bad. Also, he filmed an absurd scene of Leia flying through space. Also, he kept the newest characters (Rey, Finn, and Poe) apart for the entire movie. Also, he introduced Rose and allowed her and Finn to utterly waste 20 minutes of run-time on a casino planet to drive home excessively on-the-nose social commentary on the Star Wars universe itself about slavery, war profiteering, animal cruelty, or something…I don’t know. It was awful. And nobody went back to actually help the slave kids… #wtf

Johnson actually made a really good movie overall—for a Rian Johnson film. But it was a terrible Star Wars film as the middle chapter of a trilogy that had introduced certain story arcs that were clearly intended to be seen through to conclusion. Johnson threw out these story arcs, introduced some excellent philosophical ideas about learning from failure, and ended his movie in a way that felt like the end of a trilogy as opposed to any kind of continuation.

Interestingly, Last Jedi also mirrored many narrative and environmental beats from The Empire Strikes Back, giving the first indication that that this would be a Remake Trilogy.

Overall, my theory is that tonally and narratively, Episode VIII was SO different from Episode VII that it deeply split fans for the first time in Star Wars history into radically different camps; camps that were isolated by their internet-fueled vitriol, which was unfortunately coming of age at the same time.

The massive disparity between Episodes VII and VIII was, itself, a nearly unimaginable obstacle to overcome, but unfortunately, it was compounded by the fact that…
Disney CLEARLY had no creative roadmap for the Remake Trilogy. Unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe (ironically owned by Disney as well), Lucasfilm did not have a Kevin Feige: a creative lead with not only the depth of knowledge, experience, wisdom, and authority to make and enforce sound creative decisions regarding the multiple film narrative arcs.

The closest analog for Star Wars was Kathleen Kennedy, a holdover from the Lucas days when she was a producer for previous Star Wars films. There are not a lot of hard facts available about the relationship between Disney, Lucasfilm, and Kennedy regarding the vision or intentions for Star Wars as a money-making creative enterprise, but what evidence is available says that Kennedy probably does not wield sufficient knowledge, wisdom, and/or authority to push through whatever overarching narratives were possibly intended when the Remake Trilogy was begun. From a more generous standpoint, perhaps excessive freedom was given to Abrams and Johnson without a thought for how their unique styles might conflict.

The problems marrying the disparity in tone and narrative direction between Force Awakens and Last Jedi is very clear in Rise of Skywalker, where almost every major story and character beat had no seeded or foreshadowed element anywhere in the previous films. On top of reconciling these problems, Rise of Skywalker was also expected to be another spiritual remake of Return of the Jedi from the Original Trilogy, completing the Remake Trilogy.

So, in Episode IX, you have a film whose heart is remaking Episode VI, but whose story and character are completely divorced from any setup from any previous films.

This is a shitty framework for a film and stands as evidence that while the previous films were in production, nobody had any real idea of how Episode IX would end.
At all. Despite this being the “End of the Skywalker Saga”.

The word ‘saga’ implies that there are important narrative and character arcs that form the connective tissue between every individual story whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Not in this case. And speaking of Disney…
Another external problem is Disney’s fundamental business model of purchasing an IP and milking it for all it is worth. Between 2015 and 2019, Disney has released five Star Wars films: The Force Awakens, Rogue One, The Last Jedi, Solo, and The Rise of Skywalker. Their financial performance is notable: the episodic movies decreased in overall revenue, but outperformed the spin-offs, which also progressively decreased in revenues. In other words, Disney over-saturated the market with Star Wars while simultaneously dividing the fanbase with erratic, inconsistent films.

In addition, the spin-offs were marked by massive production problems rooted in tone and narrative issues that were blamed on talented filmmakers who were eventually fired. Again, see the problem? Disney was spending massive amounts of money to make movies that were bringing in diminishing returns and dividing/disenfranchising fans of the formerly monolithic Star Wars fanbase.

When The Last Jedi met with fan backlash for narrative, character, and structural problems, Disney kinda balked.

Then, Solo’s production turned into an unparalleled disaster, resulting in re-writing and re-filming almost the entire movie with a new director, costing tens of millions of dollars.

Then Solo spectacularly failed at the worldwide box office, failing to even match its production budget in total worldwide returns (moderately successful high-budget films typically must earn 2.5 times their combined production and marketing budget to be considered successful, with marketing budgets often matching production budgets).

At this point, Disney completely freaked out. They fired Colin Trevorrow as the writer/director of Rise of Skywalker as a direct result of his newest film (The Book of Henry) being a flop critically and commercially. Then they looked around for who could get things back on track (i.e. – MAKE THAT MONEY, YO!), which led to…
Bringing back JJ Abrams!
Except this time, he was not rebooting a dormant property, but continuing a truncated and heavily butchered story he had started with The Force Awakens.
Only this round he had less time.
And there were greatly inflated financial expectations from Disney.
And greatly inflated story expectation from the entire Star Wars fanbase.

Given these appalling limitations, it is not surprising that Abrams fell back on what he was familiar with, and in this case, that was two film-making techniques that he is renowned for: remaking something that already exists, and the JJ Abrams Mystery Box Plot™.

I’ll mention the Mystery Box later, as it is an internal problem with the film, but as for the former, Abrams decided to finish off the Remake Trilogy with a film that mirrored the structure and story beats of Return of the Jedi while also following Johnson’s example by rejecting all the newly seeded narrative and character elements that Johnson himself had put into The Last Jedi.

Note that while some of these complications are outside his control, some are entirely self-inflicted wounds.

On top of that, he seems to have simply decided to return to his own quasi-roadmap of character and story beats seeded in Episode VII, despite many of them being directly invalidated by Episode VIII. For example, Abrams clearly intended Rey to have a mysterious but eventually interesting familial heritage, which Johnson completely shot down by proclaiming that Rey’s parents were nobody. Abrams simply ignored that went back to his original blueprint that Rey DID come from some kind of notable heritage, though it had clearly not been decided exactly what that was in Force Awakens, much less Last Jedi.

Abrams’ habit of recycling old story beats and insisting on ignoring The Last Jedi by reverting his own already-invalid story arcs from The Force Awakens was evident in The Rise of Skywalker, and created narrative, tonal, and structural chaos. All of which was, again, compounded by yet another external factor, which is actually a legit tragedy…
The death of Carrie Fisher was a loss to everyone involved in Star Wars: fans and filmmakers alike. She passed after production on Episode VIII, but too close to its release date to make any changes. One clear intention of the Remake Trilogy was to rely heavily on the presence of the Original Trilogy characters of Han, Luke, and Leia. In fact, the intention seems to have been to allow each of them to feature prominently and individually in one episode each of the Remake Trilogy. Unfortunately, the way in which this was done proved difficult for Episode IX:

Force Awakens featured Harrison Ford as Han Solo and honored the actor’s long-held wishes that Han die at the end. The movie also reintroduced Luke in its closing moments, setting him up to be the featured OT character in The Last Jedi. As we know, Luke died at the end, leaving Leia as the sole surviving OT primary cast member to be featured in Episode IX.

Unfortunately, Fisher’s death in 2016 introduced a massive complication for The Rise of Skywalker’s script and production, which is likely why Disney shied away from Trevorrow and sought out a trusted and more experienced filmmaker. How do you feature a character who is intrinsically tied to a tragically deceased actor? Or another way: how do you respect and honor Fisher’s 42-year legacy of Star Wars contributions, as well as fully realize the intended arc of the character of Leia? It is a problem of almost unimaginable difficulty.

There are two notable examples of how similar problems were overcome in other film productions. Oliver Reed passed away roughly halfway through production of Gladiator, and Paul Walker passed away about 2/3 of the way through production of Furious 7. In Reed’s case, he was a relatively minor character, and existing footage was slightly altered to finish out the minor scenes he had left to shoot; the narrative accommodation is relatively minimal. In Walker’s case, he was a major character, and the entire third act of the film had to feature his character prominently. The production team responded by delaying the release date considerably and taking tremendous pains to restructure the film around building a respectful legacy for both Walker and his beloved character. This was done by utilizing existing footage, extensive CGI, and the unexpected blessing of Walker’s two brothers, Caleb and Cody, bearing heavy similarities to Paul’s build, facial features, and voice. The accommodations were extensive, expensive, and involved an 18-month delay to the release date…but very successful.

In my opinion, Disney/Lucasfilm probably considered three viable options for handling Fisher’s death: rewrite the story to exclude Leia as an on-screen character; recast the part with an actress who talent would honor the character of Leia; or rewrite the entire story around whatever existing footage of Fisher existed from the filming of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. The production opted for the third option, which was, in part, what Furious 7 had successfully implemented after Walker’s death.

Unfortunately, unlike Paul Walker, who had dozens of films under his belt, including five recent previous entries in the same series as the same character, Fisher was not a prolific actress outside Star Wars, and existing, unused footage as Leia amounted to a (rumored) 12 minutes of deleted scenes/lines of dialogue; there simply was not enough footage to proceed with the extensive scenes Leia was intended to shoot for Episode IX. And without a significant delay in release date, Disney/Lucasfilm had less raw footage and less time to figure out how to craft a story that would satisfy fans while also honoring Fisher and the beloved character she helped define.

Of all the external complications, this one is the most tragic and unfortunate. The untimely loss of any talented actor is regrettable, but the timing in this case was particularly bitter, as Episode VIII had contained a scene that arguably should have been an honorable send-off for Leia and could have easily left Luke alive to be the featured OT character in Episode IX. But there was no way to predict Fisher’s tragic passing, and Disney had no intention of delaying either Episodes VIII or IX to account for the tragic void left in the Star Wars family.
The last external factor I want to mention is Disney’s corporate interference. Again, there is little direct evidence of exactly what words were exchanged between what parties, but the overall impressions divined from small leaks here and there all the way from pre-production to post-production and release is that Disney/Lucasfilm/Kennedy/Abrams responded to the online criticism of Last Jedi and the complete failure of Solo by doing the same thing that Warner Brothers did after the online criticism following the release of Batman v Superman. In the case of BvS, WB panicked and chopped up the soon-to-release Suicide Squad in a desperate attempt to accommodate the vocal cries of fans who wanted more levity and humor after the unexpectedly dark tone of BvS. WB also, by many accounts, fired director Zack Snyder from Justice League and hired another director to come in and “make it more fun”. In the end, Suicide Squad was a train wreck of editing and incoherent storytelling; and Justice League was an inert, flaccid film which, by all accounts, was the deeply faded shadow of the original Snyder Cut of JL.

So, too, went Disney and Lucasfilm with The Rise of Skywalker, seemingly turning to Reddit forums for guidance on what fans expected from a Star Wars film in general, and Episode IX specifically. Instead of staying the course and respecting the thematic and narrative decisions in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, there seems ample evidence throughout the film that there was a checklist of things hyper-vocal “fans” expected in a Star Wars film, and Disney/Lucasfilm/Kennedy/Abrams were hellbent on addressing every single one of them, even if they were diametrically opposed. I’ll note some examples in the internal factors, but the fact that the online vitriol was so intense that a viable, if only theoretical, checklist of expectations could have been assembled, and that this theoretical checklist ended up being almost wholly addressed throughout The Rise of Skywalker, is suspicious. Like, hella suspicious…

And those they are, by my reckoning, the most notable external factors that made the production of Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker challenging. To be honest, that list alone is insurmountable given the release-date parameters that Disney imposed on production. If I had been in charge of Disney, I would have looked to the Furious 7 model for guidance and pushed the release of Rise of Skywalker back until all of these factors were more thoroughly addressed, weighed, agreed upon, and planned for in a responsible manner. And honestly, the fact that I am recommending that Star Wars should have looked to the Fast & Furious franchise for guidance may tell you everything you need to know about how Episode IX turned out…

Internal Factors

NEVERTHELESS!!

External factors aside, the final product of The Rise of Skywalker contained a shocking number of internal problems and shortcomings. Again, in my opinion and all things being equal, I would say that given corporate demands from Disney and release date requirements, the external factors were beyond anyone’s control; I don’t even blame JJ Abrams for being JJ Abrams. But the internal factors can and should have been pointed out and addressed during scripting, production, editing, and/or post-production. They were all in the control of the filmmakers, and there does not seem to be a justification for settling on lesser final products when corrections should have been so readily apparently to even the most passive viewer, of which the cast and crew included tens of thousands of people.

And with that, here are some of the internal factors that affected The Rise of Skywalker:

The decision to include Emperor Palpatine as the main villain of the film was as stupid as his introduction as the villain in the opening crawl. Not only was there never even a hint that he was a possible villain, but there is no explanation whatsoever for how he survived the end of Return of the Jedi. Lazy but endemic of Abrams fallback on someone else’s superior ideas.
Abrams loves Mystery Boxes in his stories, and Episode IX is just a massive quagmire of mystery boxes and McGuffins. In fact, they are so central to moving the story forward that I almost wonder if it was simply the only way Abrams could meet scripting deadlines for the beginning of production. Maybe it ended up being an unconscious ‘Screw You’ to Lucasfilm for putting him through the stress of returning to a trilogy they had allowed someone else to butcher in his absence without the benefit of a delayed release date.
In any case, the movie spends the bulk of its run-time on fetch-quests/side-quests, which are often a time filler in video games and lazy movies that don’t have emotional character motivations for moving the story forward. In this case:

The opening crawl says Palpatine is back, whereabouts unknown. So, the heroes must find (or FETCH) him.
They decide they can find him by fetching a Sith Way-finder…
…which they can find by fetching a dagger with a clue inscribed on it.
When they fetch the dagger from a desert planet, they lose it and Chewie…
…so they have to fetch the coordinates from C3PO’s memory circuits…
…which means fetching a robotics expert from another planet. (Baba Frick! Awesome character, 5 realz…)
Then they fetch Chewie and the dagger from a Star Destroyer…
Then they proceed to fetch the Sith Way-finder from the forest moon of Endor.
…And it is promptly destroyed and Rey just jacks Kylo’s ship, flies to Palpatine, and sends the coordinates of the flight path to the Resistance, thereby nullifying ALL of the previous fetch quests.

At this point, 2/3 of the movie is done and they finally know what to do and where to go, and the third act of the movie starts the narrative in earnest, assuming you find fetch-quests/McGuffins/mystery boxes uninteresting as narrative devices. It is all so damn lazy and dull, compared to the OT, where character relationships and emotion drove the plot forward.
Love her or hate her, Rose was a major character in The Last Jedi and she was insultingly back-burnered in The Rise of Skywalker. We know this because Abrams brought in a hobbit from Lord of the Rings to speak lines of dialogue that were perfectly suited to Rose, who was standing RIGHT THERE.

Also, Finn friend-zones her immediately at the beginning and she is left behind…wait, no. The only major new character that is a person of color verbally rejects the call to adventure for reasons and voluntarily stays behind.

And when Finn needs a mechanic to program a battery of guns to destroy a command ship, he turns to a completely new, unknown character even though Rose is standing a few yards away. This was a great example of Abrams giving the middle finger to Johnson, with Kelly Marie Tran suffering the brunt of the decision. Great optics, Disney…
The score was dull, with no new musical themes whatsoever.
The entire Remake Trilogy sidelined the new characters (Rey, Finn, and Poe) to focus on the OT cast of Han, Luke, and Leia even though the OT characters almost never share screen time! This is endemic of Disney/Lucasfilm/Kennedy/Abrams over-reliance on nostalgia to promote the Remake Trilogy. Nostalgia is fine in small doses and when earned, but between The Last Jedi and Solo, fans deserved more than a shadow of the OT characters, and the new characters deserved more than anything 7, 8, or 9 offered them.
Killing a major character can be an effective dramatic stinger for a story, especially when it fits in the story and impacts other characters emotionally. Bringing them back, especially when it is almost immediately, is insulting, manipulative, and cowardly from a narrative standpoint.

Killing Chewie was effective and powerful for all the right reasons, especially since Rey seemed accidentally responsible. Bringing him back 2 minutes later was insulting, manipulative, and cowardly from a narrative standpoint. Wiping out C3PO’s memory (“killing” him) was bold, and the first useful thing that C3PO has ever done in the 11 films he has appeared in; bringing him back a few minutes later, particularly as a quick visual gag, was insulting, manipulative, and cowardly from a narrative standpoint.

The MCU has played with this fire but at least in Avengers: Endgame (their version of concluding a saga), Feige was willing to up the emotional stakes by actually killing off major heroes. Disney/Lucasfilm/Kennedy/Abrams decided to screw with the audience, which never sits well.
Abrams decided to roll back two major pass downs from Episode VIII in the most insultingly meta way possible; it almost involved characters looking into the camera and winking at the audience.

The first addressed Kylo’s statement to Rey in The Last Jedi that her parents were nobody. Here, he reverses LIKE A BOSS by adding the MASSIVE disclaimer that they were nobody…BY CHOICE, before proceeding to inform Rey that her father was Palpatine’s son. Talk about a HUGE course correction. Adam Driver does his best, but the line the script demands comes across as “We know you hated this, so here’s a brand-new clarification that is the complete opposite.” The entire alteration also demonstrates that there was clearly no roadmap that included Rey’s parentage including Palpatine…

The second line is by Luke Skywalker, who spent the entirety of Episode VIII secluded on an island. In fact, the first time we see Luke in the movie, he casually tosses his long-lost lightsaber over his shoulder before proceeding to mock the Jedi and their “laser swords”. In The Rise of Skywalker, he stops Rey from tossing away the same lightsaber for a far better reason before simply saying “I was wrong.” To me, this was practically a wink and a nod to disgruntled fans of the previous outing that completely retconned Luke’s actions, attitude, and motivations that formed the entire foundation of his character’s actions in that film. Love it or hate it, Luke had become disaffected as a Jedi, and although he comes around and decides to Force-project himself during the Battle of Crate as a distraction so the Resistance can escape (resulting in his death by exhaustion), there is no reasoning given for such a complete, on-the-nose reversal from Episode VIII, where Luke as a character was given a full and complete character arc.

Both cases are, in my opinion, evidence that Lucasfilm lacked an overall roadmap, and Abrams enthusiastically dealt with the challenges of Johnson’s film by ensuring that there were some very overt, poorly executed, nearly-4th-wall-breaking moments to reassure disgruntled fans that Disney knew they hated Last Jedi. Fan service over loyalty to story or character…
In his pursuit of McGuffins and fetch quests, Abrams casually glosses over extremely important plot points. Like when Rey, Finn, and Poe are escaping the desert planet on a dead Jedi-hunter’s ancient ship as Kylo Ren, the Knights of Ren, and dozens of First Order ships have them surrounded. Then we instantly cut to them safely hiding in an asteroid field.

Or maybe the part where Poe and Finn casually assign Lando and Chewie to take the Falcon and “call upon the galaxy for reinforcements”. And then a few hours later, they show up with THOUSANDS OF SHIPS, having somehow brought them to the Unknown Regions of Space.

In both cases, maybe you can imply or extrapolate how these things were accomplished, but there is also a really good argument for “Abrams wanted to focus on a fetch-quest, so we’ll ignore the staggering implications of these impossible scenarios that are skipped over.”

The first, I can wrap my head around a poor justification; but the second begs for an entire new trilogy about how Lando and Chewie are The Greatest and Fastest Propogandists in the Galaxy.
I don’t have a problem with the introduction of new force powers, but after The Last Jedi introduced a couple doozies (Leia space flight and Force projection across the galaxy), it was clear that Disney/Lucasfilm demanded that they avoid the same response this time, which is why they released episode seven of The Mandalorian the day before The Rise of Skywalker was released and it featured Baby Yoda using the Force to heal someone.

CUZ FORCE-HEALING EX MACHINA, SUCKA!

On three separate occasions in Episode IX, Force healing is critical to the plot: first, Rey heals a massive sand snake, to low-key introduce the power to anyone who hadn’t seen The Mandalorian yet; then she heals Ben after stabbing him with his own lightsaber; then Ben heals her after she dies defeating Palpatine. You see, Reddit didn’t like new Force powers coming out of nowhere, so we’re going to go overboard in introducing a new one!

Problem was, as soon as Rey healed the snake for no particular reason, even casual viewers are now aware that Force healing will DEFINITELY be used again for something more serious. MAYBE TWICE! Again, poorly executed response to Reddit forum complaints…
Palpatine’s plan makes no sense, as he shifts from needing Kylo to kill Rey; to needing Rey to kill Palpatine; to needing both of them to be alive to suck their life force or whatever; to not needing all their life force or whatever because they share a special bond…his whole plot is confusing and poorly conveyed.

The only way it makes sense is if you undermine Kylo/Ben’s intelligence and just say that everybody is lying and manipulating him all the time and he falls for it every single time. I’m sure it’s intended to convey that Palpatine is a mastermind at manipulating pawns in his quest for galactic domination, but for the third movie in a row, the entire villain plot revolves around Kylo being manipulated into doing someone else’s bidding without even token resistance or questioning of what he’s being asked. Ultimately, it reflects poorly on the already underdeveloped motivations of Palpatine, and on Kylo’s intelligence.
The ending was sloppy, vis-à-vis Rey and Kylo fighting Palpatine. There were rumors a couple months back that there had been significant reshoots after initial test-screenings were a disaster, resulting in multiple cuts of the movie, including Abrams’ original cut, (Disney President) Bob Iger’s cut, and a hybrid cut of the two. I suspect these cuts differed primarily in how the film ended, particularly with whether Rey and Ben live/die and/or whether there is a kiss between the two. In the end, Ben heals Rey, they kiss (ReyLo fanservice), and Ben dies (Kylo redemption fanservice). None of it is particularly original nor true to the characters as portrayed in the previous films, but hey!! Reddit should be happy! Which means we don’t need to seed any of the ideas!
Finn clearly stated that he had something to tell Rey. Then the idea was bounced around a bit before being banished into the unanswered void. Why bring it up if you’re not going to address it?! My first thought was that Finn wanted to confess his love, which would have been lame and another example of a dead idea from The Force Awakens that was underdeveloped and unbelievable. But I actually think he wanted to tell her he was Force sensitive, which is something that is strongly implied in several scenes throughout the movie. Problem is, the gulf between these two possibilities is REALLY wide, and without ever addressing it, it should have just been removed from the film entirely.
It’s REALLY handy that Zorii Bliss happened to have a magic coin that allows the plot to move forward!
Has there ever been a traitor that said, “Shoot me in the arm so they don’t know I was helping you!” that every fooled their superiors into maintaining their cover? Answer: no. I like Hux as a traitor, but he should have left with them; his interactions with Resistance people could have been interesting and provided a more robust arc for his character. Or we can stick with tired, ridiculous tropes. Whatever.
Where did Palpatine get 10,000 Star Destroyers with planet-killing capability?! Who built them? Where did they get the 30,000-50,000 crew members per ship for them? Who built them? Why store them under ice? Why rely on a single navigation beacon to facilitate 10,000 ships leaving the Exigol system? Why not pre-program a single-use course outside the Exigol system back to regular, Known Space so the ships are not paralyzed by single-point-failure navigation systems? How did the heroes have a clear path back to Known Space after the battle? WHY DOES STAR WARS RELY SO HEAVILY ON DEATH STARS, WHETHER SPHERICAL OR STAR DESTROYER-SHAPED?!?!? The entire threat in The Rise of Skywalker is nullified by simple, logistical impossibilities beyond any intelligent viewer’s suspension of disbelief.
Why did Palpatine keep a jar of Snokes? Why didn’t he clone himself a new body? How did he produce a son—was it through “traditional reproductive methods” or in vitro or some Sith method? Did Palpatine really get busy with some female? Was it consensual? Did she possess any particular traits that made their offspring more Sith-inclined? Who were all the cloaked dudes? What does it actually mean to have “every Sith dwelling inside me”? Or “every Jedi”, for that matter? Is that literal or figurative? SO MANY QUESTIONS, WITH NO ATTEMPT TO ANSWER ANY OF THEM…leaving the audience with no emotional investment in any of it.
Was the same-sex kiss that lasted 13 frames a welcome addition to LGBT Star Wars canon, or just exploiting a sensitive social group for some free publicity? And why did the hobbit hugging the slug last twice as long?
Why wasn’t Bill Hader brought back to voice BB-8?
Oh snap! We forgot a backstory for Poe and we’re halfway through the third movie to feature him as a character. Let’s, uh…let’s just give him Han’s backstory! With no real changes at all! We’ll dress him the same to reinforce it! [High-fives around the production table]
This whole third act of Episode IX, especially the climax, was a straight-up rip-off of the entire climax to Return of the Jedi, right? Like down to identical shots and sets…
I understand that the Remake Trilogy is unnecessarily mirroring their corresponding entries in the OT, but…that was too much, right? Like, almost nothing new aside from production design and costumes, yeah?
WTF was up with Maz passing a medal to Chewie? Was the medal Han’s or Leia’s? Why would Chewie care after 42 years? Why was that the moment to pass it along? Why was Leia holding it while reaching out to Ben? Why bring in completely unexplained elements into a movie that is already bloated with questions?
Why did Lando and Jannah have the most awkward conversation ever at the end? Did Lando really just casually commit to roaming the galaxy in search of the parents of a complete stranger? Was there NOTHING better to talk about?!
I’m fine with Rey returning to Tatooine and burying Luke and Leia’s lightsaber (although considering the design of her own, I hope she took pictures and has a Mark 2 in the future), but shouldn’t she have looked around before burying the two most valuable single items in the galaxy in two feet of loose sand. I mean, there was another person RIGHT THERE watching. And it doesn’t take a world class detective to figure out what might be buried at the Skywalker homestead by someone who claims to be a Skywalker…

OK, that’s the brunt of them. I am 100% sure there were other idiotic things in this movie—feel free to comment them all over the place.

The last complaint I’ll log is not directly with Star Wars, but with Hollywood in general. I am tired of characters who are clearly portrayed as demonstrating a lifetime of horrific atrocities being “redeemed” moments before their death. Return of the Jedi did it with Darth Vader; they do it again with Kylo Ren in The Rise of Skywalker. To me, it’s like if Hitler’s last act on Earth was to resuscitate his dying wife and then falling down dead. Would anyone consider that one act enough to wipe out decades of genocide? I don’t believe in deathbed repentance, nor do I believe that years of genocidal murder can be so easily wiped away. Lucas and Disney have both fully embraced the Empire and then the First Order/Final Order as analogs for Nazi Germany, so I think the analogy is apt, and in the moment, Ben brings Rey back to life and dies, I do not come even close to buying that this final act redeems him. He’s still an evil, unforgivable POS. Not unexpected, but whenever I see this in a movie, it bothers me.

The Good Stuff!!

At this point, 6486 words in, you might think that I didn’t like anything about the movie. Totes wrong! Here are some pretty great things:

Baba Frick was a fun, functional addition to the story.
Zorii Bliss was intriguing, if not fully explored. I wanted to know more about her and her crew; hopefully things turn out better than the crew in Solo…
The Millennium Falcon is still the most awesome ship in film. I love watching it fly around, especially when its movement is fast, agile, durable, and just the greatest thing ever.
Rey was more relatable and there was more substance detailing her study of Jedi texts and training with Leia. Although Daisy Ridley seems hella tired of this whole Star Wars thing, she carried most of the character load in the trilogy as a protagonist.
Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren/Ben Solo is fantastic. He takes a character that could have been very unlikable and made him interesting and powerful in a way that escaped the previous two entries.
As stupid a plot device as they were, seeing Star Destroyers ready to (or actually) wreak havoc was exciting.
Ian McDiarmid is great as Emperor Palpatine, even if the character had no real business in the movie. He clearly had fun returning to the role.
I’m actually pretty OK with Rey taking the name Skywalker. I mean, it’s not like she’s going to take on the name Palpatine in a galaxy that has fully to partially repressed by an emperor of that name. I’m just glad she didn’t look into the camera and say her name was ‘Rey Star Wars’ or ‘Rey LukeNLeia’…
The open crawl was very well lined-up with the sides of the screen.

Conclusion

OK, let me bring it home. I originally balked at writing anything, but a quick Facebook poll showed interest, so I thought I would write something short and devastating. I got halfway there. I don’t hate this movie. I’m mostly disappointed at the potential versus the final product, especially since Disney/Lucasfilm made some really large promises and leaned into the nostalgia very heavily. I also remind myself of something that I am slowly learning to embrace and may actually act on at some point. It is much easier to destroy than create, and the effort that went into making this movie, regardless of the outcome, was rooted in a love of the material, which I share. I feel that if I were any of the filmmakers involved and someone complained as much as I do, my answer would be: “Well STFU and make something better that you do like. Then we’ll compare.” The reality is that I’m grateful for getting something that I was able to sit and enjoy. I’ve seen the movie four times, so clearly, I don’t hate it. The first viewing I was overwhelmed, the second time disappointed, the third time entertained, the fourth time highly critical. That’s the way of these things, and no matter what, I’m glad we got something, because the alternative is…no Star Wars at all.

I often think about Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, which I consider the greatest comic book movie series. Before Batman Begins, there were no great Batman movies; and after The Dark Knight Rises, we’re still waiting for another great Batman movie. But no matter what, I’ll always have the Dark Knight Trilogy. So, I can sit back and enjoy Batman v Superman and Justice League with a passive, muted appreciation for a lesser portrayal of Batman.

It’s the same with the Prequel Trilogy and the Remake Trilogy. No matter how good the films are collectively or individually, I’ll always have the Original Trilogy. And if I get too annoyed at anything, I can just turn on The Empire Strikes Back and be happy. Or fire up my computer and write my own space fantasy opera, make the movie, and let JJ Abrams shred it into oblivion. I’m in charge of my own happiness, and rather than get any more twisted around the axle on The Rise of Skywalker, I’m just gonna let it go, man…let it go.

Review by Jim Washburn