SIGNIFICANT STAR WARS: Episode IX

The Rise of Skywalker

The Death of a Franchise

(Not really, we still have Mandalorian)

We were told to let the past die, and we didn’t.
Now look what happened.

* * * * *
 
The following is an unapologetic unwinding of a lot of words, but that’s also because as a fan I’m hella mad. As always, to those who embark on this slow, descent into madness, you are the thing that keeps me going. Viewer discretion advised.

*SPOILERS THROUGHOUT*

In one of the most bizarre cinematic experiences to ever happen to a generation of nerds, there are almost no words to describe how unbelievably detrimental The Rise of Skywalker is to the entire Star Wars franchise. It is not just one of the most outrageous or baffling entries of the entire Star Wars saga (that’s including the prequels and spin-offs), it’s also the most overly stuffed, haphazardly paced, emotionally void, and genuinely lifeless films of this entire series, marking TROS as not just potentially the worst Star Wars movie ever made, but the very thing that will have fans questioning the quality as to what ever made Star Wars so great in the first place.

  The movie is insulting to an entire generation of grown-ass adults who can’t let go of a film franchise that was apparently designed only for children after all. The Force has indeed awakened, and it has never been so mortifying to look at. With one loud but empty film, suddenly everything that’s ever been hokey about Star Wars has become utterly unacceptable; the corny dialogue, the cheap soap operatics, in the blink of an eye it has all never felt so uninspired and more absurd than now. Like the inexplicably reanimated corpse of Emperor Palpatine, Rise of Skywalker is a Frankenstein of a movie that looks like Star Wars but feels like a lifeless monster; an all-too meta creation concocted in a lab, where J.J. Abrams is the doctor stitching the scattered pieces together, and the relentless fanboys are shouting the instructions. The Last Jedi backlash was bound to spawn something ugly, but not something so hideously unrecognizable.

  From the opening crawl’s first line, “The Dead speak!” Rise of Skywalker sets itself up as a gross exposition mime with no surprises or satisfaction. The film acts as an old machine designed to vomit characters, plots and themes that have been regurgitated from over the last 40+ years of Star Wars, and doing so at the cost of fan service. The plot feels like it was lifted from a bad Reddit thread, and spit up at the fastest and most heartless pace possible, damaging any and all should-be emotional beats of the story. Between Abrams’ attempts to retcon any progress of The Last Jedi, and stitch together any nonsensical plotting around recycled footage of Carrie Fisher, TROS gets off to a sloppy start, but then just when the story becomes an exciting video-game fetch quest (desert expedition! Dagger exposition!), it becomes astronomically rushed.

  EVERY single emotional beat of the story is stripped away by means of a fake ruse, or a rushed plot device jumping in at light speed, so much so that it’s impossible to have any heart in literally anything going on, and the end result is like having a lobotomy.

  Chewie’s dead! Oh wait, no he’s not. Rey killed Ben! Wait, no she didn’t. Leia is dead..? C3PO’s memory has been wiped! Wait it’s been restored. Hux is the spy? There’s a spy in this movie? Hux is dead! Rey is a Palpatine? WHO THE FUCK DID PALPATINE BONE?

  And EVERY scene carries on like this, blasting away from one asinine plot point to the next, until the insufferable madness is over.

  By inventing rules as the film goes along, TROS  shoves every catastrophic plot so violently in our faces, it’s like being told to stick our heads in a Death Star shaped beehive, and accept that this is the inevitable fate we’ve been waiting for all along. It’s as if Kathleen Kennedy is strategically trying to create the end of the Skywalker saga so purposefully ham-fisted that fans would never want to go back. The film leaves so many irrelevant questions we should never be asking from a Star Wars film.

  Even with the Emperor bullshit being so far out of left field, the film doesn’t even run with how weird it wants to be. He’s a... zombie Sith? How did he become this way? Who are those other zombie Sith Lords? Are they ghosts? Where did they all come from? Why would Palapatine create Snoke to get through to Kylo Ren, instead of doing so himself? If he knew Rey would be a threat, why has he just been chillin until now specifically to launch a threat? Are we REALLY gonna do another planet-killing weapon, only now it’s a Star Destroyer, and we have a whole goddamn fleet of them? Is this really the best we can do? The mind-melting nonsense in this movie is an insult to the intelligence of fans everywhere, the exposition is utterly insane, and the barfed up CGI makes it all so much worse.

  Like a bad Indiana Jones flick, TROS uses encrypted daggers, diamond-shaped trackers, and other mystical artifacts to drive the plot, leaving next to NO human connection to do so instead. Everyone is tired, everything feels rushed, the cameos feel cheap, and gaping plot holes are patched up because reasons. The Resistance fleet can’t get backup over the course of three movies, but Lando can get half the galaxy in a light-speed jump, by himself? Zombie Palpatine has his own bad-comic-book-movie electric sky beam, only to be stopped by Rey, with not one, but TWO lightsabers, who deflects the Emperor’s finger-lightning back in his face for the SECOND time in the series???

  It’s bullshit, folks.

  The film is a non-stop ride of exhausting frustration because it not only pigeonholes every single character (Kelly Marie Tran gets Jar-Jar’d with 76 SECONDS OF SCREEN TIME), but it also endlessly introduces ridiculous plots that are never explored. What is this Jedi-healing mumbo-jumbo, and if it’s powerful enough to bring people back from the dead, why hasn’t everyone been using it to revive the fallen? Leia trained to be a Jedi? Why, so the plot could give Rey an extra lightsaber? Moments that should be grandiose fall flat, because Abrams is too busy scurrying to the next big reveal. The film is smothered, and it’s suffocating to watch.

  Even poor Daisy Ridley gets the shit end of the stick. As an incredibly strong, character-building protagonist, Ridley gave Rey life, only to have it be completely stripped by this heritage exposition nonsense. Her parents are nobodies, Johnson said! Sold her for drinking money, he said! But Palpatine is her grandfather, and her parents died as heroes trying to protect her from him? What happened to Rey being special because she was nobody? Where is the identity in that a Jedi can be anybody? Why undo so much progress these last two films made? Because Disney is afraid that TLJ-hating mooks will stop giving money to Star Wars if they don’t have it their way? Even Rey’s ending is like something out of bad fan-fiction. She buries Luke and Leia’s lightsabers at Tatooine, and upon seeing their Force-ghosts, in a moment nearly on par with how Han got the name “Solo” in Solo, she tells the old woman her name is Rey... Skywalker.

GOOD GRIEF.

  If there’s one acting standout, it continues to be Driver who arguably gets it even worse than Ridley. Like James Franco turning and then heroically dying at the end of Spider-Man 3, Kylo Ren becomes BEN, the silent hero who takes out the irrelevant Knights of Ren, speaks no dialogue, and then shares a kiss with a Palpatine before perishing with redemption. Come to think of it, with all the crammed plot devices in attempts to tie the franchise up in a messy bow, only to end in catastrophic fashion, a lot of the film hits like Spider-Man 3, only without a groovy dance montage.

  Listen folks, the prequels never offered substantially relevant storytelling but at least Lucas stuck to a narratively constructive vision, no matter how outrageous. This new trilogy on the other hand was clearly never mapped out. Each film conflicts with the one before it, completely contradicting the story it’s trying to tell, and instead of moving forward, it runs circles into the ground with everything we already know. There’s nothing new to take away from these movies. The finale is poorly written (co-written by the dude who wrote the screenplay for Justice League), and while it’s got some neat-o direction (Abrams has some unique visuals), this is also J.J.’s worst movie, bar none. If this truly marks the end of the Skywalker saga, then thank the dear Lord Baby Yoda, because this side of the galaxy needs a fucking rest.

  In the end, The Rise of Skywalker is a goddamn travesty if only because there is so much rich mythology behind this franchise that we’ve barely even scratched the surface of. With as much potential Star Wars has to offer, TROS just goes to prove that Disney (despite Rian Johnson’s efforts) has been terrified to push these films in any new direction, at least episodically. By destroying any justification for this sequel trilogy to ever exist, the film goes out with a lifeless thud; a helpless clinging to the past in order to secure a financial future for Kathleen and the mouse.

Folks, Star Wars has officially become an unrecognizable monster... A phantom menace, if you will. And with that, we have truly, horrifyingly come full circle.

Star Wars as we know it is dead. 

But hey, at least we'll always have Baby Yoda.

And everyone seems to love Baby Yoda.

The future now, this is.