Ending the Skywalker saga for the third time.
There was a line from Luke Skywalker that echoed through my mind while watching Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: no one’s ever really gone. I’d like to expand upon that thought with one of my own: nothing really ever ends. As The Rise of Skywalker crescendoed into its last emotional note and faded into its last end credit sequence, all I could think of was that this really wasn’t the end of the Skywalker saga. How could it be? Hasn’t it ended twice already with Revenge of the Sith and Return of the Jedi? Since it has ended multiple times before, why should this ending feel any different? What makes Rise of Skywalker special?
Even though Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) met his unfortunate demise at the end of The Last Jedi several years ago, the ninth and supposed final movie in the Star Wars series is titled Rise of Skywalker, although the movie never specifies which Skywalker it’s referring to. The movie shows the series’ newest heroes Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), and Poe (Oscar Isaac) as they take on Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and his newest empire. While they’re doing that, an enemy from the past emerges to take on the new resistance and bring in a new age of the Dark Side.
Since the studio put in the extra effort to keep The Rise of Skywalker’s backstory as vague as possible, I feel I need to try and do the same in this review. But since the trailers and posters have given away one particular detail several times, I feel no shame in informing you that Ian McDiarmid is back as Emperor Palpatine. Yes, that Emperor Palpatine. You know, the one that turned Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. The one that murdered several Jedi in Revenge of the Sith. The one that was vaporized at the end of Return of the Jedi. You know. That Emperor Palpatine.
One of my biggest concerns going into this movie was how exactly they were going to bring Palpatine back and have it make sense. After all, the dude got thrown into a bloody laser beam by Darth Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi. How were you going to simply write him back into the franchise and justify his return?
Well, the short answer is that they don’t. They just kind of plop Palpatine back into the franchise and expect fans to just go with the flow. And for the most part, that’s how the rest of The Rise of Skywalker plays out. One bombshell reveal is plopped one on top of the other, and instead of explaining some of those twists and turns, the movie just kind of overlooks the exposition and simply skips ahead to the lightsaber duels and space fights. For Star Wars fans looking forward to The Rise of Skywalker answering all of the series’ mysteries and questions, they will be left feeling disappointed.
The good news is for Star Wars fans who aren’t as invested in the series and are simply looking for extravagant lightsaber duels, space fights and stunning action sequences, they’ll have more than enough to satisfy them here in Rise of Skywalker. The director, J.J. Abrams, is no stranger to grand-scale science-fiction and blockbuster action. His last three films, Super 8, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens have had epic proportions of scale in them that led to wonderful feelings of elation and grandeur. Who could forget the first time we saw the sheer size of that mysterious creature in Super 8, or when Benedict Cumberbatch revealed his true identity in Star Trek Into Darkness, or when we realized Rey was in-tune with the Force in The Force Awakens? Abrams is great at building up to really memorable moments in his movies, and they are just as prevalent in Rise of Skywalker as they are in Abrams’ other films.
The problem is those moments don’t really amount to much. While Revenge of the Sith and Return of the Jedi satisfyingly closed out their respective trilogies with emotional payoff and resolution, The Rise of Skywalker just feels sloppy and disorganized in its assembly, like a wrench was thrown into the gears of the Millenium Falcon and Chewie had to do a rush job to fix it in the middle of lightspeed. And to be fair to Abrams, he had an impossible task to deal with. He had to unite fans of both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi under the banner of one movie, despite how polar opposite those films are. Mind you that I enjoyed both of those movies, The Force Awakens for its nostalgia and spectacle and The Last Jedi for its boldness and subversion of expectations. But trying to unite the fandom from both films is impossible. It would be like trying to get Star Wars and Star Trek fans to agree on which is the better franchise.
In the end, Rise of Skywalker solidifies two things. One, that this sequel trilogy is essentially the anti-prequel trilogy. Whereas the prequel movies got better the further it progressed, the sequel trilogy got worse, so how you react to this movie really depends on what your reaction is to the rest of the franchise. Two, that Disney had no idea how to plan for this series or which direction they wanted to go. Thankfully, J.J.Abrams is a competent and reliable enough filmmaker to make a decent film despite everything he was working against, but fans who were looking for the concluding chapter to provide a satisfying ending will leave the theater feeling unfulfilled. Regardless, Disney’s greatest failure with this new trilogy was trying to convince us that this really is the end of the Skywalker saga. HA. Good one, Disney. I’ll see you again when I’m Luke’s age.
DAVID DUNN 