directed by J.J. Abrams
written by Chris Terrio, Abrams, Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow
I've noticed it's become quite fashionable among critics to thrash the so-called "final chapter of the Skywalker Saga" or Star Wars: Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker. While the film hasn't exactly achieved Batman v. Superman levels of infamy its score over on rottentomatoes.com is currently the worst of any Star Wars movie that has been released in the Disney era. Many writers have called it a regression, repudiating Rian Johnson's "bold choices" made in Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, while its defenders are happy to see a lot of the creative decisions of the last film chucked out the window, with at least one of the defenders promising that viewers who liked The Last Jedi will hate this movie.
Well, never one to be stuck in boxes, I have to respectfully disagree. I genuinely enjoyed The Last Jedi, both for its story and how it flipped the bird at some overused story tropes, and I also genuinely enjoyed The Rise of Skywalker, even as I acknowledge that it is a deeply-flawed film. Ironically enough I'll concede that it's possible that the rash of bad reviews actually helped temper my expectations and enabled me to enjoy the movie more than I otherwise would have.
J.J. Abrams dives right into the story from the opening title crawl: Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), believed dead since the end of Return of the Jedi 36 years ago, turns up alive and in command of a massive fleet of Star Destroyers. As a result, General Leia Organa (the late Carrie Fisher...more on her later) must dispatch Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Finn (John Boyega) and Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) to investigate reports of this return, and of a spy in the First Order willing to help the Resistance. Meanwhile, Rey (Daisy Ridley) continues her Jedi training under Leia's tutelage, while over at the First Order, newly-crowned Supreme Leader Kylo Ren aka Ben Solo (Adam Driver) seeks to kill Palpatine, who poses a threat to his power. The one-time galactic emperor, however, offers Ren greater power than he has ever known before, all if he can kill Rey, the last Jedi. Ren, however, has other plans, and continues his plan to turn Rey over to the dark side, even as Rey, Poe and Finn learn that the only way to find the Emperor and his fleet is through a Sith wayfinder. Thus, the three of them must find the wayfinder before Palpatine unleashes the power of the Sith fleet on what remains of the Resistance.
This film had quite a bit to do: it had to cap off Disney's new sequel trilogy of Star Wars films and tack on a satisfactory ending to a saga that many people had already considered finished over three decades ago. Given the lack of a coherent overall story plan, the disparity of creative vision between creators, and the untimely death of one of the actors playing a pivotal role in this new saga, this was always going to be a tall order. In short, this film was never going to be on the level of Avengers: Endgame but to my mind, it was nowhere near the dumpster fire that a lot of mainstream critics are making it out to be. In fact, it managed to be quite enjoyable.
I suppose I'll never know if it was always Abrams' intent to bring back Emperor Palpatine or if his hand was forced by the events of The Last Jedi, in which Rian Johnson quite abruptly killed off Supreme Leader Snoke, the big bad guy Abrams had introduced. To be fair, though Abrams puts Palpatine to good use in one sense, even if he feels distinctly underused in others. By setting up the movie as a race against time and pitting the heroes against a definitive big bad guy other than Ben Solo, furthermore, Abrams also offers Kylo Ren, one of the richer characters of this new story, a path to redemption, and it was interesting to see where that went.
Unfortunately, in the name of wrapping everything up Abrams makes some creative choices that I dare not spoil, that don't completely undo the film, but which compromise it quite a bit. It's the kind of plot that won't hold up to scrutiny, even without something as convoluted as time travel gumming up the mix. Most likely aware of this, Abrams keeps things moving quite briskly and imbues the film with quite a bit of atmosphere to distract audiences from some of the film's fundamental shortcomings. I particularly liked a sequence in which the lead characters visited a planet with a haunting relic from the original trilogy.
I also liked the way Abrams revisited some of his "mystery box" threads from The Force Awakens, and paid them off in a way that, while arguably contradicting some of Rian Johnson's declarations in his film, were pretty skillfully written around them in such a way that the picture Johnson painted wasn't false, just incomplete. Suffice it to say that the issue of Rey's parentage is revisited, and quite satisfyingly resolved, to the extent that even my biggest problem with The Force Awakens has been laid to rest.
One thing Abrams could not write or shoot around, though, was Carrie Fisher's tragic death, which left him with eight minutes of cut footage from The Force Awakens with which to fulfill General Leia's preordained role as Rey's teacher in the Jedi arts. He tries mightily to make it work, but the execution comes across as goofy as hell, with ridiculous dialogue like "never underestimate a droid" and "try to be positive" being awkwardly shoehorned into conversations about the fate of the entire Resistance. I'll credit Abrams at least for not cursing his movie with a CGI simulacrum of Carrie Fisher, at least not for any substantial period of time, but the fact that he (and presumably producer Kathleen Kennedy) were adamant on this arc for Leia even after Fisher's death really works against this movie.
The living actors, however, do an incredible job of selling this movie, especially Driver (the breakout star of the entire franchise, in my opinion) and Ridley, whose Rey doesn't quite get the hero's journey she deserves, but faces more conflict in this film than in any other in the trilogy. Even when the script is basically struggling to maintain coherence and even logic, these thespians just solider on and ultimately elevate the material. If I'm honest, it's really hard to hate a movie with actors working this well. The climactic light saber fight we glimpsed in the trailer was appropriately intense and, to my mind, arguably one of the best of the entire 42-year-old franchise. The other two of the "big three" characters of the new trilogy are inevitably sidelined, though they do get some love from Abrams. Boyega's Finn gets a nice little mini story with another stormtrooper-turned-rebel (Naomi Ackie) who feels like a much better storytelling match for him than Kelly Marie Tran's Rose Tico given their shared history, while Isaac's Poe gets an awkward but entertaining side story with someone from his past as a smuggler, the helmeted Zorri Bliss (Abrams' frequent collaborator Keri Russell). There's even a little suggestion that Finn may be a bit of a Force wielder himself, but it's never a real payoff.
I'm sure I'll do a more comprehensive postmortem of the new trilogy someday (as will many, MANY other people) and I feel that this new series would have greatly benefited from a more coherent master plan, similar to what tied together the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I'm not of the persuasion that George Lucas would have done any better than the current crew as I am still of the opinion that the prequels were by and large terrible, but at least some kind of grand outline would have done the storytelling a power of good.
Ultimately, I submit that while this film is not the disaster many are making it out to be, even the diehard fans have to acknowledge that this is not the best sendoff such a beloved franchise as this could have gotten. Given that the Skywalker saga has gotten a bit long in the tooth, though, it's just as well that, one way or another, it has ended.
6.5/10
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