‘The Rise of Skywalker’ is a Profound Act of Blockbuster Cowardice
The new film throws the future of ‘Star Wars’ to the wolves.
Major spoilers ahead for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!
If there’s anything Star Wars has taught the world, it’s that the line between good and evil can be perilously thin. A golden boy like Anakin Skywalker or Ben Solo is just one step away from becoming a Darth Vader or a Kylo Ren (Maybe perfectly coiffed hair is the problem? Must investigate further). Luke Skywalker said it best: “Powerful light, powerful darkness.” The Force will balance itself, whether you like it or not.
For audiences who smarted at the bold choices made by writer/director Rian Johnson in 2017’s The Last Jedi, the new Star Wars will provide that balance. More than anything else, The Rise of Skywalker functions as a checklist for every single fanboy complaint that has dominated the Internet for two years. In the hands of Force Awakens director JJ Abrams and Batman v Superman screenwriter Chris Terrio, the film is happy to address criticisms ranging from Rey’s parentage to Admiral Holdo’s lightspeed sacrifice. At one point, the ghost of Luke Skywalker holds a lightsaber and practically apologizes directly to the camera for that time he threw it over his shoulder.
It’s screenwriting by way of Reddit whining, and it leads to a bizarre, choppy film that feels more like a trip on a very bitter version of DisneyWorld’s Star Tours ride than anything else. Say what you will about the choices Johnson made in The Last Jedi (and obviously, plenty have), but they were all real choices, driven by character and building on what Abrams’ first trilogy entry had begun. The Rise of Skywalker doesn’t build on The Last Jedi’s foundation; it doubles back and burns it down.
When The Last Jedi revealed that Rey’s parents were no one significant, it was a moment that simply answered a question Abrams’ film had posed. When The Rise of Skywalker reveals that she is the granddaughter of the evil Emperor Palpatine, it’s a moment that takes Johnson’s answer and tears it into pieces like a child having a temper tantrum. It’s not an evolution of an ongoing story, it’s a corruption and rejection of a story that had already been told.
I’m an unabashed fan of everything Johnson did with The Last Jedi, and I won’t pretend otherwise. It’s one of the only times this decade that a blockbuster produced by the most powerful studio in Hollywood has felt truly iconoclastic, and it’s the purest distillation of everything I love about Star Wars. My disappointment with the new film isn’t simply a reaction to creative choices I disagreed with. I was fully prepared for The Rise of Skywalker to walk back some of The Last Jedi’s boldness in an attempt to win back more disgruntled fans. I was not prepared for that walk back to be so clumsy and, in some cases, outright toxic.
All of Abrams’ very worst impulses are on display here. While Last Jedi complicated the Star Wars power dynamic by eliminating its evil-old-man-on-throne archetype, Abrams calls take-backsies on that trope literally immediately. He uses the opening crawl to announce the return of Emperor Palpatine, the famously exploded big bad of the first six Star Wars films, and handwaves away any attempt to explain how the character has survived or where he’s been. He has the characters chase a secret evil triangle to one planet, where they find a secret evil knife with secret evil writing that they must read, leading them to a different planet where they read the writing, which leads them to another planet where it turns out the secret evil triangle didn’t actually matter to begin with, because there’s a whole fleet of Death Stars and oh boy, did the theater accidentally start playing Return of the Jedi?
Instead of taking this alleged “final chapter” to say a moving, bittersweet goodbye, Abrams seems to have decided that the better course of action is to bludgeon audiences into submission in hope that it might prompt exhausted tears. Every dialogue scene is interrupted with a loud sound prompting the beginning of another choppy action sequence, and several important sequences appear to be entirely missing from the movie, making it only comprehensible if you buy a book and do the required reading. It’s breathless, contrived, and nearly impossible to follow, a slick and incoherent product that lacks the soul of even the franchise’s very worst entries.
Worst of all, Abrams and Terrio squander the sequel trilogy’s greatest asset: its characters. Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren, previously one of the most fascinating performances in the franchise’s history, is re-masked, sidelined, and forced once again to do the bidding of a less interesting big bad, until the plot calls for him to abruptly join the side of the angels and share a lightly uncomfortable kiss with Rey (Daisy Ridley). BB-8 is essentially replaced by new droid D-0, an evil little monster who was recently arrested for murder. Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) goes from relentlessly principled true believer to a scummy former criminal. And John Boyega’s soulful Finn is reduced to vaguely hinting at possible superpowers while pining after Rey.
Abrams had a hand in creating Rey in The Force Awakens, which makes it even more shocking how firmly he mishandles her arc here. Where she was previously a beacon of optimism, here Ridley is forced to reckon with an urge towards darkness in Rey that has never been a part of the character before. Worse, Abrams wholeheartedly abandons her significance as a reminder of the democratic nature of the Force (a point he himself made in 2015) in favor of laughably tying her to an established bloodline. “You’re his granddaughter” doesn't have quite the same ring to it as “I am your father,” but who cares? At least now we know how a girl could be so good at using the Force.
All of these choices are disappointing and occasionally bafflingly poorly considered, but none compare to the treatment Abrams and Terrio’s screenplay gives Last Jedi breakout Kelly Marie Tran. While Rey, Finn, and Poe head out on their star tour, Tran’s Rose is essentially cut out of the narrative entirely, left behind at Resistance base in a blatant attempt to appeal to the hideously cruel harassment campaign that drove Tran off of social media. Tran wrote a brave New York Times op-ed last August, entitled “I Won’t Be Marginalized by Online Harassment.” Abrams and Terrio have obviously decided otherwise. This shameless kowtowing to fan toxicity is the film’s most noxious decision, one that will encourage deeply vicious people to repeat their indefensible behavior in the hopes that more filmmakers will cave to their demands.
More than anything else, The Rise of Skywalker makes the future of Star Wars look outright unsustainable. The Last Jedi understood that the twin sunset Luke looked out on in the very first Star Wars wasn’t just a sunset, but a manifestation of all the possibilities of the future, just out of reach. It ended with a young boy looking out at the starry horizon in the same way Luke had: not a literal sunset, but that same wistful feeling, transposed onto something new. The Rise of Skywalker has no interest in such nuance. In its poundingly literal final shots, Rey travels to Tatooine, a location she has no connection to, and looks out on the twin suns setting, a sight that means nothing to her. It’s a moment designed to desperately deliver a fickle audience something they recognize, even if all it does is make the vast universe a little bit smaller.
