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The Rise of Skywalker – Review

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, people would get excited for a new Star Wars film. Jump cut to present day – Rey, Finn and Poe are back for one final adventure. The stakes have never been higher, and our expectations have never been lower.

The film ends, credits role, and I can’t help but think to myself… please let this be the ACTUAL end.

The Rise of Skywalker is not only the conclusion to Disney’s Star Wars sequel trilogy, but the epic and poignant end to the entire saga, which has spanned nine feature films and 42 years. Or, at least, that’s what Disney wants you to believe it is. And they try very hard to convince you.

Even before John Williams’ thunderous score hits your ears and the famous golden text crawls across the screen, you’re treated to two mini documentaries that serve to remind the audience how culturally important Star Wars is. I can safely say this is only the second time I’ve felt guilt tripped before a film (the first was during a particularly disastrous date in the line to buy tickets, if you’re interested). These opening shorts are literally cobbled together photomontages of people and pets dressed as Star Wars characters which feel like Vistaprint commercials made with Windows Movie Maker. The intern was clearly very busy that week.

Unfortunately, all these reminders of how great Star Wars has been in the past make the mediocrity of The Rise of Skywalker even more obvious. And I use the word mediocre here because I didn’t hate the film. It’s kind of hard to hate something that leaves you feeling so unmoved. And that’s the biggest failing of the film, despite following Disney’s family-friendly, joke-filled formula which proved so successful for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Rise of Skywalker is a heartless mess of a movie. Let’s talk about why…

After the polarizing reactions to Ryan Johnson’s The Last Jedi, JJ Abrams is back in the director’s chair and he is hitting the reset button hard. As a result of pretending the previous movie doesn’t exist, (if by some miracle you were invested in Finn and Rose’s relationship you’ll be gutted to know her character is relegated to the sidelines for the entire film) The Rise of Skywalker feels like two films squeezed into one. The pacing at the beginning is faster than a speeder bike blasting through the forests of Endor if every tree that whizzes by is a piece of exposition and every blurred bush a character beat. It’s all so rushed that nothing has any effect.

For example (and a minor spoiler warning to the end of this paragraph) when we first catch up with Rey, she’s struggling with her Jedi training and gives Luke’s lightsaber back to a surprisingly realistic CGI Leia, claiming that she has to earn the weapon. Then literally 5 minutes later, after deciding to go on a treasure hunt with Finn and Poe, Leia gives her the lightsaber back. I guess she’ll have to earn it along the way.

On the light side (get it), our three main characters, Rey, Finn and Poe, and their relationships have all evolved. Unfortunately, their new dynamic developed offscreen and the audience has to play catch up. But don’t worry, to help us out the screenwriters have written a dot-to-dot script, filled with subtext-free dialogue and jam packed with exposition.

Fair play to the editor who had to pick up the pace. Literally pick up the pacing, as the script has a habit of jumping forward to get characters from A to B and skipping the bits in-between.

Though I’m a big fan of efficiency, these jumps come across as jarring… and lazy… and annoyingly necessary, because without them this film would be even loooooooonger.

But that’s not to say there’s nothing to be enjoyed in The Rise of Skywalker. Full disclosure, I was not a fan of the The Last Jedi, and the next installment is full of little digs at its predecessor. I particularly enjoyed the shot from the trailer where Kylo Ren solders his helmet back together. Let the past die indeed. But to be fair, he did a better job than I did with Imogen’s bracelet. These moments unfortunately do break what little immersion I could achieve in a film where all characters feel an overwhelming impulse to describe what’s happening in front of them.

(If you, like us, thought the dialogue in His Dark Materials was terrible, just wait till you see The Rise of Skywalker).

All these factors contribute to what made The Rise of Skywalker a bad film by itself, but as the final installment of a trilogy, they highlight just how little planning and thought went into making the sequels.

When George Lucas was developing the original Star Wars series, he was driven by a desire to bring the fun back into science fiction. The cinematic menu at the time was oversaturated with bleak, post-apocalyptic think pieces on the human condition. Lucas wanted to tell a story that harkened back to 1930s action-adventure serials like Flash Gordan and Buck Rogers. The entire process of making the first Star Wars film was a constant uphill battle, but Lucas’ love for the story and drive to tell it made sure that for generations to come, children would wave sticks at each other making loud humming noises.

Let’s compare that quickly to Disney’s motivation to make the sequels…

a) They wanted to bring Star Wars to a new generation
b) They’d spent a lot of money for the rights to do so
c) They knew audiences would flock to cinemas to see a new Star Wars film
d) They had a great story they wanted to tell

Only one of these reasons is false. Can you guess which one it is?

When Disney purchased Lucasfilm in October 2012 for $4 Billion, Lucas included in this absolute bargain his story treatments for the sequels. But in order to ensure total creative freedom, Lucas’ ideas where swiftly thrown into the trash compacter. At first this sounds like a good idea – fresh stories and new characters. After the prequels who wants to hear Ol’ Geroge’s ideas anyway? Time for something completely different. But Episode VII was already scheduled for a 2015 release, the clock was ticking, and a story had to be found from somewhere.

Luckily JJ Abrams, a man who already had experience rebooting an iconic and beloved science-fiction property with Star Trek (2009), was given the task… Okay, so you didn’t like the prequels, well how about a carbon copy of A New Hope with a bigger Death Star? “TOO SIMILAR!”, Disney heard the fans yell. Okay, let’s get a new director in and give him free rein to do whatever he likes… “NOT STAR WARS”. Bugger, thought Disney. Better get the first guy back to wrap things up.

This is why The Rise of Skywalker and the entire sequel trilogy was doomed from the start. The story was always secondary. Instead they fell back on fan service, and every movie was a reaction to the previous one. So, if JJ Abrams tries to convince you he had a plan for all three films, DON’T BELIEVE HIM. Abrams is famously the man in Hollywood without a plan. His mystery box theory revolves around scattering secrets throughout his films… Why did Rey’s parents abandon her? What are the Knights of Ren? Who is Supreme Leader Snoke? Well let me tell you guys that in The Rise of Skywalker, the mystery box is opened, and what’s inside is just as terrible as the idea itself.

In 2019 Disney made a record $10 billion at the worldwide box office. And that’s easy to believe when you consider that in the top 10 movies this year, ranked by worldwide box office takings, only 3 weren’t made by Disney. In fact, you’d have to scroll down to number 7 before you even reached a film that didn’t have Mickey’s finger in its pie (I apologise for the mental image that may conjure). When 21st Century Fox moved into the House of Mouse back in March, it looked as if Disney’s monopoly of the film industry would continue to increase. And lo and behold…

Disney has even started making demands to cinemas regarding the release of their biggest blockbusters. With this in mind, I was struck by an overwhelming sense of irony watching The Rise of Skywalker: a movie about a band of misfit rebels, defying the odds to take on an all-powerful Empire. In its Hollywood real-life parallel, Disney is the evil empire, slowly taking over the movie industry, and creativity and originality is what’s at stake if the rebels don’t win. The rebels of course, are us – the ones buying the tickets. Disney can churn out remake after sequel after prequel, as long as we keep paying to see more of the same.

And if you’re okay with that, if the idea of seeing a slightly more realistic version of Hamlet with lions excites you to the point where you’re happy to part with your money, then that’s fine too. My point is that we should pay for what we want to see, because that’s the only way to let film industry know.

To summerise, The Rise of Skywalker is like watching an injured relay runner limp across the finish line, weighed down by all the stray running gear and batons their teammates inexplicably dropped along the way. You can’t be angry, just disappointed.

1
out of 5

A fitting end to this series...

...but that's not saying much.

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