Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Review!

George Lucas made a beloved classic trilogy of films about a farm-boy training to become a space-wizard with the help of his friends. Disney bought Lucasfilm and made their own trilogy about a scavenger girl training to become a space-wizard with the help of her friends. History repeats itself, eh? At least J.J. Abrams (and *groans* Rian Johnson) had the innovation to at least try to tell an original story instead of simply hitting the remake button. Because I can promise you if the Sequel Trilogy were remakes, it would not sit well with people, at all. But you know what's actually good?

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I've seen this film get a mixed reception, for the exact opposite reason Last Jedi was polarizing. Whereas Last Jedi was a well-intended yet ultimately misguided attempt to deconstruct and subvert the overall style of everyone's favorite science fantasy space opera, The Rise of Skywalker is pretty much the epitome of giving the fan community exactly what they want; A 2-and-a-half hour adventure set in the Star Wars universe. Your enjoyment of the film depends on whether or not you like Last Jedi. If you did (what's wrong with you?), then you will be disappointed. But if you are like me and have some mostly negative feelings towards Last Jedi, then chances are you'll love the movie. Is it perfect? ...No, but it is the best movie J.J. Abrams could come up with given the circumstances he was put in.

For those not in the know, the main reason why there's such a divide between Last Jedi fans and rest of the community is simple. Last Jedi is a Star Wars movie in name only, and spent a good chunk calling out the various tropes that Star Wars itself invented because of imitators trying to copy its success. While thematically interesting in theory, the execution basically amounted to a film that was 3 hours of fake outs and aborted arcs. What really hurt Last Jedi was that it felt like a standalone adventure but it was supposed to be the second part of a three part story. The reason Last Jedi was made this way was because of the director of that film, Rian Johnson, basically threw away all the notes and planning that Abrams set up for the next two films in favor of doing his own thing. The behind the scenes drama between the directors became a legendary cautionary tale about how NOT to plan a trilogy. But does The Rise of Skywalker manage to live up to the 42-year-old legacy, even with a uncooperative director hijacking one third of the story? For the most part, yes.

The Rise of Skywalker wastes literally no time at ALL with setting up the plot. The opening crawl confirms a few things. One, Emperor Palpatine, the main antagonist of the Original Trilogy, the Prequel Trilogy, and pretty much the entire franchise is still alive. And before anyone says "but the Emperor can't survive that long given the time line!" Or "Didn't he fall into a chute of a space fortress that blew up?" Keep in mind that cheating death via the Dark Side of the Force is literally one of Palpatine's main talents. Anyway, Palpatine announces to the entire galaxy that he is in fact still alive (or at least his soul is) and that all this time he built up a back-up plan in case he lost control of the galaxy; The Final Order. A MASSIVE FLEET of Super Star Destroyers (read: really big spaceships), all of which are armed with planet-buster weaponry. So instead of building a single giant, immobile space station that an destroy LITERAL PLANETS, he now has a fleet of bigger-than-average battleships, and every single one of them is armed with weaponry capable of wiping out planets. But the next part of the opening crawl also says that Kylo Ren, now ruling the First Order, goes to find Palpatine and kill him before his Final Order can destroy Kylo's First Order. So no, Abrams is not retconning Last Jedi. At least, not all of it.

But one thing I noticed is that a lot of the film's first 30 or so minutes feel like Abrams is trying to cram his own version of Episode 8 into this film. Granted, he had no choice but to do so given how much Rian Johnson royally screwed up with Last Jedi's contributions to the overall story (or lack thereof). While I am happy with the film overall, part of me wonders what would have happened if Rian Johnson actually played nice and gave Abrams something to work off of instead of shutting down almost every interesting story arc before it can have a satisfying payoff. Because if that was the case, Abrams wouldn't have had to worry about "wasting" the first 30 minutes setting up plot threads for the main cast to pursue.

Now, the way they handled Emperor Palpatine was good, for the most part. I understand that the main reason he was brought back was again, because Rian Johnson killed off Snoke, the main antagonist of the first two films, in an anticlimactic fashion and never explored his origins. The one thing both Abrams and Johnson agreed on was to set Kylo Ren up for a redemption story, so making him the final antagonist was pretty much a no-go. So who could possibly fill the role that Snoke was supposed to fill? Why, The single greatest villain in the franchise! Anyway, Emperor Palpatine himself was great. Ian McDiarmid does a fantastic job portraying the Dark Lord of the Sith with a sinister hiss, and his introduction was actually pretty creepy. His badly scarred, Lich-like features hidden in shadow, the only thing illuminating his face being the occasional flash of lightning. I find the decision to reveal Palpatine right at the beginning to be a little strange, since the fact that the most powerful Dark Side user ever is even still alive feels like it could be a plot twist in and of itself, but I also understand that Palpatine revealing himself is also what kick-starts the entire plot of the film.

When Kylo Ren confronts Palpatine, we learn that Snoke was actually just a living puppet that Palpatine was manipulating through the Dark Side of the Force, and has (through Snoke) been controlling everything the First Order did behind the scenes. Palpatine then makes a deal with Kylo Ren, somewhat mirroring how Palpatine corrupted Anakin Skywalker back in the Prequels. That deal being to track down and kill Rey, the main protagonist of the Sequel Trilogy. Meanwhile, the Resistance learns from a spy that the Emperor is still alive, hidden on the uncharted planet Exogul, which was believed to be nothing more than a myth until now. So Rey, Finn, Poe, BB-8, C-3PO, and Chewbacca all board the Millennium Falcon one last time to see if they can find Exogul and kill Palpatine before the Final Order destroys the whole galaxy. 

The pacing of the film is akin to a roller-coaster ride. Once it starts, it never slows down except for two, maybe three times of the whole ride. And that's pretty much the mindset I was thinking going in to the film. Last Jedi, as bad as a film it was, taught me to temper my expectations when I comes to big, mainstream films. So I was cautiously optimistic about Rise of Skywalker. Anyway, one thing I have noticed was there was kind of a pattern with Rey and Friends' adventure. They go to an area to do a thing. Something goes wrong. The team barely scrapes by when they do the thing with bad guys hunting them down. The team finds a new thing to lead them to a new area. It kind of felt like the side-quest chain of a video game (and I say that AS a hardcore gamer). Which is.. Okay. It works. 

Eventually the team finds a dagger that reveals the location of a Sith Way-Finder, an extremely rare device that can lead you straight to Exogul. I have a few problems with the dagger. One, I don't have a problem with the location of the Way Finder being engraved on the dagger's blade. I don't even have a problem with C-3PO refusing to translate the runes because his manufacturer put in a protocol that prevents him from reading anything written in Sith-Speak out loud, forcing the team to take C-3PO to a black market dealer to remove the protocol to make him read it. What I do have a problem with is the fact that Rey discovers that the dagger's blade matches up perfectly with the wreckage of the Death Star, and thanks to a ruler thing attached to the dagger's hilt, figures out where in the wreckage the Way Finder is. Why do I have a problem with this? Simple! Assuming the dagger was forged before Palpatine was initially defeated back in Return of the Jedi, that means that Palpatine knew the Death Star would be destroyed, had a dagger forged to look like its probable remains, and had somebody hide a device that leads right to his secret lair inside of a very specific spot in the wreckage. Which means if the wreckage landed in a way that was even slightly different than what Palpatine predicted the dagger would be pointless. If it was forged afterwords, then Palpatine had somebody look at the wreckage of the Death Star, forge it into being a near-perfect replica of the outline, then had somebody hide the Way Finder. The latter makes more sense, but only just. Really, the more you think about the dagger the more contrived it becomes as a plot device.

Anyway, on a more positive note, I like how we get more of Poe's backstory. In the first two films, the only things that we really got to know about Poe were that he was a really good pilot and fiercely loyal to the Resistance cause. Now we know he used to be a down-on-his-luck spice runner who was romantically involved with a girl who "might" be a Mandalorian. Might. It's really unclear if she is or not. It could be possible she's just a normal person who wears a helmet constantly. But the fact she wears a helmet constantly and is implied to be a deadly fighter makes me want to say she's a Mandalorian. Anyway, while I do like her as a character, I also feel she was too quick to forgive Poe for abandoning her for the Resistance. She goes from wanting to blow Poe's head clean off his shoulders in one scene, and literally two scenes later they have a heart-to-heart and she gives Poe a token that lets the owner bypass any First Order blockade.

One thing I absolutely love is space battle during the climax. It is the biggest, most ambitious space battle in the franchise thus far. Thousands of Imperial Star Destroyers, armed with the deadliest weaponry The Empire can get its hands on. Just a few ragtag underdogs with a plan. And of course, a "Gondor Calls for Aide" moment when Lando Calrissian shows up when the Resistance is getting overwhelmed with a small armada consisting of  pretty much every neutral-aligned star system ever (and even the surviving members of the New Republic). Is it cliche? Yes. Is it fun? YES.

Also, I liked the action sequences and fight choreography in the film. The speeder chase on the desert planet (forgot the name, also why are so many planets in this universe deserts?) was great, the fight scene between Kylo Ren and Rey on the Death Star wreckage was great, the fight between Kylo Ren and the Knights of Ren was great. My point is there was a lot of good fight scenes and action sequences. I think my favorite would be the scene in the beginning when Poe, Finn, and R2-D2 are fleeing the First Order with the info the spy gave to them, resulting in Poe "Light Speed Skipping", a new flying technique involving jumping into hyper-space, dropping out of hyper-space, and jumping back into hyper-space at random intervals to confuse and get rid of any hostile ships tailing you.

I think the only real thing I actively dislike about the film was a spoileriffic scene involving Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. Throughout the whole trilogy he was a conflicted anti-villain. He wanted to prove he was worthy of Darth Vader's legacy, but he spent a good deal of Rise of Skywalker (and even some of Last Jedi) feeling genuine guilt for all of the wicked deeds he committed both as an aspiring Sith Lord and as a leader of what amounts to a terrorist group. After getting his life saved by Rey, and a pep talk from his deceased father Han Solo, he throws away his admittedly awesome looking light saber and returns to the Light. He rushes off to help Rey fight Palpatine during the climax. After a long hard fought battle, Rey dies when channeling the ghosts of every Jedi in existence to destroy Palpatine permanently, and Ben uses the Force Heal technique (the same one Rey learned earlier in the film) to revive Rey... And then dies himself. First of all, I feel like having a redeemed Ben die so as to not deal with the consequences of having Ben answer for the crimes he committed as Kylo Ren is an excessively safe move. Having a redeemed Ben help rebuild the galaxy as atonement for his sins Prince Zuko style would have been (in my opinion) a very interesting and satisfying way to end his story arc. But the main issue I have is just how anticlimactic his death was. He seems fine one moment, even sharing a kiss with Rey, and then just suddenly drops dead without a sound. And then his body fades away, leaving nothing but his clothes. Further proof that in Star Wars, the only real redemption an anti-villain can work towards is to die heroically and hope that forgives them for everything they've done? Probably. Seriously. Between Darth Vader, Revan, and Star-Killer, all of the anti-villains in this franchise seem to get killed off mere moments after being redeemed.

As for Rey herself, I actually really liked Rey in this film. She's a courageous yet somewhat naive Jedi, who at the beginning of this film is in the final stages of training with Leia (who is retroactively revealed to have received training from Luke Skywalker himself). She actually reminds me a lot of Korra from Legend of Korra. To be fair the similarities in how the two main protagonists from Star Wars and Avatar the Last Airbender is admittedly uncanny. Luke Skywalker and Avatar Aang were heroes of humble origins (Luke was a farm-boy, Aang was a monk) that were kind of roped in to going on the adventure (Luke had nowhere else to go once his foster family died, and Aang's monastery was burned to the ground) and they acquired their abilities slowly over the course of the series (Luke had to train in the Force, Aang had to master the Four Elements). Rey and Korra both start the trilogy off with a load of abilities under their belt (being a decent fighter and mechanic for Rey, knowing three of the four Elements for Korra). Both of them don't really NEED to go off on an adventure, but they do so anyway. 

As for the presentation... Its Star Wars. Star Wars always looks good. The Prequels may have some CGI that has not aged well in places, but 9 times out 10, Star Wars looks amazing. The costume designs are great, the alien designs are great, the space ship designs are great, everything about the movie is very impressive. This might actually be the nicest looking Star Wars film to date. The acting and music are both really good. Honestly the best thing about the Sequel Trilogy is how good the acting is. Daisy Ridley's acting skills are what bring her character to life. John Boyega and Oscar Isaac are both great as the coward-turned-hero Finn and the hotshot-with-a-shady-past Poe respectively. Adam Driver (the actor that plays Kylo Ren/Ben Solo) spends most of the film being dark and moody, but once he's redeemed, there's a kind of goofy, wholesome charm to his performance (think how Harrison Ford portrayed Han Solo during the Original Trilogy). I really liked how Kylo Ren/Ben Solo was handled, save for his death. Other than the death being a wasted opportunity (in my opinion), I love what they did with him. 

In conclusion, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a fun film. It does suffer from having to cram a "proper" second part of the Sequel Trilogy, which is less the fault of the film itself and more on Rian Johnson's refusal to cooperate with others when telling a three part story. Honestly, the fact that I enjoyed the movie in spite of it trying to cram almost two movies' worth of content into a measly 2 and a half hour run time is impressive. The characters are fun, and the action is fun. "Fun" is the one word that best describes the film as a whole. It could have been better, but it could have been a WHOLE lot worse. And considering the mixed reception, I was expecting it to be worse than it was. So in the wise words of Nute Gunray, this film is "A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one!" So with all that being said, I give Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker 9 undead Emperors out of 10.