Another year, another
Star Wars movie. Today I'm reviewing Episode IX: The Rise
of Skywalker, the last of the new sequel trilogy. After the
double disappointments that were 2017's The Last Jedi and
2018's Solo can this latest entry redeem the current
generation of this epic space fantasy series?
Short answer: too
little, too late.
Taking place a few
months after The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker has
both Resistance and First Order fighters searching for wayfinders
that may lead to the origin of a mysterious broadcast from the
not-so-dead Emperor Palpatine (this ain't no spoiler; he was in the
trailer), who seeks to reestablish his Galactic Empire under Sith
rule. This leads to... honestly there's an ass-load of stuff that
happens throughout this movie. The riveting early scene introducing
Palpatine notwithstanding, the first half of this film jumps around a
lot with action scene after action scene, one right after the other.
We're shown so many locations and so many MacGuffins that I couldn't
help but tune out the finer technical details of things as the film
ground on.
Remember what I said
about TFA and TLJ, how they're remakes of the original trilogy films?
TROS is no exception, a quasi-ripoff/remake of Return of the Jedi,
especially in the last act. Here we get to see the return of:
- a planet-exploding weapon (What is this? The fourth time now?!),
- a jedi returning to an old master's retreat to do some more training,
- Lando and Chewbacca spearheading the attack in the Millennium Falcon during the final battle, and
- a jedi going alone to confront the bad guy leader as he eggs him (or in this case, her) on to kill somebody.
- (Trust me there are far more similarities that I can't mention without spoilers.)
Return of the Jedi
coincidences aside, The Rise of Skywalker's plot is very up
and down. We learn the origin story of both Rey – which is pretty
neat – and Snoke – which is totally lame. What's also lame is
that the main characters are pretty much invincible; their ability to
survive landspeeder crashes without a scratch, raid/board a star
destroyer with only a handful of guys, and blast through a whole
platoon of stormtroopers without even having to stop and take cover
robs many of the action scenes of tension. There's one subplot that
was established back in Episode VII that Rise of Skywalker
hints at resolving but by the film's end this plot thread is still
left hanging. Did the writers simply forget about it? I guess they
were too busy working on the really disappointing and predictable
ending and the half-dozen or so “what the hell” moments that
occur in the film's last five minutes.
The characters are
about the same calibre as the previous two films: Rey is as
to-the-point and lacking in personality as ever while Kylo Ren
continues to be the best and most interesting character in the whole
trilogy. While he's just as conflicted as he was before this time
he's without a master and seeing him act with more agency –
especially in relation to Rey – is a treat thanks to a focused
performance from Adam Driver. John Boyega is around to shout Rey's
name a whole lot. And of course it's always a delight to see Ian
McDiarmid play the role of Emperor Palpatine once again. There's also
Carrie Fisher back as Princess Leia one last time via unused footage
from Episode VII; as you can imagine this doesn't make storytelling
easy with her character so it's a good thing Maz Kanata (the goggles
chick) follows her around and (apparently) reads her mind.
As with other recent
Star Wars films, Rise of Skywalker is a very
well-produced film. The effects look great (better than the last
two), the compositions are splendid, the music is top-notch, and the
fight choreography is precise. In short, it's a nice-looking and
nice-sounding film. The tone is somewhat more balanced than last
time: there's slightly fewer cute critters to make the kids laugh.
Some of the jokes are quite funny while some are simply bizarre and
gratuitous.
And that's Episode
IX: The Rise of Skywalker. I may have been a bit harsh on it, but
the fact is that I don't hate this movie. Most of it is OK, that is
until you get to the disappointing ending. It's a finely-crafted film
and I believe that the only lazy thing to it was the writing. This
movie remains trapped in familiar territory and simply doesn't bring
anything new to the series – which is my main complaint about the
sequel trilogy as a whole. But in case you're wondering, yes The
Rise of Skywalker is better than
The Last Jedi. But
that's not saying much.
Still,
if you've ever wanted a Star Wars
movie in which someone says the word “ass” then this is the one
for you!
Grade:
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