The Rise of Skywalker: Uneven, Patched Together, and Stuck Cleaning Up After The Last Jedi

After the utter disaster that was (and still is) The Last Jedi, Disney Star Wars had their work cut out for them. That movie fractured the fan base in a way the prequels never quite managed. The Last Jedi sits near the bottom of a lot of people’s rankings. On mine it is dead last, worse even than the Star Wars Holiday Special.

That left The Rise of Skywalker in an ugly spot before a single frame was shot. First it had to walk back some of the more egregious choices Rian Johnson made. The Holdo Maneuver had to be treated as a statistical anomaly because that one stunt quietly invalidated the first seven movies. Then came the 180 on Rey’s parentage. And those are just two of the messes the movie spends its opening stretch trying to mop up.

Don’t get me wrong. The Rise of Skywalker has plenty of problems of its own. Being saddled with the previous film did not help. The final battle, with what feels like fifty billion Star Destroyers sitting in the ocean and needing a single point to launch all of them? Get the hell out of here with that. It is the kind of idea that sounds big in a pitch meeting and falls apart the second you think about it for more than ten seconds.

Some things I did like. The Sith wayfinder worked. The dagger and the callback to the Emperor’s throne room on the Death Star worked too. Some folks will call that “jangling keys.” Fine. At least it felt like a plot trying to move forward instead of the “Gotcha! Subverted expectations!” approach of The Last Jedi. Disney Star Wars looks great and is stunning visually, that is never in doubt but the story is.

In all, The Rise of Skywalker is not so much a bad movie as an uneven one. Its most vehement detractors tend to be the same people who are the most vehement defenders of The Last Jedi. Make of that what you will.

The movie sits in an awkward place. A good chunk of the fan base hates it because it undid so much of The Last Jedi. Another chunk is simply “meh” on it. And some of us (myself included) are still a little confused about what the movie was even trying to accomplish.

No matter how you feel about the film itself, the real problem is the lack of structure across the three sequels. Two different directors who, by all appearances, did not collaborate. An auteur in the middle chapter claiming to be “a fan” when that claim looks shakier the longer you sit with the finished product. There was no shared arc. There was a first movie that set things up, a second movie that knocked most of it over, and a third movie that tried to stand the pieces back up in two hours.

But overall of this the odor of the Last Jedi permeates. I know I keep circling back to this, but the story of this movie can't be told without the mistakes of the prior one taken into account. 

Who is to blame for all this? Stops and starts with Disney itself. They could closed out the story with what the fans wanted but apparently let two guys randomly do stuff that looked like Star Wars but felt like something very different. 

And there you have it. The main saga of nine films goes out with a whimper in a lot of ways. No real reunion of Luke, Leia, and Han. Rey taking the Skywalker name at the end. It never had the sense of finale that Return of the Jedi managed, hokey spots and all. It never had the tragic weight of Revenge of the Sith. The Rise of Skywalker feels patched together, and it shows.

How about you? Did you come away with the same take?

Star Wars Episode VII- The Last Jedi...Once Was More Than Enough

I’ve only watched The Last Jedi once...once.

That was enough.

And this is from someone who has probably watched Star Wars, A New Hope over two hundred times. Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi a ton.

I went into it with cautious optimism after The Force Awakens. The new characters had potential, most of the old ones were back, and there was still room for the story to go somewhere meaningful. What we got instead was a film that felt less like a continuation and more like a deliberate demolition job at best, at worst a lecture.

Characters make decisions that exist primarily to serve the plot rather than growing out of who they are. Long-standing figures are diminished, sometimes for a punchline, sometimes for a thematic point that never quite lands. The tone swings from broad comedy to grim self-seriousness without much control. Trying to be Marvel too much there?

By the time the credits rolled I was left with the clear sense that the movie was more interested in subverting expectations than in telling a coherent Star Wars story.

I’ve rewatched the original trilogy many times. I’ve gone back to the prequels, Rogue One, and Solo. I’ve never felt the slightest urge to put The Last Jedi on again. Once was sufficient to know it doesn’t work for me. I'd watch the Holiday Special again or Ewoks, Battle for Endor before this...

It sits at the absolute bottom of my personal ranking of Star Wars films, and the gap between it and the next-lowest entry is not small: Attack of the Clones has real problems: stiff dialogue, awkward romance, some clunky plotting; but it still feels like Star Wars. It still has weight. The Last Jedi often feels like it’s actively arguing with the audience about what Star Wars is allowed to be, and the argument is not a persuasive one or that you're "wrong" for not agreeing.

And I don't buy for one minute that Rian Johnson is the fan he claims to be when it comes to Star Wars. Normally I wouldn't fan police anyone, like what you want to I always say. In this case though he had an active hand at crafting Star Wars, that deserves all the commentary it gets and then some.

And no Rian, your movie is NOT in the same league as Empire Strikes Back no matter how much you try to retroactively change your choices.  

I’m not interested in re-litigating every scene or every online battle that followed its release. The casino sequence (waste of time/pointless), the Holdo maneuver (break the in-universe much?), the treatment of Luke (I was never the biggest Luke fan anyway), the way certain character arcs simply evaporate: others have gone over those pieces in exhaustive detail. The point that sealed it for me in The Last Jedi? Fuel. You read that right, fuel. Its never been much of a thing in Star Wars and suddenly the entire flimsy plot hinges on it?

Get the hell outta here with that.

Then there is the places where they could have made truly great choice like Finn engaging in self sacrifice? NOPE! "Gotcha!!!" with subverting expectations, to which my eyes nearly rolled out of my skull.

For me all of this is simpler: the movie sucks. It left a bad taste the first time and that taste never went away. Some films improve with a second look. This one doesn’t deserve a second look. You may like it and that's fine. But for me? Once was more than enough.

To head off the "old man Star Wars takes?" To be clear, if someone likes TLJ, more power to them. Its simply not for me. This has nothing to do with ruining my childhood either. Its simply I found it lacking.

There it is, the absolute worst Star Wars in my opinion.