Much like the last Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker has seemingly divided the internet in half. Some are screaming about how awful it is, the rest are screaming about how great it is. It will apparently either ruin your childhood or force you to cum in your pants. I assume that this conflict will eventually lead us into a post-apocalyptic world in which you must choose a side and all conflicts are resolved in the thunderdome. In the meantime, I’m here to say that this movie is alright. I have a whole lot of questions, some of which are pissing me off, but I also generally had a good time with the film. It isn’t particularly satisfying as a conclusion, but it isn’t the worst Star Wars movie either. I mean, Jar Jar isn’t in this. As usual, spoilers will be identified ahead of time.
The plot is either very simple or incredibly complicated, depending on how much you want to dwell on. The major point is that the Emperor has returned (that’s in the trailers, so it isn’t a spoiler) and has amassed an army to finally end the Jedi and rule the universe and it is up to our heroes to stop him. Perhaps that sounds familiar. Of course, this being the ninth film, there are about a million subplots and characters that need resolution and the film addresses them with, um, varying degrees of attention and success. The major characters all get their moments here, but other characters fall to the wayside, as do entire plot points. Remember how Last Jedi ended with that little girl telepathically moving a broom and the implication was that far more Jedis were in the making? Yeah, well, forget about that.
Much of this film feels like an apology for The Last Jedi. Much will probably be written comparing this film and Last Jedi and using the comparison as a basis for discussing the use of fan service and the value of nostalgia as entertainment. While Last Jedi attempted to move the series into new directions, this is a return to the familiar and the safe. Much of what irritated fans about Last Jedi has been retconned, or at least softened here. Unfortunately, my biggest issue with Last Jedi is that it’s boring as fuck and that problem can’t be retconned.
That approach has both positives and negatives. On the plus side, this movie is often a hell of a lot of fun. It is a fast-paced action movie that is trying to do so much that it moves like a freight train through its lengthy running time. Unlike Last Jedi, it is certainly not boring. On the down side, that means that most characters (with the exception of Rey and Kylo, whose arc is the best part of the film) aren’t given as much attention as they deserve. The return to the familiar means that we see old characters and locations that resonate with longtime fans. The downside is that they are obvious appeals to nostalgia. As a longtime fan, there are moments here that I loved and at least one moment that felt like an emotional punch to the stomach. However, I also recognize that those moments purely exist to take advantage of my nostalgia. There is degree of nostalgic manipulation here that is brazen in its transparency, but it works.
The biggest problem, though, is that it just doesn’t feel like a conclusion to the series that I have been watching my entire life. There is nothing organic about this story and I will never, ever believe that this is the conclusion that Disney (or anybody else) had in mind this entire time. Other than the retconning and ignoring of events from the last movie, this just doesn’t feel like a logical continuation of the story. I don’t believe for a second that they always intended to bring back Palpatine (more on that in the spoiler section). The major goal is to find objects that were never mentioned before so that they can travel to a world that has never been mentioned before. For a series that has been going on for over four decades, that’s a whole lot of shit that was never mentioned before but is now really, really important. It astounds me that, with a series of this importance and magnitude, Disney was clearly flying by the seat of their fucking pants when they came up with this. It’s disappointing and makes this entire trilogy feel incredibly redundant and unnecessary.
SPOILERS…………………………… Okay, I have serious questions. How the fuck is Palpatine alive? The movie completely ignores this question, except for some throwaway line about the powers of the dark arts or some horseshit. This is not a minor fucking point, movie, how the fuck is he still alive? I know what he has been doing, which is building an enormous goddamn army, somehow completely undetected, but it is baffling that the movie would consider his survival to be a trivial point. Also, so Rey is Palpatine’s granddaughter…….. FUCKING WHAT?!? How? Who the fuck banged Palpatine? How drunk was she? How could this never be mentioned before? Why does everybody in these movies now have to be related? Also, the ending is basically a redo of the ending of Return of the Jedi with Ray having to refuse to kill Palpatine and succumb to the darkside. Other than this being derivative, I have a question: Why is it that the Jedi can kill stormtroopers left and right, but they can’t kill the Emperor because it will cause them to give into the darkside? Motherfuckers, I just watched you kill like a hundred goddamn people in order to get here, but one more kill is too much? My girlfriend explained that this has something to do with Buddhism, but I never before realized that a working knowledge of Buddhism was needed to follow the plot of Star Wars. Maybe I was wrong and she’s right, but I don’t think even Buddhism can explain how Palpatine is still alive.
END SPOILERS
This movie is a lot of fun moments strung together in a really ill-conceived plot. It is an entertaining film, but a poor conclusion to a saga. All in all, I now divide Star Wars into three levels: The excellent (Episodes IV, V, VI), the good (Episodes III, VII and IX) and the shitty (Episodes I, II and VIII). And now it is all over…. except that the next three Star Wars films already have release dates for Christmas 2022, 2024 and 2026. End of the saga, my ass.
Image By: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/af/Star_Wars_The_Rise_of_Skywalker_poster.jpg
